Anchorage Daily News

WASILLA -- For a guy who's currently propping up the state's tiny dairy business, Kyle Beus is deceptively at ease.

You wouldn't know to look at him that Beus has for months been working almost around the clock to get the upstart Valley dairy business Matanuska Creamery off the ground. Beus manages the creamery.

"I was down here till 1 this morning and back at 6 a.m., and I expect to do that again tonight," Beus said Thursday afternoon.

He chalked up part of the rush to preparations for a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday that was filled with speeches by Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, Rep. Don Young, local officeholders and U.S. Department of Agriculture officials.

The creamery got off the ground with help from a $643,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant and a lot of support from Stevens and from state Senate President Lyda Green, R-Wasilla, Beus said.

But mostly, Beus is busy because the creamery is going gangbusters.

"We bottled milk into the late hours last night and into the wee hours this morning," he said.

Jugs of milk in local stores are something the Valley's four dairy farmers are pretty glad to see.

"If he couldn't pull anything together, we would have been slaughtering cows," dairyman Gareth Byers said of Beus after the ceremony. "There were a few options out there, but none of them were good."

Byers is the newest face in Alaska dairying. He took over an existing operation Nov. 1, about a month before Matanuska Maid quit collecting milk for good. Working 16-hour days just to dump his milk -- his would-be profit -- was hard, he said. It wasn't easier for the longtimers.

"This is the longest winter I've spent at Point MacKenzie," Wayne Brost, a 13-year Alaska dairy farmer, told the crowd Friday.

But as people crowded around tables to sample fresh milk and cheese curds, Byers said he's excited about the future.

"It's a new beginning for dairy up here," he said.

A GALLON AT A TIME

The creamery's slogan, printed on a giant banner that hung in the store Friday, captured the hopes riding on Beus' endeavor: "Securing the future of Alaska's dairy industry, one gallon at a time."

Matanuska Creamery has been picking up milk since mid-March. Early pickups were pressed into 35,000 pounds of cheese, some of which will be ripe and ready to sell next week.

People who invested in "cheese futures" bought some of the cheese upfront months ago and have first dibs on the finished product. What's left will soon be on Fred Meyer shelves.

Lately, however, the milk has been selling in fluid form. Bright yellow gallon jugs hit Fred Meyer coolers last week, as quickly as one day after the milk was collected.

"If you want milk any fresher, you have to buy a cow," Beus joked.

Dairy farmers still await their first milk checks, however. They'll get paid June 10 for the milk sold in the latter half of May, Beus said. After that, checks will be cut twice a month. Payment for the milk that went into producing cheese will come when the cheese sells, he said.

Beus said he hopes sales of creamery products will get a boost in October when Target opens new stores in Anchorage and Wasilla. Target recently agreed to stock the local milk and cheese, he said.

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at www.adn.com/contact/rwhite or call 352-6709.