Just kidding around: Jennie and Jarell Smith enjoy raising goats on their Bovina farm

Published 11:00 am Tuesday, June 10, 2025

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Jarrell and Jennie Smith hang out with Sunny, one of the nearly 20 goats they own at At Last Farm in Bovina. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Jarrell Smith, co-owner of At Last Farm in Bovina, bottle feeds a baby goat. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Jennie Smith, co-owner of At Last Farm in Bovina, holds two baby goats. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Ginger and her kids hang out in a barn stall at At Last Farmin Bovina. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

A baby goat walks through the barn at At Last Farm in Bovina. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

A baby goat suckles from its mother, Ginger, at At Last Farm in Bovina. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

A baby goat is bottle-fed at At Last Farm in Bovina. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Jennie and Jarrell Smith own at At Last Farm in Bovina. The couple has about 20 goats, 50 chickens and a cow, and sell products made on the working farm. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Beech, one of the nearly 20 goats who live at At Last Farm, grazes in the pasture. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Jarrell Smith, co-owner of At Last Farm in Bovina, leads Annabelle the cow to the pasture to graze. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Jarrell Smith checks the teeth of Sunny, one of the nearly 20 goats he and his wife Jennie own at their At Last Farm in Bovina. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Sunny, one of the nearly 20 goats who live at At Last Farm, poses for a photo. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Jarrell Smith tends to one of the goats he and his wife, Jennie, own at At Last Farm in Bovina.

One of the goats at At Last Farm in Bovina hangs out in the barn. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Jennie Smith tends to Sunny, one of the nearly 20 goats she and her husband Jarrell own at their At Last Farm in Bovina. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Shaquille O'Neal, a rooster at At Last Farm in Bovina, guards the chicken flock. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Annabelle, a cow at At Last Farm in Bovina, grazes in the pasture. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Jarrell Smith totes a batch of hay through the barn at At Last Farm in Bovina. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Ginger and her kids hang out in a barn stall at At Last Farmin Bovina. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Jennie Smith, co-owner of At Last Farm in Bovina, holds a baby goat. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Editor’s note: This story appears in the May-June 2025 edition of Vicksburg Living magazine.

At their small family farm in Bovina, Jennie and Jarell Smith have birthed and raised dozens of kids.

And lots of chickens, pigs, dogs and a cow as well.

The couple’s primary interest is goats, whose babies are called kids. The Smiths have bred, raised and sold them for eight years, and also sell products made from their milk.

Besides being a small side business, it’s a passion and their own unique furry family.

“Neither one of us had children when we married and I was 44. I wasn’t fixing to. We’ll say we’re great aunts and uncles. But these are our kids,” Jennie Smith said.

Farming and animals have always been an interest for Jennie and Jarell. Jarell’s family raised hogs in South Carolina when he was growing up. Jennie was a city girl, but her father often took care of whatever animals happened to come around the backyard.

“I’ve always loved animals. My dad loved animals. We lived in a neighborhood and at one point in our lives we were raising seven mallard ducks in the backyard. We had golden retrievers and raised them. Anything he could get away with that my mother wouldn’t throw a fit too bad with,” Jennie said. “Once my father passed away, if Jarell was out of town my mother would come sit and I’d do chores. She’d sit over there and tell the goats, ‘She’ll be right back, y’all keep eating.’”

Jennie and Jarell were married in 2013 and soon after bought their 11-acre property in Bovina. They named it At Last Farm, after the Etta James song that they danced to at their wedding. Not long after that they started raising feeder hogs like the ones Jarell was familiar with from his youth.

That all changed when they met Ronald and Sandra Collins.

The Collinses raised goats and immediately hit it off with the Smiths. The Collinses became the Smiths’ mentors in the arts of goat farming, teaching them everything from how to feed to how to breed, raise and harvest the animals.

“I was probably the one that motivated her. I didn’t have any experience with dairy animals, but I had raised feeder hogs. We did that here for a while until her goat fancy took over the big pasture. It’s kind of in my blood. I love it out here,” Jarell Smith said. “After she went out and spent time with the Collins she fell in love with it, then later we both did.”

The Smiths bought their first goat, Betty Jo, in 2017 and were off and running from there. They gave up pig farming and now have around 20 goats on the farm at any given time, along with a flock of 50 chickens, three dogs and a cow named Annabelle.

“How many people say they’ve got pet dogs? Well I’ve got a pet cow and her name is Annabelle,” Jennie said with a laugh.

Jarell estimates that between 12 and 20 kids — baby goats — are born on At Last Farm each year. The farm has a half-dozen family lines that are kept straight with a simple naming system.

Each line has a specific theme like trees (Beech and Magnolia) or small Mississippi towns. In one line, every goat has a “zz” in its name.

“Sometimes when we’re on a road trip that’ll be the thing we do. ‘All right, come up with some names for a goat line.’ We joked for a while that we were going to do stripper names,” Jarell laughed.

Jarell and Jennie said all of the goats have unique personalities. Some are escape artists who constantly find new and inventive ways to get out of their pens. Others are sweet and loving, and a few are stubborn. A few days after they were born, three new kids were already exploring the barn.

Even Annabelle has her quirks. The cow has been blind in her left eye ever since a piece of hay got stuck in it as a calf. She’s still perky, though, running and bouncing behind Jarell as he led her into the pasture to graze.

“She has a lot of goat in her,” Jarell said.

Jarell added that the personality traits are passed down through generations.

“They each have their own personalities, and that carries on from mother to daughter,” he said. “We’ve got one goat, Rosemary, she will roll on the ground, have four feet up in the air. She’s the only one that does that, but her kids do, too.”

The Smiths try to breed their goats so that the kids are born in January and February, but it doesn’t always work out that way. One was born on Christmas. Another — named “Ta Da” — was a surprise kid born on New Year’s Eve, a few months after one of the male goats got loose and friendly with a female. This year’s kids were coming into the world in April.

Most of the young goats are sold to other farms in the area. The other part of the business is selling their milk and other products.

Jennie has several varieties of goat milk cheese that she sells through the At Last Farm Facebook page. Chicken eggs, pickled eggs and okra, and vegetables from the farm’s garden are also available for sale. All of the milk products are available either pasteurized or raw.

Jennie’s also experimenting with goat milk soap, but said she hasn’t quite gotten the formula right yet.

“Goat milk is supposed to be easier to digest. Sometimes you have a doctor who tells a mother their baby won’t do breast milk or formula, so they have to do goat’s milk instead,” Jennie said. “If I can’t use it for human consumption, the chickens get goat’s milk, the dogs get goat’s milk. Annabelle, when she first moved here, got goat’s milk. We use it around the farm for us as well. I treat it like we’re going to use it for human consumption.”

Jennie said most of the profits from the farm cover the cost of feed and other supplies. Raising goats and chickens is more about having a fun hobby that both of the Smiths enjoy.

Jarell still works at ERDC, but Jennie retired several years ago after a 25-year career in the casino industry. Jennie’s new full-time job is caring for and enjoying their animals.

“You hear when people retire, they don’t have anything to do? We have plenty to do — and it’s fun,” she said. “I used to wear a suit every day and now I wear overalls. This is my uniform.”

About Ernest Bowker

Ernest Bowker is The Vicksburg Post's sports editor. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post's sports staff since 1998, making him one of the longest-tenured reporters in the paper's 140-year history. The New Jersey native is a graduate of LSU. In his career, he has won more than 50 awards from the Mississippi Press Association and Associated Press for his coverage of local sports in Vicksburg.

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