SNOW CAMP — Randy Lewis is doing what he loves, but these days it doesn’t always love him back.

“To be honest, I never wanted to do anything but milk cows,” Lewis said, “and that’s essentially what I’ve done.”

But this is not a great time to be in the dairy business, he said, and to keep his 100-plus-acre farm a farm, he is selling off his right to develop the land for good.

“We have a saying,” Lewis said. “Once you plant a farm in houses, it doesn’t grow much else for a long time.”

In 1960, there were probably 100 dairies in Alamance County, Lewis said. Income for dairy farmers has been a roller coaster ever since he took over the family farm in 1980, but it was the Great Recession that really pushed things to the brink.

“There’s four left now,” Lewis said. “We lost two this year.”

The price of milk has fallen, the price of cows, too, Lewis said, which means farmers are losing the money they spend raising them. He predicts more dairy farms across the country will close.

“There’s nothing on the horizon that’s making any of this any better,” Lewis said.

Lewis has had to get creative to keep his small farm going. He pulled out of the coop system a few years ago and, with the help of an $8,000 state grant, made a small bottling facility on the farm to cut out the middle man. His milk, sold under the Ran-Lew Dairy label, is pasteurized, so it is safe to drink and legal to sell, but not homogenized, so the cream rises to the top, and the caps on his bottles say, “Cream top shake well.” It’s also GMO free.

“This is as close to raw milk as you are going to get,” Lewis said.

It’s something that sets him apart from other small dairies like Maple View in Orange County and Homeland Creamery in Guilford. His milk is a different product with a different feel and flavor. Customers like it, he said, once they get used to it and know cream at the top doesn’t mean the milk is spoiled.

He delivers milk himself to stores like Weaver Street Market in Hillsborough, Whole Foods, and Lowes Foods stores in Mebane and Burlington as well as a few restaurants.

Now, Lewis is going into a farmland-preservation easement. Lewis won’t know exactly how much it’s worth until he’s had a survey and appraisal, but basically he is selling an easement prohibiting development that will be on the land whoever owns it.

“I want to make sure this stays a farm,” Lewis said. “It’s going to pay enough of the bills that we can probably stay here and do this.”

Lewis said this land has been in his family about five generations and that means a lot to him. After 2009, he said, he would have been better off giving his cows away than keeping the farm going. He doesn’t like to think about the financial loss he has taken in the past nine years, but he’s hoping the easement will help him overcome it.

“This place makes money,” he said, “we’re just too far in the hole.”

Staying in business also means expanding the business. Ice cream is the next project, Lewis said, but that is tricky. He makes good ice cream for himself, but it’s different on a larger scale. Milk that’s not homogenized can have a grainy texture customers aren’t used to.

There are also strict rules about fat content in dairy products, so while his whole milk has a higher fat content than most commercial milk — the cows pretty much decide how much — he is not separating the cream from it, so his ice cream might not have a high enough fat content to be called ice cream. He might have to call it low-fat.

“We have to find out what we can make and what we can call it,” Lewis said. “We’re starting from scratch — that’s what we’ve been doing the whole time.”

Reporter Isaac Groves can be reached at igroves@thetimesnews.com or 336-506-3045. Follow him on Twitter at @tnigroves.