The Batson Family Bottles Up Inda Bay Spring Water

In partnership with: Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce

Inda Bay Spring Water exists because of a family visionary. In the late 1950s, Shep Batson’s grandpa told his son, “You don’t need to go to college. You need to stay here and sell this water.” Grandpa was referring to the natural spring water that has flowed from springs along the hillside of their Stone County property for thousands of years. Son Archie’s response? “Daddy, you’re crazy. Water’s free. Nobody is going to pay for that.”

Shep’s wife, Tracey, laughs as she retells the family legend.

“How true that was at the time,” she says, noting it’s taken the family years, but they’re finally bottling the water as Grandpa Hollis Batson envisioned.

Sips from the Spring

Shep and Tracey own Inda Bay Spring Water, which bottles natural spring water from a multitude of springheads collectively producing 3,800 gallons a minute.

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“It’s just a tremendous amount of water that flows across our land,” Tracey says.

The spring was first staked off by Shep’s ancestor John Bond in 1822. Bond wrote his family in Georgia that his new home was near the largest spring he had ever seen. The water eventually flowed into Indie Bay, which was 5 miles long and
2 miles wide in places.

Shep is the seventh generation to work the land, running a natural polled gray Brahman cattle operation like his father, Archie, who was one of the first breeders of natural polled gray Brahmans in the country. Shep currently sells natural polled Brahmans for breeding, and he sells and ships semen and embryos internationally.

They’ve also successfully raised crawfish and alligators on the property, but these commodities were not feasible in the long term. About four years ago, the Batsons began to seriously research the viability and logistics of bottling the natural spring water that’s bubbled across their land for thousands of years.

“We knew it would be a challenge, but we didn’t know how big of a challenge it would be,” Tracey says, citing potential issues like Department of Health inspections and certifications, supply chain issues, constructing a bottling plant and other obstacles. Their three daughters, ranging in age from 14 to 25, helped with everything from harvesting crawfish to driving nails to building the bottling plant.

A Precious Resource

In March 2023, they shipped their first truckload of Inda Bay bottled water. The name “Inda Bay” pays homage to Shep’s ancestor John Bond and his selection of Indie Bay as a prime spot to settle in. Inda Bay natural spring water has a balanced pH and is almost unmatched in its purity according to lab analysis.

“We do nothing to it other than run it through a filter,” Tracey says. “It has no chemicals. We handle the bottling and packaging, and God does the rest.”

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They sell wholesale by the pallet and offer private labeling for businesses. They project sales of 5 million bottles of water in 2024.

“We really felt like this resource was something we could provide,” Tracey says. “Things come and go, like one year people say Angus is the best cattle, and the next year it’s something else. Crawfish comes in and out as a fad. Water is not a fad, and it’s becoming more and more precious all the time, with municipal water failures and supply chains failing.”

Thirst-Quenching Legacy

The history of hydration extends even beyond the Batsons’ earliest ancestors. In the 1980s, Hollis Batson invited researchers to investigate the ground around the springs.

“Archaeologists dated artifacts going back 10,000 years, so this water has been quenching the thirst of this territory for a long, long time,” Tracey says. “We felt like we could expand that, offering water to supply the Mississippi Gulf Coast if we could just get it going.”

Learn more about Inda Bay Spring Water, visit indabayspringwater.com.