Undercover Hippie Files: Moo is me

Sometimes I wait to write posts so they will be a complete little story with a nice ending. But then, the ending doesn't come. That is how it is with this, but I guess I will tell y'all anyway.

As I have gotten more and more into nutrition and eating natural whole foods, I have been questioning our dairy intake and whether we should go raw. Now, I'm not convinced that pasteurized milk is the devil (right now we have a gallon of milk from HEB in the fridge) but I do think real (raw) milk is healthier.

So a while back we visited a Class A raw milk goat farm. We toured their facilities, met the goats and saw the milking process. It was a really neat experience but still a bit weird. I mean, I knew it was raw but when I saw them milk the goat, the pour the milk through a paper funnel into jugs then put the jugs to chill, I kept thinking - "That's it? Shouldn't you do something else?" But then he took out another jug, already chilled, with milk he collected that morning, and I took a sip. It was tasty. I was really worried that I wouldn't like it since it was so much fattier than I was used to and I don't like store bought whole milk at all. It wasn't like that at all, it was just like the milk I was used to, except...milkier.

So we bought ourselves a gallon. At $12.75 raw milk doesn't come cheap but we learned to use a little less on our cereal and dilute it slightly for baking and were able to make that gallon stretch for two weeks (raw doesn't go bad the same way pasteurized does, it sours but doesn't spoil in the same way or as quickly).

The farm is quite a ways away from where we live but the farmer said he delivers to town twice a week so we called him up and the next weekend he dropped another gallon off at our front porch - but this time it came with a $3 delivery charge. Now, he didn't mentioned this when I emailed about prices, when we visited the farm and he told us about the delivery service, or when we called to request a delivery so it took us by surprise. It was a little annoying to say the least but I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and I know gas costs money but still $15.75 for a gallon of milk? The most aggravating part was that I don't think it is an option anymore, it is just too big of a stretch on our budget.

So this month, we are back on store milk. I've looked into other options (pasteurized but non-homogenized, or just organic, etc) but I am not happy with them and am really conflicted. I think I might be able to swing raw again this summer since less milk consumption will be occurring with Craig being gone for work, but after that I don't know. How many more bean meals are we willing to eat to make it work? For now, I'll just have to be content with my memories of raw milk while I drink pasteurized cow milk. Oh, woe moo is me (sorry, I couldn't help myself).

I'm not out to convert any of you to raw milk drinkers, but if you are interested in some of the articles I first saw that got me thinking, here you are:

Nourishing Gourmet talks about raw milk
Kelly has a series about raw milk
A Mercola report on raw milk benefits
realmilk.com