A raw deal

I read an article the other day entitled "Is raw, unpasteurized milk safe?" (http://
seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011399591_rawmilk21m.html) It got me thinking again about why folks are so polarized about raw milk. Good god, in foodie circles it's an issue as divisive as healthcare reform or the war in Iraq. Or perhaps abortion offers a more apt parallel: the legality of selling raw milk varies by state. (No joke.) In the few parts of the country where you can buy raw milk at the market, like the California co-op where I snapped this pic a few months back, there are labels reading "WARNING: This product may contain harmful bacteria." And yet plenty of folks seek it out, will find loopholes like "cow shares" (where one isn't *buying milk* but rather picking up a portion of the assets of an animal that they partly own -- an important legal distinction), will drive ridiculous distances to procure a gallon and pay a pretty penny for it. The milk has not been sterilized, begging the question: is it worth the risk?

Now, I've come to love raw dairy. The milk, cheese, and yoghurt that I've had the opportunity to sample at small family farms around the country taste different from the grocery store stuff I'd been consuming my whole life. Richer, creamier. Not only does it taste better, but frankly, I think it's healthier. While the FDA claims there are no benefits to unpasturized, raw milk, I am not convinced. (I guess that puts me nearer the "rabid supporter" end of the spectrum. I'm not rabid, though. I've had all my shots.) I swear my hair, my nails, my skin have never been so healthy as when I've had frequent access to the creamy deliciousness of raw cow, sheep, and goat milk over the past 11 months. It makes sense: the good stuff hasn't all been zapped out of it during the usual pasturization process.

I am not anti-hygiene, mind you, or anti-food safety. (I am, however, vehemently against antibacterial soap and hand sanitizers, but that is a soap box for another day.) There need to be standards, sure. The animals need to be healthy, the equipment clean, and the milk kept cold and free from harmful pathogens. It should be tested regularly (and it is). This is entirely possible at a small-scale dairy run by a conscientious farmer, like the place I helped out at in Foxboro, MA back in June. Heck, Terri was a USDA dairy *inspector* before she started her own raw milk dairy. She knows what she's doing and her loyal customers trust that she would not sell them something she would not drink herself.

Now, let me be clear: there are risks. I would tend to apply the same doctor's guidelines for raw milk as I would for, say, sushi. Probably best not to chance it if you're pregnant or under 2 years old. (Speaking of raw animal products being dangerous, why, I wonder, isn't the FDA trying to shut down the sushi industry? I may need to do a bit of sushi research.... Yum.) The Seattle Times article suggests many opportunities for fecal contamination during the milking process. (Ick. Did I really just type "fecal contamination"? Yes, I believe I did. Double ick.) It isn't that there's less poop in pasturized milk, but the germs (as well as the good stuff) are obliterated by the high heat exposure.

There are risks one should consider when consuming raw dairy (or raw anything, really, if you consider the tons of chemicals dumped on most crops these days). But I suspect that the chances of getting sick from a glass of raw milk from a small, local dairy are significantly smaller than, say, getting salmonella from your bag of grocery store spinach or e. coli from a fast food hamburger. Have you noticed the rise in factory farm food recalls in recent years?

I actually think the issue comes down to scale: raw milk can be safe if the dairies are small enough. Time and energy must be devoted to doing things safely, and a farmer's diligence and intimate knowledge of each animal are critical. Sorry, Big Ag, but raw milk operations should not (and cannot safely) be scaled up to your factory farm specifications. As such, it's no wonder that food academics like Michael Pollan suggest that it is "an emblem of noncorporate food." Ah, *another* reason to celebrate raw milk.

Want to try some? Well, you can't buy it in DC or Maryland. (There is hope, though slight: you can get it through a cow share in nearby Virginia.) Here's a great resource, including information on where you can (and can't buy) it around the country: http://www.realmilk.com/happening.html. (Thanks for the link, Mike!)

I love raw milk. If I lived in a larger place with a yard, I'd consider getting my own dairy goat. Unless that's illegal in DC, too.... (Have I mentioned lately that goats are my favorite barnyard animals?)

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

How can ewe resist?

1 bottle + 10 lambs = hilarity. And there are over 100 little lambies at Becky's....

During my time at Monkeyflower Ranch, there were 5 or 6 lambs being born each day. Plenty of mouths to feed meant I got lots of hands-on experience. I loved it. Honestly, the little guys were so cute, waggling their fluffy tails as they nursed, that I hardly noticed the mud, poop, milk, and straw that permeated my clothes from being around them 3 or 4 times each day for the past few days. (Until I caught a whiff of myself when I was leaving the farm on Monday morning, that is. I may need to fumigate a few clothing items before putting them in the wash....) They're smaller in stature than the calf brood I bottle-fed back in Foxboro last June, but they're just as voracious (and hilarious).

I'd first heard of Becky's sheep operation from my friends Laura and Barry a few weeks ago. The artisan cheese maker had worked at a goat dairy years before, been trained as a professional chef, worked for awhile at the Bay Area's fabulous Cowgirl Creamery (whose dairy wares at the DC location frequently captured a sizable chunk of my paltry teacher's salary back in the day), all the while wanting to be on a farm... running a dairy seemed like a natural next step. The former Gabriella Cafe chef had decided she wanted to get into making raw aged sheep's milk cheese -- a delicacy not readily available in this country, though popular in Europe. So a few visits with cheese makers in France and Spain were in order -- sounds like my kind of research! -- and then it was time to get started.

Like the folks at Uplands Cheese (where I'd stopped overnight on my way through Dodgeville, WI and met the cows behind the stunning Pleasant Ridge Reserve -- one of my all-time favorite cheeses), Becky believes that the quality of her Garden Variety Cheeses comes down in large part to the quality of the milk, which in turn depends on the quality of life of the animals, which ultimately comes down to the quality of the pasture. Yep, good grass. With access to lots of fresh water and an open-air shelter for when the weather turns nasty, Becky's flock of milkers -- around 50 ewes -- spend most of their time out on pasture. Because of the relatively mild climate in Watsonville (or, technically Royal Oaks, but try and find *that* on google maps), it turns out that the best grass is available during the drizzly winter and spring months, so Becky slated the first lambing season to begin in December. This way the sheep have prime grazing spots during milking season.

As Becky and I crumbled and salted a batch of cheese, then pressed the crumbles into molds, I learned quite a bit more. I came to understand that sheep produce less milk than cows or goats -- 2 quarts for an average ewe per day in comparison to about 4 gallons per cow -- and their milking season is shorter, averaging about 6 months. Thus she is only making cheese for 6 months of the year. Is this enough to support the farm? Becky's been working on some creative solutions to that very question. My favorite is her adopt-a-ewe project. This past summer, she advertised as follows:

"Ever thought about quitting your job, cashing in your savings and following your dream of starting a sheep cheese dairy? Want to live vicariously through someone who has? For $500 you can cover the costs to feed and care for an organically raised dairy sheep during the off-season. In return, you will receive $600 worth of farm products from January to June of 2010."

$500 for fresh lamb (or a wool comforter) plus weekly installments of fresh and aged sheep's milk cheeses for 6 months? Psh. I've probably dropped that much on cheese alone. Sign me up! If only I lived nearby.... (Don't worry, mom and dad, I'm not moving, but wouldn't it be rad to have something like this near DC??)

Becky says she hopes to make cheese 4 or 5 times a week during the half-year period when milk is available -- quite an accomplishment when one considers how much work goes into the process. Milking and equipment cleaning seem to take up much of the active time. And then there's the basic animal care. While relatively low-maintenance, having sheep is still work -- mostly in terms of milking, but they also require periodic hoof-trimming, hay to supplement their diet, and regular checkups. (And much more, I'm sure, that I didn't witness firsthand during the few days I was on the farm. Like setting up the fencing for the rotational grazing. A healthy pasture is key, remember.)

As I've been doing some thinking lately on farming in a way that is sustainable in terms of not only fuel and chemicals but also human energy, I found Becky's setup to be pretty reasonable, with tasks and shifts varied between 5 or 6 paid staff over the course of the week. It's a long day -- the first milking and lamb feeding shifts start around 7am and the last shift ends around 10pm -- but it's manageable. There's still time for fun. After Saturday night's dinner party (and final lamb bottle feeding of the night), a few of us watched "Black Sheep" -- not the Chris Farley comedy, but one of the more ridiculous horror films out there, about genetically-modified vampire sheep who take over a farm in New Zealand. At least I think that's how it ends... I fell asleep about an hour in, just past midnight. (I'd been up since I helped out with the 7am lamb feeding session. And to think I used to be a night owl.)

I hope that more folks start up small dairy operations like this. The cheeses are downright delicious -- what, you thought I'd not tried any? -- and the lambs... I mean, HOW CUTE are the lambs? Sure, they're awkward and kind of clueless and try to nurse on your elbows and each other and the backs of your knees, but how can you keep from smiling around these little guys? I sure couldn't.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Feats of Dairy-ing Do

As fate would have it, my plans to check out farms in western Massachusetts fell through just when a number of folks started sending me information on amazing farms further east in the state. (Thank you, Mike, Daniel, and Mother Margaret Georgina!) Ollie and I conferred and agreed that rerouting made sense. So after a few phone calls, we began to head east from Southwick to Foxboro, where I was to learn all about raw milk, the dairy industry, and the Farm Bureau from the friendly and knowledgeable Terri, her parents, and her sister. (I also learned a lot about sharks and dinosaurs from Terri's son, Joseph, but since you can't milk them, I won't go into detail here.)

I arrived at the Lawton Family Farm on Saturday morning, catching a ride from Warren, MA with Terri's sister, Danielle, who had kindly hosted Ollie and I (and our ridiculous amount of gear) the evening before, and who filled me in on the family's history of dairy farming. She and Terri -- the driving force behind Oake Knoll Ayrshires (a raw milk production operation at her family's farm in Foxboro) -- had always been around farmers, been actively involved in their local 4-H organization, and since the 80s when their father converted the farm to a dairy, been around cows. This family knows dairy. (If ever there's a farm trivia night at Wonderland when I get back to DC, I know who I want on my team for the round on bovines.) Terri's degree in Animal Agribusiness and her time as a state dairy inspector have informed her professional practice, but she also clearly really cares for her cows. She names every cow and is acutely aware of the quirks of each; the cows, in turn, seemed comfortable and even a bit curious around various members of the family, and me when I made my way to the pre-milking area. The milking routine moved like a well-oiled machine: the cows waited outside the milking barn until the gate was lifted, then they marched in, found the nearest empty spot, and poked their heads through one of the 12 headgates to nibble on a small pile of grain. The milkers -- Ed and Nancy -- cleaned and sterilized the udders and teats, then hooked the cows up to the milking machines. When the whole group was done, the teats were disinfected once again, the cows unhooked, and everyone marched out the far end of the barn to make room for the next cadre. Amazing.

Terri is very much connected not only to her cows but also to her community of raw milk drinkers who regularly come by the farm to pick up their pre-ordered fresh milk. One afternoon, she told me of a recent time when the price of organic oats and grain (which she uses to supplement the cows' main diet of forage -- grass and hay) rose sharply from $5 to $30 over the course of two months: she took a poll among her loyal customer base to see what they wanted to do. Of the options -- 1) start feeding the cows conventionally grown oats and grain, 2) start feeding them organic corn and soybeans, or 3) let the cows attempt to subsist on a diet of grass and hay alone (which, it turns out, means that they lack key nutrients) -- the group as a whole decided to abandon the organic feed (option 1) in order to keep the cows happy, healthy, and productive. Democracy in action.

I was surprised to learn from Terri's mom that, contrary to what I'd read in books like Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, cows actually love corn. They will seek it out. If they get loose in a field, I was told, they will always go for the sweet-tasting, easily accessible calories of a corn stalk over the usual grass. (Yes, I know corn is a grass, technically, but there are different chemical things going on that make corn especially appealing... and complicated. There is a good deal of debate among those who raise cattle as to whether chopped corn stalks -- a common component of the diet of conventionally-raised cows -- count as "grain" or "forage" or some combination of the two.) This doesn't mean cows *should* eat corn, or if they do, certainly not anything close to what they are stuffed with when crammed into the typical beef cattle feed lots. For her part, Terri avoids feeding corn products to her herd, a practice which is both more expensive and requires more work to locate appropriate alternatives for her cows. But the decision has philosophical and financial underpinnings for her business, and Terri continues to nourish her cows without corn products.

Speaking of nourishing, I was put on calf-feeding patrol the last morning at the farm. Apparently Ed and Nancy thought I could hold my own after Nancy and I had successfully fed the group the previous morning, so they sent me into the calf barn with a big bucket of fresh milk and a bottle. (In retrospect, I think they might have been mildly hazing me.) Hilarity ensued as the calves proceeded to knock each other (and me, almost) over in the feeding frenzy. I tell you, those little guys are hungry. Whitey got his head stuck in the bucket at one point, while one of the other calves tried to headbutt the bottle out of the mouth of the calf I was feeding as another of the calves jumped on his back, the last little guy nibbling on my fingers and then, when that didn't work, my pants. Total chaos. I was seeing the "suck or die" instinct in action. I'd heard about this principle of calf behavior -- not to be confused with the Republican Party's motto -- during my time at the Abbey, and have found the aggressive nursing instinct to be pretty intense. But I made it out alive and all five calves were fed. Whew!

I purchased a small container of the farm's newly marketed fromage blanc and tossed Ollie into the back of Ed's truck: I'd managed to hitch a ride into Boston during Ed's regular brewer's grain pick-ups. (Hey, I'm biking *most* of the way around the country, but I'll hitch a ride here and there with folks going my way. And after the intensity of the morning's calf riots, I was glad for the rest.)


Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry