Raw Milk (and butter and someday, cheese!)

I have been wanting to find a local source for raw milk for a few months now, for several reasons:

1.   Raw milk contains more of the good-for-you enzymes, vitamins, minerals and beneficial bacteria than pasteurized milk does.

2.   It’s becoming increasingly more important to me that I know where my food comes from, how it is processed, how the animals are cared for, etc.  Just last week 4 people died from Listeria obtained from eating cantaloupe.  Cantaloupe, for crying outloud! 

3.   Locally grown / raised food allows me to minimize my carbon footprint as those goods have not been transported thousands of miles.

The only problem is, I don’t know where to find it or, more correctly, I DIDN’T know where to find it.  No one at the farmer’s market offers a cow share, the local growers association has no dairy farms listed on their producers page – I was stuck with nothing!  And, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s because selling raw milk is illegal in my state (Indiana).  You technically have to own the cow – that’s why I’ve been asking about a cow share.  That’s the way around the law in my state – a dairy farmer sells you part of the cow then you pay him or her to care for and board said cow and you can then benefit from the milk. 

In a recent post over at The Elliott Homestead, Shaye mentioned a resource for finding raw milk in your area – www.realmilk.com.  Lo and behold, there is a small dairy just a couple miles from my parent’s house!  (Thanks, Shaye!)  I contacted them about signing up for a cow share.  She has 3 Jersey cows – Betsy, Daisy and Margaret.  Last Friday evening, Hubz and I stopped by the farm while she milked.  We walked away as cow share owners carrying our very first gallon of fresh, raw milk. 



See all that cream at the top...yum!

So far, we are loving it!  Saturday morning we woke up to find about 3 inches of cream at the top of our gallon jar.  That amounted to 3 total cups of cream from which I made 7 ozs of butter – that’s almost 2 sticks!  I was so excited.  My Mom was too.  She grew up with a milk cow on the farm.  She snagged some of my butter.

I was concerned about how long it would keep being that it’s unprocessed.  My farmer couldn’t give me a good estimate.  She doesn’t have many customers yet and gets 8 gallons of milk a day.  She uses a good bit to make mozzarella cheese a few times a week, but she has so much milk that she tosses whatever is left of yesterday’s milk to the chickens/dogs/cats/goats every morning!   It never goes bad at her house.

By the way, her cheese was really good, hard enough to grate over a homemade pizza.  That will be my next adventure - cheesemaking.   I’ll let you know how it goes!



This post is being shared as part of the Farmgirl Friday blog hop at Deborah Jean's Dandelion House.  Click on the image below to see what other Farmgirls are up to this week!