So there I was, out in the middle of nowhere, driving home after picking up eggs from my local farmer the other day, when what should pull out in front of me but the huge milk tanker truck pictured to the right.
The interesting thing is that most folks wouldn’t think twice about the big fat lie plastered on the back of that milk tanker.
Is it possible for farm fresh milk to come out of a tanker truck? Â I don’t think so!
My dear uncle would turn over in his grave if he saw the message on that truck. Â You see, my Uncle Harry was a small dairy farmer from Frewsburg, New York just a few miles down the road from Chautauqua where my family spent the summer each year while I was growing up.
My first experience with fresh, raw milk was at my uncle’s farm where I would drive out as a teenager to visit on weekends. Â I would ride his palomino horse for hours all over the beautiful, rolling pastures and then come in for lunch or dinner.
There was always a big stainless steel pitcher of cold, raw milk on the dining room table during meals and my aunt and uncle would try and coax me to drink some. Â I was tentative about it as I’d been warned that “raw milk was dangerous” and not to drink any.
But, seeing his peaceful, healthy cows grazing in the pasture, I found that somehow hard to believe.
I never did try my uncle’s raw milk, but I truly wish I had. Â I’m sure it was delicious.
Now a veteran of raw milk drinking from numerous farms for over 10 years, I feel like I am somehow honoring my uncle’s legacy by supporting the small dairy farms in my community and spending my dairy dollars locally.
Sadly, like thousands of small dairy farms across America, my uncle’s farm is no more. Â It pains me to know that I can never take my children there to see it like it used to be.
But, I can help educate people about the wonders of raw milk from cows grazing on green grass and how this food is so very safe to consume – light years safer than factory treated, tanker truck milk headed to grocery store shelves around the country!  Grassfed raw milk is life giving, nutrient dense, and exactly what children need to grow up sturdy and strong.
This seems a timely topic to write about given that my local farmer’s rye grass is coming in strong in the pastures right now and the raw butter is turning deep yellow as the cows transition off of the hay winter ration. My family’s favorite raw butter of the year!
One thing is for sure – there’s no way my kids will ever be drinking any phony fresh milk from a tanker truck in all its pasteurized, homogenized, antibiotic, steroid, and hormone laced, GMO glory.
No, my kids will be drinking clean, raw milk from a small farm such as what my aunt and uncle proudly owned.
And, it will be fresh from the cow, not phony “fresh” from a truck!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
I am from India and I grew up with fresh milk from the cow in the morning and evening right at our door step.Fresh vegetable vendors come door to door to sell their weeks freshly grown vegetables and fruits.They still do!
I got married came to USA.I was excited to see all those foods in the refigerators in big grocery store!All under one roof!!LOL!!!AMerica is really advanced !Back in india thats what everyone thinks.But years passed I started getting migraines,mood swings and irrtable…I had no clue that the food what we ate is the root cause.
I my older son never drank milk for 3-4 yrs..I was so worried.I was pushing him hard to drink milk.I thought something was wrong with him.I didnt know the concept of organic then.We always thought that whatever we get from the can or the store is the HOLY NECTAR!!!LOL.
Whenever I visited my family in India,my son drank the milk,I used to feel good.
My innocent mom used to think that in america, evrything is fresh..Only after visiting here did she realise.
Its so hard to fresh raw milk.for me in Jacksonville ,Fl.
Everything is regulated.People and the little kids are deprived of healthy food.
I really appreciate your efforts Sarah!!!
An eye opener!
I live in Rwanda currently, where there are three milk options, uncooked (“fresh” milk), pasturized/packaged milk (which the seller calls “fresh”) and UHT milk (Ultra Heat Treated, which gets called “long life milk”). Yeah, that’s pretty popular here due to lack of refrigeration. Do you know they even sell UHT/shelf stable yogurt?? Yuck. My husband tried it once & said it had a wierd texture. Yeah, I imagine! We don’t drink our milk raw here due to concerns about procedures and sanitation, but I much prefer my own gently cooked milk to the “fake” milk at the store.
OK, I found the link to the story. Would love to see what you think about it.
Five kids sick, some seriously, apparently only one common denominator … sure hope it was not the raw milk!
Here’s the reality .. even in the remote chance it was the raw milk, would I stop drinking it or giving it to my kids? No. The fact is that food borne illness is much more likely with other foods even pasteurized milk. Not to say that no one will ever get sick from raw milk, but the likelihood is so much smaller than it is painted out to be by the gov’t.
This morning, my 6 year old granddaughter hand-milked my Jersey cow all by herself! ( A gallon and a half!) You KNOW how proud I am! Her mother had consumed raw milk all through pregnancy and breast-feeding and my granddaughter was weaned onto it.
Sarah, I’ve been following this discussion for months now, and my only concern is that there was a story in San Diego recently about children getting sick from raw milk. I didn’t pay a lot of attention, so I don’t have the details, but maybe you do? I know you talk about this being safe.
Thanks,
Melinda
Are you talking about the Organic Pastures case? The link to the milk was not established from what I read. http://www.thecompletepatient.com is a great blog for keeping up with any cases about raw milk and there are several blogs about this case from what I recall.
Please click over to the link above in the post which shows gov’t data about how many people get sick from raw milk each year. The risk with raw milk is much much lower than with any other food including pasteurized milk.
Tanker milk is gross.
I love my raw milk. I love supporting a farmer, I love that my raw milk is cheaper than the “lightly pasteurized grass fed milk” from the store (and tastes so much better, and doesn’t upset my body.). I like that I have a local drop off to get my milk, and I wish that it was more available to others.
Hi Sarah – I only came across your site last week. I can’t even remember what I was “googling” at the time, something about healthy cooking I think. I’m embarrassed to say I knew nothing about the traditional cooking movement – and I’m currently studying to be a home ec teacher! I’m overwhelmed by all the information, but very excited. I’m starting with some small changes. I’ve been looking for local organic food suppliers and there are quite a few. I haven’t found raw milk yet, but I did find non-homgenised bio-dynamic organic milk from a local farm here in Adelaide Australia. My children were amazed by the thick layer of cream at the top – I told them that’s how milk was when I was their age. Thank you for providing so much good information on food and nutrition. So many things I’ve read here are what my Mum and grandparents used to do, for instance – soaking oats overnight before making porridge. Now I know why & will go back to doing that.
Fantastic Jasmine! Welcome home to traditional cooking 🙂
I started searching for REAL fresh (raw) milk almost 4 years ago, when my son was a few months old. I had stumbled up the WAPF website while researching vaccinations. It took me a year to find it! While researching another product, I happened to click on a “where to buy” link. You can imagine my shock when I found a local organic delivery service that delivers raw milk (from a local Amish farm) every week, right to my door! How lucky am I?! Needless to say, we’ve been enjoying farm fresh raw milk ever since. It is AWESOME stuff! If it was no longer available to us, we wouldn’t drink milk. I will never feed that swill from the tanker trucks to my family again.
I love supporting my raw dairy farmer, who in the last year lost his contract with Organic Valley for refusing to stop selling raw milk. I no longer purchase Organic Valley products, and I am SO THANKFUL he made that decision. I also happily support the organic delivery service that makes the raw milk, and many other wonderful foods (pastured eggs, raw cream, pastured and grass fed meats, etc.), so easily available to us.
If you’re searching for a raw milk source, don’t give up! You may just stumble upon it in an unlikely way.
Thanks, Miss Sarah, for sharing bits of your childhood’s “soft” memories. I enjoy your blog so much and am learning as fast as I can.
I love telling people that I’m using “RAW ” milk. Sometimes the message passes as though I had whispered the comment into a whirling dust devil, and other times they ask, “Where do you get the raw milk?” I really must make up some business cards to pass out.
The location of the milk drop is a small Co-Op that normally is in a person’s garage, but now it is on the run, so to speak. It is legal in Texas to sell raw milk and home made foods etc. This particular home does not make any money from the sale of the milk, it’s a drop off location only, the town’s buildings/inspections office is now harassing the Co-Op, not the health department. The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense is helping the Co-Op; in the meant time others offer milk ports in the storm.
I love this county’s spirit to succeed. We are like a bunch of teenagers that are told we can’t do something, and the reply is, often under our breaths, “Watch ME!”! Sometimes, this is a good thing.
I would love to know if this is near me – I’m in the DFW area…
Sonya,
I live in the DFW area and have been to Lucky Layla Farms in Plano, where they sell raw milk and delicious, fresh drinkable yougurt. It might be worth the drive to check the place out.
http://luckylayla.com/index.php
There are several raw milk dairies in the DFW area. Check localharvest.org for starters. To be legal in Texas, raw milk has to be bought straight off the farm. Texas Daily Harvest is low-temp pasteurized (not raw, although they do have some raw cheese products I think), non-homogenized, and they will deliver to you all over the greater DFW area.