Raw Milk from a Local Farm, Part I

Milk is an amazing food.  Babies can grow from 19in and 6.75lbs at birth to 26in and nearly 16lbs around 6 months of age when sustained on nothing but breast milk (based on 50^th percentile averages).   That’s a 37% increase in height and a whopping 137% increase in weight.  That’s crazy!  Clearly, a women’s unpasteurized, non-homogenized breast milk is ridiculously nourishing.  Can the same be said for skim milk found in our local grocery store?  In the past 3 months or so, we have made the transition from pasteurized, homogenized skim milk to organic, raw milk from pasture-raised cows on a local farm.  

The first step was transitioning from skim to whole milk.  I’ve been reading about the benefits of the fat profile in whole milk as opposed to reduced fat or skim milk ever since my older brother switched.  The fat portions in milk are what contain vitamins A, E, K, and D, known as fat-soluble vitamins.  Since skim milk contains less than 0.5% fat, the vitamin content is severely reduced, which is why they are supplemented more heavily than whole milk.  Great solution, right?  Yeah, except that fat-soluble vitamins need fat present to be properly absorbed and to yield decent bioavailability (1,2,3).  By drinking whole milk instead of skim milk, you are probably absorbing and making better use of the nutrients that are naturally occurring in the fat portions of the milk, and maybe even better use of the added nutrients as well.  (I know some are probably concerned about the “high” saturated fat content in whole milk, but hopefully in a later post I will have time to discuss further why saturated fat is not the cause of heart disease and is actually great for your body.)  Because I have been drinking skim milk since as long as I can remember, the hardest part about this first step was adjusting to the fuller taste.  By first switching to 2% for awhile and then onto whole milk, it only took a couple weeks.

In the next post, I'll cover the much more complex topic of unpasteurized vs. pasteurized milk.  For now, I'll just share how we obtained the raw milk.  In NY state, it is illegal to sell unpasteurized milk in grocery stores, but farmers can sell their cows’ raw milk directly to consumers.  Alex and I ventured to Scheffler Farm in Groton, NY, an organic farm that sells raw organic milk from pasture-fed cows, organic eggs from free range chickens, and all types of organic, grass-fed beef cuts and organ meats.  Eileen gave us a tour of the entire farm, located a convenient 15 minutes from our apartment.  We saw where the cows and chickens grazed, where and how the cows were milked, how the milking equipment was sanitized after each use, how the milk was cooled and stored… it was awesome!  What factory farm would allow that kind of open access for consumers to see how their food is obtained?  Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals, would convince you how resistant factory farms are to visitors.  Visiting Scheffler Farm and talking with Eileen kind of made me want to work towards owning a cow or two and having some chickens in the future.  We bought a gallon of milk in glass mason jars and a dozen fresh eggs, which we saw her collect directly from the coop.

Here is our fresh milk:

What better way to try out raw milk for the first time than with homemade chocolate chip cookies?

To me, surpsingly the taste was very similar to whole milk we've bought in the grocery store.  The pricetag is a little hefty, at $6 a gallon.  However, we are going to start picking up more each Tuesday, and using it to make our yogurt as well.  In the conversion from milk to yogurt, no volume is lost.  Because organic yogurt can run higher than $6 a gallon in the grocery store, this helps even out the cost for us, although we would buy it regardless!

References:

1) Pinotti L, Baldi A. Lipophilic microconstituents of milk.  Adv Exp Med Biol. 2008;606:109-25.

2) Lodge JK, Hall WL, Jeanes YM, Proteggente AR. Physiological factors influencing vitamin E biokinetics.

Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2004 Dec;1031:60-73.

3) Jeanes YM, Hall WL, Ellard S, Lee E, Lodge JK. The absorption of vitamin E is influenced by the amount of fat in a meal and the food matrix. Br J Nutr. 2004 Oct;92(4):575-9.