January 18, 2008

milk woes

So I was thinking yesterday that I'd like to start buying local milk and eggs and ideally have it delivered, you know, milkman style. We're going through quite a bit of milk every week for the kids. Smith Brothers is the place I've heard the most about. But...due to some government regulations that make it really hard to have a dairy on the same land you have cattle, they had to sell off their herd and now buy milk from a co-op. But I wanted to go to the source. So I kept looking. I read a bunch about Wilcox Farms which sounds interesting cause they've got "Salmon Safe" certification and are doing a lot of "green" practices. But...again they ran into the regulations problem and had to sell off their herd...though I read an article that says they're trying to bring a couple hundred cattle back for their organic milk. I think it's when you get over 300 cows you start running into problems. Both Smith & Wilcox are pretty big operations. Wilcox is actually sold at Costco. I wouldn't mind going more mom & pop. So I posted a message to my vegetable farm box subscribers asking if any of them had recommendations. And one person responded that she uses SPUD which I'd been thinking about off and on too...it's really hard grocery shopping with the two kids in tow! Anyway they supply milk from a couple of smaller local farm/dairies. But it's creamtop or raw milk. And I am not sure about doing that. So I'm still looking. But it's making me sad that it is hard to find. I haven't been to the farmer's market in a couple of months. Maybe I'll go see if anyone shows up there and/or ask around. I suppose it's funny that I live in a big city and I'm looking to find a small farm to supply my milk and eggs.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

matt likes creamtop. it took me a while to get used to but once i realized that the gloppy white stuff was actually delicious sweet cream that i would pay a lot of money for to put on other things, i liked it better. still would be weird on cereal but in chocolate milk it's nice.

Jill said...

we buy the kids creamtop yogurt. i suppose it's not that big of a deal to go to creamtop milk. it's not like our kids couldn't use the extra fat...jeff & i just drink soymilk anyway.

i'm really loving our farm and farmers out here: http://www.jubileefarm.org/newsletters/2008/20080121.html.

we just watched "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" last week which was great and made us so sad at times but so happy that we're doing what we can to support small farms/ farmers, and eating local produce.