Milk, Dairy and Such

 

Milk, Dairy and Such

 I just finished watching a documentary on milk and dairy production and consumption in modern times.

 Nearly all milk these days is pasteurized or homogenized or processed in some way.  Premiums are paid for “organic” milk (produced without growth hormone or other chemicals), and also for “raw” milk, ostensibly straight from the cow.

 I was raised in a rural area in the 1930’s and 1940’s, and the milk that I drank for 10-12 years would probably qualify these days as both “organic” and “raw”, without being called that.  No chemicals were uses of which I’m aware, and the milk came “straight from the cow”.  Milk in glass bottles with paper=tab caps were kept cool in a natural spring where we picked it up each Sunday after church.  Butter and cream and cheeses made by the farmerwere also “straight from the cow” and were handled in similar fashion.

 Cows like green apples, and in the spring of the year this was reflected in the taste of the milk, and of the cream which rises to the top portion of the milk bottle.

 I relate all of this because we just drank the milk and ate the “raw” dairy products without too much thought about bacteria and such.  I’m sure our guts were tuned to a disease resistance no longer possible with our puerile conventional dairy products.

 Later on in my teens, I worked on a dairy farm shoveling cow manure in winter, and bailing hay in summer.  My recollection is that the milking barns and machines were kept quite clean, but the farmers were not anal about it.

 Ray Gruszecki

February 3, 2022