Posts
I grew up in Wisconsin, “America’s Dairyland.” Infamous for our cheeseheads, fried cheese curds and weak, watered down beer.
According to a website entitled “Wisconsin by Luke” there are 11 federally recognized tribes in WI today. The name of the state was taken from the Chippewa Indian word "Wees Konsan" meaning the gathering of water. Jean Nicolet was the first European to reach Green Bay in 1634. In 1763 France ceded Wisconsin to Great Britain then Britain ceded it to the United States in 1783. It is also called "The place of the beaver" and also called the Badger State.
Luke, who created his site for a school project, goes on to describe Wisconsin’s important rivers - the Mississippi, the St. Croix, Fox River and Green Bay. The St. Croix flows into Lake Superior which is bound to the north by the Canadian province of Ontario. This web of lakes and rivers is how my great-grandfather came to settle in New Richmond, Wisconsin. He and his brother immigrated to French-Canada settling in Ontario, assumingly got bored there and decided to take a canoe from the Canadian border through Lake Superior onto the St. Croix.
They disembarked on the shores of Bass Lake on the central west border with what is now Minnesota and somehow claimed hundreds of acres surrounding the lake in Dakota Sioux territory for themselves. This part of how my family took the land from the original indigenous habitants – our history of colonization - is not recorded in my family’s history books or memory.
Once there, like many other European settlers who populated the rolling hills of Wisconsin, they began to plant corn, potatoes, alfalfa and raise dairy cattle. Their cows were fat and well fed by the lush perennial prairies and grasslands, shaded by the tall trees of the surrounding forests and a well-quenched by the decent sized lake they drank out of and cooled off in. Outside of being milked in the barn twice a day, they roamed freely all of their days.
My family has since sold off most of the land surrounding the lake to urban escapees from the Twin Cities looking for rural respite, or, sons and daughters of farmers who now make their living by commuting to industrial jobs in the Cities. Their pontoon and speed boats now crowd the lake for sunset parties and water skiing.
I myself spent every summer growing up on and in that lake at my grandma’s cabin. You couldn’t imagine a more idyllic childhood. Me and my 80 cousins spending our summers together fishing, swimming, making forts in the forest, and occasionally helping out at the dairy farm.
I milked a few cows in my days there, but only a few. They were typically cows who had some kind of utter infection and were taken off the machines and milked by hand until they recovered. The days of milking the entire herd by hand were over well before I arrived on the scene. And my mother prefers not to talk about the forced farm chores aspect of her childhood. Mostly we would stand guard of my aunts flower beds as the cows were led from the fields back to the milking barns, or help load hay into the silo at the end of the summer. When I was very little I remember the farm house, no more than 1000 square feet where my Grandpa Ray and Grandma Delia raised five kids followed by my Uncle Dick and his first and second wives who raised eight kids. They since have torn down that teeny villa and built something much larger – more what you expect of a typical American farm home these days.
In the 1997 the farm received a certificate from President Clinton and the White House in celebration of its 100th year designating it a heritage farm. A few year’s later, with none of his eight children stepping up to take over the dairy farm, my aging Uncle Dick after countless triple by-pass heart surgeries decided it was time to switch to beef cattle. We guess it was all the raw milk, cheese, eggs, and other artery clotting food one consumes in excess when you live on a dairy farm. I believe there is a reason the best heart disease doctors and The Mayo Clinic is in the heart of the dairyland.
I remember during those summers on the lake, my aunt delivering raw milk from the farm to my grandma, presenting it to her as some kind of special, coveted treat. Me and my suburban siblings eyed it suspiciously and never did drink it beyond a taste that was quickly spat out. My mother encouraged this suspicion in us. Having left the farm for the city as soon as she was old enough, she had bought only ultra-pasturizied or powered milk since. Like most she was convinced by the urban myths that this was the only milk safe for human consumption. Our young minds, like so many of our young urban counterparts who believed that carrots came from the grocery store, were convinced that raw milk, straight from the cow’s utter, was something not to be messed with. A dangerous warm concoction that at best would make you sick just by smelling it.
As we watched my grandma add it to her coffee, use it for baking those brownies we really loved, or drink it straight, we felt she was taking her life into her own hands. My grandma, the sweetest, hardest working, powerhouse matriarch was really living on the edge in those moments. She didn’t die when she drank it, and for that she earned our everlasting respect for her steel stomach and superpower immune system.
So a few months ago when my husband suggested we join a raw milk group in Santa Fe, I was immediately suspicious. The idea that a farmer in Lubbock, Texas would drive up to Santa Fe once a week with a mini-van full of this forbidden elixir - raw milk, butter, cream, and the occasional side of beef, seemed as equally incomprehensible to me as my grandma drinking from the disease-steaming carafe of milk delivered and living through it.
News of this clandestine activity was whispered to my husband over lunch by an acquaintance after he mentioned he was lactose intolerant. She suggested it wasn’t the lactose, but the pasteurizing that was inconsistent with his constituency. So he signed us up and began bringing home gallons of thick milk with a thin layer of cream on the top.
The first time I joined him in the raw milk pickup it was winter, a dark early evening as we drove through the winding streets of northside neighborhoods following such directions as “one block past the three tufts of beargrass.” It seemed rightfully hidden to me as I was still convinced of its potential deadliness. We pulled up to a suburban adobe home with a line of people, hoods pulled tightly over their heads to keep out the cold, silently standing in line as the farmer distributed the white liquid from the back of his mini-van. My husband got out and went to the back of the line. More came silently after him. I could see him trying to make small talk with the other illegal consumers to avail. It felt like a scene from an urban street. Our drug dealer had come into a big supply and needy users lined up quietly trying not to let their jones get the best of them before they could quietly slip away from wherever they had come to get their fix. And in some ways, raw milk is illegal unless you can weave your way through the complex matrix of food safety regulations the government has created that keeps most farmers and consumers confused about real food.
Even after a month or so of my husband bringing raw milk home from these pick ups, forwarding me emails from the farmer on the successful health inspections they passed, I still felt myself avoiding it in the fridge, thinking it suspicious nonetheless. Not being familiar with its smell I was unsure I would know when it was spoiled. Despite the fact that this milk met my commitment to eating locally, and sustainably from food that is raised humanely, I still couldn’t even bring myself to partake of the cheese he made from this concoction.
Finally after getting badgered too many times because I was still buying milk in the store when there was already “milk” in the fridge, I decided to dig up the “raw truth” about raw milk. Like most things tied to the food system these days it is a matter of wading through corporate spin, urban myths, and getting to the real heart of the matter.
Here are a few things I found out:
- Did you know there is an Annual International Raw Milk Symposium? The 2nd one will be held April 10, 2010. Guess where….Wisconsin.
- What is raw milk? Cow's milk taken straight from animals fed only fresh, organic, green grass, rapidly cooled to around 36-38 degrees F., and bottled. Unpasturized and unhomogenized.
- Not all raw milk is the same. Look for raw milk from cows pastured on organic green grass their WHOLE lives for the best health benefits to you. Any food can be contaminated depending on how it is produced, packaged and handled.
- To get a “Raw for Retail” permit in Texas your milk is tested for at least three things:
- Standard Plate Count – Number of bacteria in milk, has a strong relationship with the keeping quality of milk and the cleanliness of the dairy; legal limit less than 20,000ppm
- Coliform Bacteria – used as an index of the level of sanitation and/or water quality employed in the handling and processing of milk and milk products; legal limit less than 10
- Somatic Cell Count – used as a parameter to detects udder health and milk quality; legal limit less than 750,000
- When kept at the optimal temperature of 36-38° F. (2.2-3.3°C.) you can expect fresh raw milk to last from 7-10 days. Higher temperatures allow the normally occurring lactobacilli to get busy making lactic acid, which gives soured milk its characteristically tangy taste and reduces its shelf life.
And thanks to Luke, whoever you are, for posting your school research project: Wisconsin by Luke: http://www.pocanticohills.org/usa99/wi.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment