07-08-2007, 01:58 PM
When I was a kid my mother bought our milk (and cream) from a small dairy farm down the road. It was a self-serve system so we rarely saw the dairy farmer. We would bring our own jugs and fill them out of large (5 gallon?) milk cans that were kept cold in a spring water fed cooler. We would leave money in a coffee can on the honor system to pay for whatever we took. The milk was fresh, raw, whole, and unhomogenized. "Straight from the cows teet" as my dad used to say. Three months before I moved away from there the county health department shut him down, and as cbelt3 said it was to "protect us" from the dangers of raw milk. Sure, whatever.
Unlike cbelt3 though we did shake the milk. The cream had only been poured off the top of the milk so there was always some butterfat at the top unless you shook the milk just before pouring it. Although, you didn't have to shake it if you wanted to steal a little extra cream for yourself.
I have family in PA that own a dairy farm with about 120 head of cattle. Last time I was there, they had store bought milk in the refrigerator. The way the milking system is set up, it is apparently a pain to withdraw milk since the milk can never touch un-sanitized surfaces or air. As grateful11 said, any contaminated milk that got into the tanker could cost them several thousand dollars so the cost of buying their milk at the store was worth the reduced risk of damaging the integrity of the sealed milking system. In order to get fresh milk when we were there, we had to milk the cows by hand.
Unlike cbelt3 though we did shake the milk. The cream had only been poured off the top of the milk so there was always some butterfat at the top unless you shook the milk just before pouring it. Although, you didn't have to shake it if you wanted to steal a little extra cream for yourself.
I have family in PA that own a dairy farm with about 120 head of cattle. Last time I was there, they had store bought milk in the refrigerator. The way the milking system is set up, it is apparently a pain to withdraw milk since the milk can never touch un-sanitized surfaces or air. As grateful11 said, any contaminated milk that got into the tanker could cost them several thousand dollars so the cost of buying their milk at the store was worth the reduced risk of damaging the integrity of the sealed milking system. In order to get fresh milk when we were there, we had to milk the cows by hand.