surprse! we didn't die!

We went to a small, local, organic dairy (small = only 11 of the 23 Jersey's being milked when we were there) a few days ago and bought our first raw milk. It was a bit jaw-droppingly spendy at $10/gallon but we were willing to try it out after reading all the nasty crap about today's milk industry of pasteurization and homogenization. Also, my husband can't drink milk or eat too much cheese or ice cream. He can eat things baked with milk like muffins or cake, but he can't have milk-based soups or gravies. We had heard that people who have milk issues can dink raw milk so we thought we'd give it a try.

The verdict? Oh, dear Heavenly God. Raw milk is so much better than you can imagine. (That might be a tinge overexagerrated.) It smells better and tastes better. At first we couldn't quite figure out what was so different, taste- and smell-wise, but then it dawned on us: pasteurization! Pasteurization is cooking the milk and while we've never noticed it before (since we had nothing with which to compare it) it is an obvious flavor when it is absent. Store-bought milk tastes like cooked milk.

Perty lil' Jersey

The kids all thought the raw milk was much better and kept asking us, "Can I have a bowl of cereal with the real milk?" (We still had a little store-bought milk leftover, which we were making them use up first.)


The best part of all was that my husband can drink it and it doesn't upset his stomach at all. We did a little research and found out why. When milk is pasteurized it kills all the bad jumk but it also kills the good stuff. One of the "good guys" that are killed are enzymes that help your body digest the milk itself. So when my husband was drinking store-bought milk, he was getting the milk but without the enzymes to digest it. (Apparently some people just don't have them. Sorry, Hubby.) Raw milk has the enzymes so he can drink it just fine.



Overall we are so pleased that we will be making budget adjustments in order to accomodate this new expsense because we think the benefits of raw milk so outweigh the cheapness of that pasteurized store-bought stuff that used to be milk. It's still hard to swallow the $10 price tag, but hey! as soon as the cows come off their winter feed the price drops to $8! Which, although still expensive, isn't too much of a jump from organic milk...