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(BY JOSHUA HESTON)
Good milk.
A generation or two ago, fresh milk (and its obvious byproducts of butter, cream, buttermilk and ice cream) was an established staple in our mostly agrarian society.
Fresh milk. Fresh fruits and vegetables. Freshly butchered meats.
It is likely that while your grandparents and mine didn’t take these things for granted they did not expect technology to subtly — and in time, completely — alter our most basic of foods.
In the name of progress, our food has changed.
In case you haven’t noticed, our population has changed as well.
We are, for the most part (here in North America) overfed and undernourished.
Obesity isn’t uncommon anymore; it’s downright normal.
But what does this have to do with fresh milk? Quite a lot actually.
The story of milk over the past 60 years or so tells — in microcosm — the story of our whole now-modernized food supply.
Traditionally, one’s milk supply came — not from the brightly lit cooler section of a grocery store — but from a cow. More specifically, it came from your cow, handily stationed somewhere on your farm.
Milk cows (usually of the Jersey or Gurnsey breed) were often named. My grandparents’ cow was named “Susie Belle” in case you wondered. Stories of milk quantity (“Jersey’s give the richest milk”) and cow temperament abounded.
Tame milk cows are smart critters and can be more than a little ornery.
The cow was milked, the cream separated — both milk and cream were stored in the cave or springhouse.
Cream was churned until it formed butter. The remaining liquid was buttermilk.
Cream kept around too long? It soured, making it sour cream. Any milk that did finally go bad was fed out, either to dogs, cats or hogs.
Local creameries bought excess milk (along with butter and eggs) for re-sale in town. It was a basic, synergistic economy. It was a local economy.
It was surprisingly safe.
Times changed.
The industrialization that occurred during the 1940s and ’50s brought modernization to our food supply. People were moving off the farms and into cities in droves.
It was our technology that made a World War II victory possible. It would be our technology that won Kennedy’s vaunted “space race.”
I think it changed our perspective.
We developed a belief that anything could be accomplished... with the right technology.
Somewhere along the way we grew to believe there was a scientist (and resultant hybrid, chemical or process) to make our lives better....
Maybe even perfect!
A whole slew of corporations (and attached lobbyists) were only too willing to satisfy that belief.
Food was no longer grown in the backyard or on a nearby farm.
Fruits and vegetables were raised by the ton in another state or another country!
Commercial orchards no longer chose varieties for taste. Hybrids were developed for easy shipping and added water weight.
More water in the fruit means heavier fruit and that means more profit.
Fresh milk was labeled “raw” and ingreasingly regarded as a dangerous foodstuff — an unsafe relic of an earlier “hillbilly” age.
A whole raft of state and federal laws descended upon the sale of milk.
For most local farmers, it was easier to let the state have its way — and buy milk like everyone else (straight from the grocery store).
But all this safe, federally approved milk?
Is it better?
Is it safer?
Fresh milk — unpasteurized and un-homogenized — has a completely different molecular structure than store-bought milk.
The fat in fresh milk reacts differently in the digestive system.
A complex variety of enzymes and probiotics exist in fresh milk, most of which processing kills.
Processed milk spoils easily and quickly. The fat content and structure of fresh milk, however, seems to naturally retard spoilage.
Fresh milk gets downright stubborn about going bad (and even when it does, the fresh stuff usually just sours rather than spoils).
Technology? Progress?
Maybe hillbillies really do know best.
— Joshua Heston, editor
June 11, 2010
July 28, 2011
Fresh milk and cream
Plate 2
Milky Moo
Plate 3
Plate 4
Plate 5
Cream & Mason jar detail
Ozarks Creamery photo plates
Photo credits: J. Heston.
All Plates, StateoftheOzarks Archives, June 11 (Milky Moo the Cow), and August 13 (Milk & Cream), 2010.