The Whirly Girl

Last weekend I made Sally Fallon proud.  At least, she would be if she knew me and knew that on Saturday I ventured to a farm outside of town, that I had tracked down online, and came back with an ice chest full of raw milk, free-range eggs, and pastured meat.  I”m just a little proud of myself.

I’ve been casually looking for sources for milk and meat and eggs for a while.  A lot of my recent internet reading has been about “Real Food” and why you should eat it, the evil that is factory farming and the nastiness that is grocery store food, and how bad corn syrup and soy products are for your health.  I agree with all of these things.  I also l-o-v-e shopping at my grocery story and have a sweet tooth.

However, we have been slowly journeying towards more wholesome and less refined food.  I love cooking and baking, so I’m not doing anything out of the ordinary, just experimenting with different methods, recipes, and ingredients.  A lot of those ingredients actually come from the so-called evil grocery story, because I happen to live near a very good one.  I do love it so.

As much as I love the grocery store, I also loved the farm we visited yesterday.  The unassuming, down-to-earth owner talked to us about how he used to run a commercial dairy, but a few years back decided to start selling his milk raw to customers that drive more than a mile down a gravel road to get to it.  This is what my car looked like after we did:

And he talked to use about what he is learning about raw milk and how he wants to start making and selling cheese when he retires from his job in town this spring.  And yogurt–when a 60-something dairy farmer in rubber boots talks to you about “just experimenting with making yogurt”, how can you not be sold? 

We bought milk full of lovely cream, risen to the top.

We bought free-range eggs from happy chickens.  One of them was even green.

We bought t-bone steaks and ground lamb, and then the owner threw in a package of sausage as a bonus.

While we giddily made our way  home (well, I was giddy and Scott was very calmly happy about his steaks), we were impressed with the the complete lack of negativity with which this man spoke.  He told us all about his products and methods and the benefits of raw milk and free-range eggs, all without speaking ill of grocery stores or pasteurized milk or farmers that use pesticides.  Our 20 minute conversation with this dairy farmer was more convincing than all of my research put together.  I think we’ll be back.