[Sca-cooks] Raw Milk at Pennsic

Tara Sersen Boroson tara at kolaviv.com
Sat Aug 5 07:52:32 PDT 2006


That's a pretty good price - around here, where I can buy from, oh, 
geez, maybe a dozen different farmers, I typically pay between 
$4-$5/gallon if I bring my own bottles, plus fifty cents if I use a new 
bottle from the farmer.  BUT... the milk I buy is all Jersey cow milk.  
This farmer is using mostly Holsteins (plus a few Jerseys), which 
produce far more milk, but of much lesser quality (about half the 
butterfat, a fraction of the CLO).  If his cows are 100% grass fed, 
though, it's a great resource even if his cows are Holsteins. 

There's also a goat farm that sells raw goat's milk in Evans City, which 
is a little west of Butler - Bryner's Haven Dairy, 123 Mt. Nevo Lane, 
Evans City.  724-865-2418.  There are a bunch of farms closer to 
Pittsburgh, too, but I'm not familiar with their reputations - if 
they're grass-fed, what kinds of cows they raise.  You can find them 
listed at www.realmilk.org.

Coupla notes, I've found that fresh raw milk has a much longer shelf 
life than 1 week.  It starts souring at one week, but it's still 
entirely safe and edible at that point - I find that, with 
refrigeration, I can typically keep it 14-15 days before it gets so sour 
that it curdles.  Of course, it might not last that long in a cooler - 
but then, it never lasts that long here either because it gets used too 
fast ;)  Also, it's not accurate that he cannot provide bottles - all 
the farms I have bought from offer that option, and they are all 
licenced by the state.  The funky thing about PA law is that the milk 
must be constantly agitated until it is sold to the consumer.  This 
means that he has to bottle it and hand it straight to you.  He can 
certainly do that in his own bottles legally, he just doesn't feel like 
paying for the bottles.  That's fine, I have no argument with that; but 
to present it as illegal for him to sell you a bottle strikes me as... odd.

Another thought, though it might be too late to coordinate this, out on 
the eastern side of the state, there are a *lot* of great raw milk 
sources (great = grass-fed Jersey cow, IMO).  If someone wanted to do a 
course on homemade dairy products, someone headed out from here could 
rein in a few gallons of cream and milk for making cheese, butter, 
clabber, yogurt, cottage cheese, etc.  Hmmm.... you know, now that I 
think about that, maybe I'll run a course like that some year I get back 
out to war :D

-Magdalena vander Brugghe

-- 
Tara Sersen Boroson

'Normal' is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car you are still paying for, in order to get to the job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car, and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it. -Ellen Goodman

[T]o admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. -Virginia Woolf



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