Raw Milk

Yeah, that's what I said. Raw milk. As in straight from the cow, do not pass pasteurizing, do not collect 200 hormones.
When I was a kid we used to drink raw milk from the neighbor’s cow. Periodically it would show up on the porch in the classic galvanized milk jug. When you popped the top there was a layer of cream that Mom would carefully scoop out and set aside for cooking. Then my brother and I would fight over who got the first glass of the heavy, creamy, ice cold goodness.
That first glass was always chugged down in a style that would prove perfect preparation for the college years and would leave you staggering around with a crusty white mustache and a bloated milk-belly. You couldn’t move much after a glass of the raw milk, but as long as the taste was in your mouth you didn’t care. As an adult I only see this sort of beverage euphoria produced by a fresh keg of beer on a warm summer night, but it never fails to resurrect the memory of milk.
Then the neighbor took his cows and moved away and the new farmer had sheep instead. There aren’t words invented yet to properly describe the resentment one 9-year-old girl had for those sheep. I hated them and what they represented: DairyGold Pasteurized Milk. Busted down to store-bought milk. Each glass tasted exactly like every other one. No cream to scoop off. And worst of all, it was thin and runny and came out of a cardboard box.
By the end of the summer I only drank the one glass that Mom forced onto me at breakfast every morning, and now that I’m a grown woman living on my own I rarely have milk in the house. The raw milk of my youth has been relegated to that portion of the brain where all good childhood memories reside. It’s tucked there between jumping off the rocks at the swimming-hole behind our orchard and racing the sunset on my Arabian gelding in an effort to make it home before full dark.
In the years since it has become illegal to sell raw milk, depriving countless children of a true milk-drunk stupor. To be fair, it also deprives them of the possibility of botulism from poor handling and transportation. However some resourceful and organic-minded people have found a way around that: Cow-Sharing.
For about $70.00 you can purchase one share of a milk cow, which will get you roughly one gallon of raw milk per week. You can then either go to the farm and pick up your milk yourself, or you can trust another shareholder to bring it to you. I think it’s pretty cool. Sure it’s potentially dangerous, but the best things in life hold some element of risk.

Written by: Twisted

For a complete write-up on Raw Milk pick up today’s Portland Tribune.