We wanted to see where our milk comes from.

Calf pen where the babies are kept for the first 6 weeks to be domesticated before they're turned out to pasture


The goats tried to eat my scarf and Micah's toes


These lovely ladies produce mighty delicious eggs. They live in an old trailer.

Our new raw milk dairy is Windsor Dairy. One of the owners, Meg, took us on a tour yesterday. Not only is she a dairy farmer but she, and her husband, are vets. She was incredibly patient as I asked a thousand question. She was also so knowledgeable and funny and tenderhearted (she sure loves her animals). Meg's dairy has been through three phases: conventional dairy (cows packed in dirt pens, fed diet of soy and corn and antibiotics/hormones), an organic dairy (fed organic grains) and now totally grass fed. She couple of interesting facts about her dairy in all three of it's stages (conventional/organic/grass-fed):

1) Incidence of Mastitis (an udder infection that makes milk unfit to drink)
Conventional: 100+ cases/yr
Organic: 6 cases/yr
Grassfed: 0

Milk Production:
Conventional: 9 gallons/day
Organic: 6 gallons/day
Grassfed: 3 gallons/day---all this means is that the cows may not produce as much but what they do produce is packed with nutrients

2) The milk from her cows has TWICE the amount of protein and fat that conventional grocery store milk does.

3) Every batch of milk is tested for salmonella, listeria, E-coli and camphylobacter. In 3.5 years that they've been producing milk from grass fed cows they have never tested positive for any of those. That's some clean milk. A conventional dairy produces milk that is chock full of all those nasty pathogens...that's why they have to pasteurize it and kill all those germs.

Meg also talked about how she was once a specialist in shoulder dystocia (when shoulders get stuck during a birthing). Now that her cows are grass fed and healthy she said she never has to assist with a birth.In fact, she rarely has to use her vet training now that her cows are eating what cows are meant to eat.

Hmmm...kinda makes you think. Cows eating what they're made to eat= healthy cows. Same thing goes for humans. Goldfish, Skippy and Wonder Bread do not a healthy person make.

Feeding our family the best food possible is more expensive but is there anything better we could spend our money on? After all we only get one shot with these bodies of ours.

Cheap foods come with a high cost...our health.

In the words of Hippocrates, "Let food be your medicine and let medicine be your food."

And now I'll step down from my soapbox.