Real food? - Mini vent.

[Hinotori]

Keep the buck away from the doe as well to keep the taste better. That smell can penetrate and become one with the milk.

They can sell raw milk in stores here. It just must be labeled and the dairy must have a permit. I see raw goat milk at a few different stores. I haven't seen raw cow milk, but it is legal.

 

[baymule]

We can buy raw milk here in Texas, but you have to go to the farm and pick it up. Milk for "pets" must have blue dye in it and be for "pet" milk only......yeah riiiigghht

 

[goatgurl]

@sumi. i so agree with you, i get so tired of reading food labels and find them full of things i can't pronounce. I try really hard to produce as much of my food as i can. almost no one can raise it all but i sure as heck try. we can sell raw milk here, up to 500 gallons a year i think, and sold it myself a time or two. years ago where i lived at the time wouldn't let you sell goats milk and i had a young mom come to me and plead with me to sell her milk for her young son who had bad milk and food allergies. she told me she had to pour water over his cheerios cereal and that he had never tasted ice cream , that broke my heart. he was this little sickly, thin, pale, snot nose thing with a horrible pot belly. well i went thru the whole spiel about illegal to sell, blah, blah, blah but i sure gave her enough for her "dog" with lots left over to make cottage cheese and ice cream. with in 3 months he was a bright eyed healthy looking kid. he is now almost 30 years old and i still hear from them now and then.
@DenimDeb if you like raw cows milk you will like raw goats milk. just remember what hinotori said and keep the buck far, far away because they can make milk undrinkable. and when you produce your own milk cleanliness is truly next to Godliness.

 

[Denim Deb]

@goatgurl, I can pronounce the names of all the stuff they put in food, but that's only because I had to take chemistry when I was in college! That doesn't mean I know what all the stuff is, though.

 

[sumi]

@Britesea Thank you! I am hoping to find a suitable property to buy (once this one sells) where I can keep a goat or two for milk. And I would've fed them cabbage!

@goatgurl That's a heartwarming story!

@Denim Deb They slap codes on chemical additives here. E1234 and E1324 and and and. I don't like those E's...

 

[Denim Deb]

I was watching something on TV about how they milk cows and why they can't sell it raw, and it made no sense. They wash the cows udder, then a machine is attached and the milk is pump directly from the cow to a holding tank. But they have to pasteurize it for just in case any fecal matter gets in the milk. How in the world is it supposed to get in there w/the way the milk is handled?

 

[sumi]

When I was in my teens I worked weekends at a dairy farm and I've remember how the cleaning and sterilising afterwards often took as long as the milking process did. Everything is super hygienic, the equipment we used got washed and then rinsed with diluted acid afterwards, to remove anything that may have stayed behind. There was no way anything but milk went into those tanks. And that was a small sell-directly-to-the-public operation.

 

[Britesea]

Some of the milk regulations probably date back close to a hundred years and maybe at that time they were necessary, but no one ever takes a outdated law or reg off the books... that's why in some places interracial marriages are technically illegal, as well as wearing red on Sunday. The only difference is that no one is bothering to enforce those, while the raw milk regs are not only being enforced, but given even more teeth- thanks to the germaphobes in our society.

 

[sumi]

That's crazy, Britesea. Things have changed so much over the last 2-3 decades. In some ways I am grateful that South Africa is such a lawless place. We have the freedom to do about anything we want... I can keep a sheep in the middle of town and no-one will say boo. Though that lawlessness also causes problems as you can imagine!

 

[Britesea]

Very true, @sumi. There's pros and cons to everything. I could wish, however, that we had just a little less "There Oughta Be A Law" here. Even the police don't know all the laws. I remember back when I was running a house cleaning business; I printed up a bunch of brochures and went out to the parking lots and stuck them under everyone's windshields. When I got home there was an irate phone message from someone telling me it was against the law to do that and he was going to call the police if he ever saw me doing it again. I called the police to ask if that was true- after all, I was only doing it because I had gotten so many flyers etc on my own windshield before. The police had NO idea if it was illegal or not, and ended up simply advising me not to do it in case such a law WAS on the books.

 

[goatgurl]

@sumi years ago right after my divorce i worked for a friend on their dairy farm and i guarantee we kept the milking parlor and tank rooms as well as all the milking equipment sanitized and cleaner than i kept my house. the legislators just have to find a way to earn their keep and making stupid rules is one way.
@Britesea i promise state and local laws change at someones whim everyday. i have several family folks in law enforcement on local, state and federal levels and they all agree that you can't keep up with the changes. i don't even try anymore.
ok, stepping quietly off my soap box.