Fond memories of really good milk
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
The Chinese dairy people who have been watering down their milk and putting melamine in it are in trouble, and they deserve it.
When I go to the store to buy milk, that is what I expect to get. Just good old cow’s milk. It will be processed, of course. We are a people who pasteurize their milk to keep it disease free and who homogenize it so that the fat is evenly distributed throughout the product and not just floating on top as it does in raw milk.
Raw milk has gotten a lot of bad press the past few years, especially in California, which is too bad. On rare occasions it has made some people sick. But few things on earth taste as good to a milk-lover as fresh, cold raw milk with the cream still on it. Thinking about it makes me salivate.
About 30 years ago, it was my habit to buy raw milk from a dairyman who milked 50 Guernseys, bottled the unpasteurized milk in gallon-sized glass bottles and sold it through small groceries throughout the area. Customers would return the glass bottles to the store, the dairyman would pick them up when he made his next delivery, sterilize them and use them again.
I would buy milk from the dairy itself whenever I could. It was near my own place, and the dairyman and I were friends. Sometimes I would help him clean up, and I learned a bit about the business — mainly that it’s hard work. He fed and took care of the cows, bottled the milk and delivered it. He did all he could to keep his product clean. Nobody I knew ever got sick drinking it. He certainly didn’t water it down or put melamine in it.
I wish he still lived down the road a piece, and I could buy milk from him, and I’ll bet the Chinese wish that, too.
