Eggs and Milk

[Guest guest]

Hi e,

Co-ops can be expensive and not local. The nearest one to me is in Cambridge

and NONE of the produce that I have seen there this fall was local. Last time I

was in, everything was from California. Didn't look to see where eggs and milk

were from, did notice 1000 Hills beef was there and a huge assortment of

cheeses.

Milk--if you are going to cook with it, it may not need to be raw. Raw is best

for drinking, soaking, low temp stuff in my opinion (others may not agree and

that is fine). But if you are baking a ton of pumpkin bread up and need milk,

the store stuff is probably just fine for that if you need to cut a couple of

bucks someplace. Then on the other hand, you would be supporting " big dairy " .

If you go to this groups home site (click on the link that reads " visit your

group on the web " , you will come to the home page. On the left hand side you

will see a list of things: messages, files, database, etc. Go thru those,

someplace is a list of farms.

Other places to look for milk contacts: State and National clubs, registries,

etc. Most have a member listing. Local county extension agents, they usually

know who has what and where. 4-H leaders, they know what animals are where in

their clubs and when they will probably be for sale. Local feed mills--these

are harder and harder to find since many people only have pets or a couple of

animals and as a result purchase 50# bags of purina junk to feed. The local

mill is a wonderful place to get anything you want/need--custom mixed feeds for

your animals, prepackaged mixes for your animals, gossip--lots and lots of

gossip!, farm fresh eggs are usually for sale in a box behind the counter, a

tack board is usually up with notices of eggs for sale, extra chickens, etc.,

all available. And the local mill usually has hot coffee, terrible cookies,

extra chairs and lots of old timers willing to tell you exactly what you are

doing wrong! And how much better it was when they were still farming all

zillion acres from dawn to dusk with horses or that old Deere they still

have out in the back shed.

You can freeze milk, I do it quite a bit with extra milk I have. I also have a

couple of customers who have a lot of it frozen up. There was some discussion

about it on this list a few months back, you could probably do a search for

freezing milk and find it.

Oh, if you do the store bought milk, I would stick with one from the co-op. I

can't remember the farm that has the cow milk with the cream in it but that is

probably one of the better ones out there that is pasteurized but not mixed up.

Some farmers markets are easier to have eggs at than others. In Mpls this year

to have eggs or meats I had to fill out paperwork and send to the inspector

prior to selling. That covered all of Mpls. Other places didn't care as long

as it was labeled correctly. Things change a lot from one city or county to

another.