Mad Milk Disease

I know you are thinking that we already talked about cows this week, because of Cowboys & Aliens.  I like cows.  I'm surprised I have so much to say about them.  I'm a redhead, and we can get fired-up about needless things. So, here goes: 


Are we so far removed from our food that this seems logical?  The milk this ad council is trying to sell you does not need to be shaken because it is HOMOGENIZED!!  It has been processed, just like almond, soy, rice, and hemp.  After it is heated to kill any living organisms, then it is pressed through a sieve with tiny holes, so that every piece of milk is the same (homo) size, then they (the milk folks) add vitamin D.  


Adding Vitamin D is a throw-back to the industrial revolution (over 100 years ago). People started to get vitamin deficient because the sky was dark with coal smoke, so the milk manufacturers added 'D'. 


If you had a cow you, or a friend, milked 2x a day for a total of 8 gallons per day, then put that milk into the refrigerator, then you would have to shake it, if you wanted it to be all the same consistency.  It might make you as mad as this woman, and if it did, I know a great therapist.  Maybe milking a cow in the wee hours of the morning would be cathartic for you, if you have so much anger.


We should know where our food comes from, and how it is made.  I'm not a cow-milk person, unless it comes from a cow I know, and then I can't get enough.  I'm sure I was a mom's milk person, but I'd have to ask my mom.  


What I do know is where my food comes from, so I am not blindly persuaded by advertising.  This ad is banking on our ignorance, and is deceiving.  Rice milk is just as bad/good for you as milk is.  Milk is not sacred, unless you are an infant mammal.  Even then, species is important for survival.   


Anyway, drink what you want/can.  

Cows and the Chevy Nova

Just through these doors are two milk cows.

I can remember few events from when I was very small.  One is when my 2nd sister was born when I was three, and I remember a trip to the dairy farm my uncle Herb managed near Fresno, California.

My Grandma Foth took me in her green Chevy Nova.   At least, that is the kind of car it was in my memory.  The kind that had 2 doors and a triangle window too high to see out of if you are a pre-schooler in the back.

This is where the story gets a bit gruesome and why it is memorable for me.  I stretched up to see the farm as we pulled in.  Before I saw the milking barn, or a cow, I saw a man carrying a dead, newborn cow.  He walked with it to a pile of more dead baby cows and dropped it.  They were black and white.  We then visited my uncle and saw the milking barn and my memory fades after that for about six years.

In my mind all the colors were clear, the green car, the black and white cow, the color of the dirt road.  I wasn't scared.  I wasn't repulsed.  I think because I was so little, I remember how I feel, and it was more than a feeling.  The world was so big to me, and confusing.  I saw that there is something mysterious about death, and birth, and a farm.  I don't think developmentally I was able to judge the event.  It just was, but it was formative.

As an adult, when I see cows, and surprisingly enough I see them, that day at the beginning of my story has shaped how I think about cows.  I know it is silly.  I have no profound feelings or thoughts about cats, dogs, deer or raccoon, all of which I have seen dead by the roadside.  With cows, I see how nearly soul-less, soft and dim they are, and it touches me.

This summer in the Czech Republic, we went to get milk for the week.  We walked to the edge of town and met a Czech woman, selling milk.  Her milk tasted like milk.  If you buy milk at the grocery store, and that is the only milk you have had, then you do not know what milk tastes like.

The kids enjoyed seeing something new, and the woman was proud to show us her farm.  It was clean and the smell reminded me of the story I just told you.