milk not lasting- farm to table legal defense fund ?

[provocativa]

if it were legal here it might be possible that i knew of a raw milk delivery service owned by an mdc mama (insert innocent whistle guy here). anyway, this summer we began having trouble with the milk not staying fresh, and my farmer accused me of being the problem. of course other folks in the other delivery groups were having problems too, and wouldn't mention it to him but told me, or else they had no experience of milk that lasted 3 weeks like our previous farmer's milk. anyway, he later mentioned that he had moved his fridge into his house, because the fbi couldn't search his house without an extensive warrant. i tried to explain to him that the extra amount of time that the milk stayed warm was negatively impacting it's keeping ablilty. he didn't get it.

now a homeschooling aquaintance who gets her raw milk somewhere else mentioned that she had trouble with it staying fresh this summer (and she's gotten milk from him for years).

i think that this advice to put the fridges in the house came from the farm to table legal defense fund, and that her farmer also followed the same advice.

has anyone else with many years of raw milk experience had a similar thing happen this summer? i am actively looking for another supplier but since it's illegal here it's soooo hard to find one.

[Gale Force]

I don't know about the recommendations of the FTCLDF. On one hand, keeping the milk in the house seems like a really clever recommendation. On the other, considering the importance of immediate cooling for spoilage and pathogen growth management, if the dairy is implicated in an outbreak, that warrant will be extremely easy to get and the whole gig will be up. If this came from FTCLDF, it appears not to be a fully-formed idea.

[AJP]

Quick cooling definitely has an impact on helping the milk stay sweet longer. However, a few minutes won't make much difference, IME. Do you know how much longer the milk waits to get chilled now that it has to be transported to the house? Also, is there any chance your fridge isn't staying as cold?

Other things affect it as well. High summer temperatures can cause higher somatic cell count in the milk from heat stress, and that milk is likely to sour more quickly.

[Gale Force]

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All true. And here I am making it political.

[Gale Force]

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My 5000th post

LOL

[AJP]

Originally Posted by Gale Force

^----

All true. And here I am making it political.

It does often get that way at some point, with raw milk.

Congrats on 5000!

[spughy]

It's the speed of cooling that's the problem - my cowshare milk only stays fresh a week. We all know that it's because we have no mechanism OTHER than a standard fridge to cool it quickly. Since we do weekly pickups, though, and most everyone runs out of milk before a week, it's not a huge big deal.

If it's a real problem for you, you could talk to others who get milk from the same farm and look into a joint purchase or subsidizing a quick-cooling thingie. It will involve extra energy use for the farmer though.

[AJP]

The milk from my cow stays sweet at least 3 weeks, and we don't have a quick-cool thingie. We use half-gallon jars and keep our milk fridge at 35-36 degrees (it's an upright freezer with an external controller to keep it at a specific temp). The milk is in there within about 10 minutes. Once a jar comes to the house, gets opened and agitated and stays in the house fridge at more like 40 degrees, it will start to sour within a few days.