Milk + Meaning on a Dreary Day
A note from Molly + Sebastian
The month of May was cloudy and wet, and the forecast is looking somewhat similar for June. While we’ve all been itching for sunny summer days and drier hay fields, the rain has encouraged us to sit down and share something that we’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
We recently hosted a colleague in cheese on the farm and offered him a cup of milk. This person has worked in cheese for over 20 years and has visited countless dairies.
Photo Credit: @jessicanotargiacomophoto
He told us that out of all those visits over all of his years, we were one of only five where he was offered milk. It’s a confusing reality that few dairy farmers drink their milk, so we weren’t incredibly surprised by this, but it got us thinking…
What does it mean that our family, children, and community drink our cows raw milk every day?
The answer to that question is deeply tied to the ways we experience and operate our farm.
When you’re on the farm, you will see or hear a cow from almost any location you're standing, whether you work here or visit our farm store. All of our employees take milk, cheese, and yogurt home to their families, our community comes to the farm store to buy our products and often run into neighbors and friends while they’re here in the store.
At this point, four generations of kids have investigated every crevice of the barn while their parents and grandparents take care of afternoon chores. Some did homework in the barn as their parents milked cows, some created elaborate hay mazes in the loft with friends, some milked cows barefoot (young Martin!), and basically all were pulled on wagons from the time they were infants to check on a calf, a pig, a fence, or some chicks.
Our family’s lives are interwoven and intimately connected with those of our cows, our pigs, our chickens. The swallows, the maple trees, the pastures, and barn cats. We experience the farm as our home - it is not just our livelihood but our life.
When you love something you want to tend to it. You don’t make it unsafe, you don’t poison it, you don’t turn a blind eye, or walk away when a challenge arises. Our connection to the land, the cows, the milk, the cheese and the people, make it impossible to exploit any part of the system. Since we live here on this land and we rely on these beautiful animals for our livelihood and the livelihood of our team, since we are nourished by the milk, cheese, yogurt, and meats... for these reasons, taking care of all the parts of the farm is non-negotiable.
And you, our dear customers, matter just as much as our land and our animals! When folks like you visit our farm and are delighted by the calves out front, when you enjoy our products, you’re supporting (and participating in) a system that is connected and caring. You are choosing this over a massively complex and often exploitative food system that for more than 60 years has continuously and intentionally disconnected us from the food we eat for the sake of profit. Businesses where the people producing the food make an imperceptible fraction of what the business owners and corporations make, where much of the food produced is making us sick. Together we are connecting humans in one of the most fundamentally important ways by sharing food made responsibly and with love and care.
So thank you for being part of our farm!
~Molly and Sebastian