Once a month my friend Lisa and I go to a sustainability workshop in a small country library. We have been about four times now, and we are even working up the nerve to TALK to people we don't know! I know, it's a bloody miracle! We call them the 'woolley jumper people' because they mostly are wearing handmade knitted jerseys and they often smell of woodsmoke. They grow their own food, preserve and dry the fruit from their own orchards, smoke their own meat, milk the cow, make butter . . . Lisa and I have serious intentions of being self sufficient hippies in the near future, so we take our little notebooks and try and learn as much as we can about the old ways of doing things. We dream of being invited to the house belonging to one couple who have no electricity, just a cellar, and their own vegie gardens, orchards, cow . . . They are pretty much our heroes!
So all this time I had been wondering about where I could find some raw milk, and I KNEW for certain someone in this group was bound to know. So last time we went, I put my hand up (I know!) in the middle of the meeting (gasp) and asked if anyone knew where I could get some raw milk. "Well, yes", said Sue, (the lady with the orchard, cow etc mentioned above) "see the lady down the back when we finish." We were soooo excited! But then we realised we would have to TALK to the lady about the milk. Oh no! (Yes, Lisa is just as ridiculously shy as me.) But we did and so on monday afternoon I went to a farm and got some beautiful fresh untreated milk. It was so fresh that the cows were being milked as we were filling up our jars.
(I couldn't resist popping the jars into these sweet fabric bins that the lovely Deb sent me. Aren't they adorable. She is very clever. Thanks Deb!)
Raw milk is ridiculously nutrious and you cannot buy it in the supermarket here. You have to find your own farmer to supply you and you are only allowed 5 litres at a time. It's all very hush hush, like the black market! It tastes so amazing and creamy. Oh the cream! Cream is always good. Anyway, I'm going to stop waffling on about it now otherwise I'll start quoting the vitamins and minerals it contains and I'm pretty sure I can hear you snoring already! But seriously, check out this link.
I've been baking bread most days this week too. I'm trying to eat the way people used to, organically and unprocessed. It's such a quiet medatative activity, kneading dough.
It's really lovely actually, watching the dough rise as the sun sets behind the mountains. Soon I'll have escaped into the pages of Anne of Green Gables (or into Sarah's beautiful world), and then my life will be complete.
