The Tyee – The Milk Warriors of British Columbia

Buttercup, our family Jersey cow on Pender Island

The Tyee – The Milk Warriors of British Columbia

I like to follow this story because I grew up on unpasteurized milk.  Mom milked our Jersey cow and we had fresh milk, awesome whipped cream and graham cracker snacks, fresh butter and sometimes homemade ice cream.  One of the local doctors had a neighbour buy milk from my mom for her kids to stimulate their immune system.  Another neighbour bought milk from my mom even though his daughter and her husband had dairy cows - just because it was from a Jersey and it was unpasteurized.  There was a dairy inspector who came out and checked the cow for TB, and of course the cow was well cared for so we didn't worry about any health problems.  Mom would filter the milk through cheesecloth into a glass container, sit it in the fridge, and let the cream rise to the top.  Then she would use a ladle and carefully collect the thick yellow cream into another glass container.  She tried a cream separator, but with all of its parts it would take a lot to clean thoroughly. Much more effective to just use a ladle when we only had one cow.  Ahhhh, memories.  Our milk from our own cow was nothing like the milk from a store (not that there's anything wrong with that...:))