D has a gig upstate mid-August and I’m prepping for the journey. We joke that I seek out all the dairies, pick-your-owns and county fairs along the way, while D finds all the historical homes to visit. I’m getting an early jump on this one…
A few weeks back D and I went to Artisanal for a cheese course with Mateo Kehler, cheese maker at Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont. (Mateo also graces the cover of the current Art of Eating quarterly.) We ate his cheese and fell in love with the beauty of raw milk. Then Mateo slammed down the ultimate question:
“Have you ever had fresh milk? Right out of the cow? It’s warm and sweet like melted ice cream.”
I don’t know who you think you are but that sounds good– And I don’t even like melted ice cream! I eat it quickly just so it won’t melt on me!
Other than this cheese tasting, my CSA pairs with some farms that offer raw milk cheese. The cheeses have a nuttier, creamier texture that I have come to love. Even the hard cheeses seem to just melt in the mouth. But that is just more raw milk cheese. We’re looking for fresh milk.
Well heck! Where do you find a cow’s teet for fresh milk in NYC?! I should have taken my chance when I was about 5 and my class spent a day on a Wisconsin farm– I even milked a cow myself. If they had told me then that the milk in that red bucket tasted like ice cream I probably never would have left the farm.
And now, while I’m ever farther from a farm… Maybe, I suppose, I could settle on raw milk.
A search uncovered that only farms with state-issued permits can sell raw milk direct (from the farm). That’s a hard thing to find in NYC. So now I’m looking into farms that might be along our journey to find raw milk. Still… even better if I can find a bucket of fresh milk….
Photo taken from the Jasper Hill Farm website.