Fresh beginnings
Six years ago George Calvert was a stressed-out workaholic living on little more than hamburgers and french fries when he was diagnosed with Meniere’s disease. Thirty years of running his own business had taken its toll, and working long hours on a diet of mostly fast food had left Calvert with the seemingly incurable inner-ear disorder and an irregular heartbeat to boot.
“George’s inner-ear problem was probably caused by stress from the job,” said Calvert’s wife, Judy. “There was a time for awhile when he would just fall down from it – he literally couldn’t stand up.”
With medical science unable to offer much help, the Calverts decided to take matters into their own hands. So they closed up shop, sold their company, and bought a shorthorn milk cow.
“George had a milk cow growing up,” Judy said, adding that the Calverts hoped the cow’s fresh, raw milk, coupled with a slower lifestyle on their six acres in Medical Lake, would be a boon to their health.
As the Calverts ventured into the world of home dairy farming it wasn’t long before family members and friends began to take an interest in the new cow, affectionately dubbed Brie, and her creamy, nutrient-dense milk.
“We started with one cow just for us, and it kept growing,” Judy said. Within a year they added two Jerseys to their expanding herd and started offering “shares” in the cows in order to sell the raw milk.
Today the Calverts are still semi-retired, living on Social Security and the modest revenue from what has become “Udder Whey,” a state-licensed micro dairy that produces the wholesome raw milk the Calverts credit with greatly improving their overall health.
Raw milk sales are illegal in many states, including Idaho, though the state does allow the sale of unpasteurized milk and milk products not intended for human consumption. A handful of small farms do offer raw milk for sale through cow and goat shares, though Idaho does not currently condone such sales of unpasteurized milk.
“Our legal opinion is that the law does not allow cow shares,” said Marv Patten, dairy bureau chief for the Idaho Department of Agriculture, who said the state is currently evaluating its existing retail raw milk rule. “One suggestion is that perhaps cow shares could be made legal up to a certain number, say five or 10 head” of cows or goats, he said.
Although the state of Washington allows raw milk sales through a handful of licensed producers, including Udder Whey, officials warn raw milk is a potentially hazardous product that can contain harmful organisms, including salmonella and E. coli.
The Center for Disease Control & Prevention reports that an estimated 73,000 cases of E. coli occur annually in the United States. An estimated 2.4 million Americans are affected each year by campylobacter jejuni, and approximately 1.4 million cases of salmonella poisoning occur annually in the United States. The CDC also reports that from 1998 to May 2005 there were 39 outbreaks of these and other food borne illnesses in which unpasteurized milk or cheese made from unpasteurized milk were implicated. The outbreaks occurred in 22 states and an estimated 831 illnesses, 66 hospitalizations and one death were associated with these outbreaks.
But raw milk enthusiasts believe the benefits outweigh the risks. They say pasteurizing milk destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with lactose intolerance and other allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer.
“The milk we get in the store shouldn’t even be called milk,” says Sadie Lake, a raw dairy convert who has been buying Calverts’ milk for nearly two years. “I feel so much better about raw milk’s health benefits.”
Every other Wednesday Lake straps her infant daughter into the backseat of her Subaru Outback and drives nearly 30 miles roundtrip from her Spokane home to buy Calverts’ farm-fresh milk. At $9.00 a gallon, the milk isn’t cheap, but Lake says the extra money is worth the peace of mind she gets from consuming the very best nature has to offer. Lake says she uses the milk to make a variety of dairy products – cream for coffee and tea, homemade butter, and kefir – a fermented dairy drink that is thought to have probiotic properties that aid digestion.
Lake is one of a growing number of health-conscious consumers seeking the nutritional benefits of raw milk at a time when some states are cracking down on what they view as the illegal sale of unpasteurized dairy products within their borders.
Last year, following an outbreak of E. coli in southwestern Washington, the state came down hard on small dairies offering cow shares. Udder Whey was one of the few that persevered, converting their cow-share operation to meet standards set by the Washington State Department of Agriculture in order to continue selling raw milk. Since May the Calverts have been running Udder Whey as a community-supported agriculture farm, or CSA, a system in which consumers support local farms by paying in advance for agricultural products.
The Calverts currently sell raw milk and other goods – all-natural beef and pork, and free-range and organic chickens and eggs free of hormones, antibiotics and other additives – to more than 20 area families through CSA memberships. In addition, many of the Calverts’ customers take advantage of the farm’s relationship with Azure Standard, an Oregon-based bulk natural foods store that delivers reasonably-priced organic produce and other goods to order for Udder Whey’s CSA members.
Lake, who buys Calverts’ meat and eggs in addition to milk, said that before she discovered Udder Whey she shopped almost exclusively at Huckleberry’s natural food stores in Spokane. “I’m neurotic about nutrition,” Lake said. “But Huckleberry’s is so expensive, and even there you don’t always know what you’re getting.”
Lake said she appreciates knowing that the Calverts treat their animals with love and respect. “Each of the calves when they are born are given names and treated like members of the family,” Lake said. “So I know George is going to do his best to take care of them and keep them healthy.”
Pigs are fed raw milk and natural alfalfa, corn, oats and barley, and natural vegetables when available. Calves are raised on raw milk and fed toxin-free grass and alfalfa until they are butchered. The lack of grain in their diets makes the meat high in omega-3 fatty acids, which scientists say could prevent heart disease and bolster the immune system. A report published in March by the Union of Concerned Scientists said meat from cows fed only grass has higher omega-3 levels than meat from cows raised on grain. And experts say the same is true of lamb and poultry as well.
“If they’re raised on pasture, I’ll tell you what, you’ll never eat another chicken from Safeway again,” said Terry Swaggerty, small farm program director at the Washington State University Stevens County Extension. “Meat and lamb are the same way – people don’t know what real food tastes like,” a phenomenon Swaggerty hopes to change.
This month WSU, in cooperation with the non-profit Community Agriculture Development Center, will begin offering a U.S. Department of Agriculture mobile processing unit for livestock. It will give small farms and ranches in the region an opportunity to stamp individual cuts of meat with the all-important USDA seal, allowing them to reach a broader consumer base.
Currently many small growers can’t afford to haul their livestock to permanent USDA processing facilities in Sandpoint and Basin City, Wash.
“With the transportation costs alone for most of them it isn’t worth it, so instead they try to drum up local customers for custom slaughter,” he said.
But the new mobile USDA processing unit aims to change that by giving small farms in the region local access to USDA certified meat processing.
“It means you can expect to see more small growers at the farmers’ markets now, because it will actually be possible for them to get the USDA certification,” Swaggerty said.
The new unit will comprise a 24-foot refrigerated truck and a trailer in which livestock processing will occur. Together the truck and trailer provide a self-contained mobile facility that provides its own power source and water supply. Currently the unit is parked at Smokey Ridge Meats in Chewelah, Wash., and will be operated there by S&K Processing under contract to the CADC, Swaggerty said.
When the unit comes online later this month it will have the capacity to process up to eight-head of cattle per day. Swaggerty said he anticipates the mobile facility will move to capacity “within a year or two,” adding that several farms and ranches are already lined up to use it.
Swaggerty said the new USDA unit, along with an existing mobile facility that has been processing poultry in Eastern Washington for the past couple of years, is a response to growing demand for local, natural foods from small growers.
“There is a rising tide of dissatisfaction with the standard conventional industrial approach to food, so these kinds of projects are a response to that,” Swaggerty said. “We don’t envision taking over the world, but it is nice to have an alternative.”
Tagline: Amy Klamper is a freelance writer who lives in Spokane. She is a member of the Udder Whey CSA, a consumer of locally-raised, all-natural meat and poultry, and a frequent patron of local farmers’ markets. She can be reached at: aklamper@gmail.com