Category Archives: dairy

Guernsey – Gorgeous Island, Great Cows

I just finished reading a very good book called “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.” The book makes one fall in love with the Channel Island, so afterwards I spent some time looking at Guernsey online. Along the way, I discovered that there are all sorts of benefits to Guernsey cows that I never knew of.

I already knew that milk from Jersey and Guernsey cows is naturally much lower in hormones than that of Holsteins. The raw milk we drink comes from Jersey cows. And I also knew that they were, in my opinion, the prettiest cows. What I did not know is this:

Guernsey milk contains 12% more protein, 30% more cream, 33% more vitamin D, 25% more vitamin A and 15% more calcium than average milk. Also, 96% of Guernsey cows produce only A2 Beta Casein protein milk, compared with most cows which make primarily A1 milk, and Jerseys whose milk contains about 40-50% A2 protein. The A2 protein has been touted in recent studies to benefit milk allergies, lactose intolerance, heart disease, and even autism. Guernsey milk produces a better curd for cheese making, converts more feed to milk than Holsteins, matures earlier but lives and produces milk longer.

And, of course, they are just very, very cute!

Raw Milk is Real Milk

This morning I found out that the Department of Agriculture is pressuring my beloved state of CT to put much stricter regulations on raw milk, including requiring all sales to be on-site. All the farmer’s are up in arms, and the consumers too. If we have to start buying our milk on site, we will have to drive 30 minutes each way to get it, which is just silly. The hearing is tomorrow, and I have written about 50 people on the committee about it, and signed a petition. I wish I’d known earlier, so I could have arranged to be at the hearing — and I am surprised we didn’t know, since my husband is a retail distributor of raw milk. He sells to about 6 people a week, but the farmer never told him. Ah well. Wish our farmers luck!

We love our raw milk, which we’ve been drinking going on 4 years now, and selling for 3. My husband doesn’t mark it up at all, nor do most of the grocery stores around here who carry it, they just like to offer it to their customers. For my husband, who runs a auto repair shop and convenience store, he had a dairy license and began carrying the milk so we wouldn’t have to drive so far to get it.

Raw milk is unpasteurized, and non-homogenized. This means it is whole milk with cream on the top. It tastes fantastic, like nothing you’ve ever had from a store. And its healthy too. Pasteurization began to protect children and adults from the very poor standards at city dairies in the early 1900’s. Raw dairies these days are extremely sanitary, and generally use milk cows like Jerseys or Guernseys who don’t add extra hormones to their milk like Holsteins do (all Holsteins pituitaries are naturally amped up so that they will give unnaturally high amounts of milk each day, so they put out large amounts of hormones in their milk, whether they are given rbgh or not.) And raw milk is loaded with good bacteria, aka probiotics, that strengthen your immunity and improve digestion. For more info about raw milk, go to realmilk.com