A tour of local dairy - getting to know our food sources

I am a firm believer in trying to buy almost all of my groceries from local sources and so far I'm probably at around 80%, which is pretty good. I decided to up it a notch by not only buying local but also touring my local suppliers. This week I visited Calder Dairy.

First let me say this is a rare privilege. I can't think of any other dairy sources I can just drive up and walk around in. I have to admit I was expecting something a little more Disney like and sterile, what I found was an actual working dairy with a few amenities for the visiting families but over all a honest to goodness practical working dairy farm. After looking at this farm and seeing their operations, I appreciate their openness and hard work. They have a few areas they can improve on but their transparency is honorable, and anything mention here can be improved or changed. The dairies not open to the public, or too far for me to access, are not transparent for me so I will stick to what I know over what I don't in this case.

My preference would be to buy organic raw milk, but the organic milk I have access to comes in plastic bottles and is trucked too far for this locavore. Raw milk is available but I have to drive out to get it, I try to be as carless as possible. I pick Calder's milk up at the local co-op which is only a 10 minute walk from my home. Calders' still has home delivery and glass bottles that are returned to the dairy and reused so I choose to buy their milk. I buy their minimally processed "nonhomogenized" milk to avoid further processing, which means there are cream blobs floating in my coffee. I'm ok with that.

Calder Dairy is located on a small paved road surrounded by a very impressive community. The neat houses with big gardens and spotless properties were a huge change from the large landfill, many trailer parks and used car dealerships I passed on my way there. This little community gave the feeling of generations of hard working and conscientious people with a long sense of tradition and history.

My first impression of the farm was a surprise to me. I expected something bigger, more commercial and slick. I've been on many farms over my life and here felt like I was thrown back into the fifties in someways. Very cool folk art wooden statues on the road in welcome you and immediately let you know this farm has been around for awhile. A pond loaded with geese and ducks has a covered picnic table area where families can sit out of the sun, enjoy their ice cream, made on the premises and feed the geese. The property is littered with carved wooden animals kids can play on and a grassy area shaded by trees. Goats, ducks, chickens and geese freely roam the property.

My first stop was the general store that sells all of their products. They have much more available than I knew. Cottage cheese, salted and unsalted butter, half and half in cool bottles to name a small selection. I had not seen their ice cream before and decided to try it. A dedicated label reader I was disappointed that much of their ice cream was not for my consumption. First impulse was to order the caramel cappuccino but the caramel had HFCS as did a few of their other flavors and there was no coffee listed in the ingredients. The blue ice cream I realized was exactly that, blue, due to their coloring ingredient added, I was hoping for blueberries. So I settled for chocolate which had few ingredients and I could identify all of them. I enjoyed this ice cream until I got towards the bottom where another ice cream flavor appeared. My guess is the girl that served me didn't rinse between scoops. Coming from the food industry I took issues with that.

There are a few other areas I was uncomfortable with. The animal pens where the horses, goats and some nondairy cattle were looked as though they were never rotated. All they had was dirt to live in and I saw no additional pens they could be rotated to. The calf pens and the immature dairy cattle barn seemed to me to need a more regular mucking then I saw.

Watching the milking, while again a rare privilege, also made me a tad squeamish. The cows certainly knew the routine and went into the first open milking corral available to them like pros. The cattle when I got there were all pressed into a holding pen that led to the milking room. Here they had zero space to move. I know they were only there for a short time and seemed perfectly happy upon being milked and released to patiently wait in line for an automated brush that they knew how to manipulate and clean them off. My issue is that while in this pen when they defficated or urinated often on the cows around them. Wait for it, I'm not done.

The three men milking the cows wore gloves. One let in the alloted number of cows and the other two positioned them and prepared them for milking. In this process they touched the dirty cows to help them enter the stall or to get thier attention. One of these men was constantly stroking/touching the cows and then looking at the goop on his gloves from the cow, wiping his hands on his pants then reaching for the antibacterial cleaning swab to clean the teats, disposing of the disposable tissue then using his dirty gloved hand to hand milk the teat, which is necessary to check for mastitis. He then put the milking machine on the teat. This touching of the teat and machinery with the dirty glove is to me the reason for pasteurization. Nothing a little more attention from the management can't clean-up but once again the use of the gloves is not fully understood or effective in preventing cross contamination.

Calders states that they do not use Bovine Growth Hormones and feed the cattle what they grow on the farm. I am not sure this is exclusive all year or the only fed they get and the little area I saw growing was corn. I am unsure what their diet is and would prefer pasture, grass fed over grain fed. I'm surprised that these few cows can produce all the Calder Dairy products and think there may be more cows else where but I did not talk to anyone while at the farm and these are my own thoughts. Each cow produces quite a lot of milk and are milked twice a day so I could be overestimating Calders production needs.

Having the farm open to the public is important. There were many families who brought their children and from the conversations in the milking observatory their intent was to teach their kids where their food came from. You could see the children having a hard time relating the milk they knew at home and in the stores as being produced by these cows. I used to visit a farm a lot as a child and they also had dairy cattle among many other animals and it smelt a little sweeter than Calders.

My trip to Calders was eye-opening and a surprise to me, and we should all start to find out about our food sources and hope that all of them are as transparent as Calders. I value that they provide services like home delivery, glass refillable bottles, and a farm I can walk around on and ask questions. They are truly community based and involved company and I will keep buying their dairy products and try to take a few children out with me next time.