Those City Folks

Just recently my husband and I have been shopping at an organic market more and more. It's something we've both wanted to do for a long time. I like the fact that they get a lot of their food from local vendors and we both like the idea that our food is a little less "tainted."

We did occasionally shop at a small market in our old neighborhood - but having to drive all the way over there just to buy over priced food was a little more than our schedules could take. Luckily, MOM's (My Organic Market) has opened near our home and it's a very pleasant trip down to the store.

Amoung the many treasures we've found at the market, such as fresh baked breads, whole spices and grains, and beautiful, luscious, sweet and firm apples right from the tree, we discovered real milk. Milk that comes from happy, well-fed, well-treated cows near to our home. Milk in thick glass bottles. Milk that could have come straight from the bucket. Real-true-milk.

Of course we bought some. Whole milk, all the fat, all the goodness, true milk. The kind of milk you remember as a kid. My mouth watered at the thought of it and we both couldn't wait to break out the bottle as soon as we got home.

Now as a preamble, both of us grew up with some "farm" experience. My home had small animals, I raised chickens for eggs and ducks for...well being ducks. We had a goat for awhile and I took care of sheep for the neighbors. It wasn't a farm-farm, but it was "ag-land" as it's called in Hawaii and I did get my hands dirty. My husband grew up on a real farm, his mother raised horses and he has many a story about chasing the chickens and getting chased by the chickens. I don't know if he had cows or not, but there were a lot of large animals around for him to get his hands dirty too.

However, as you can imagine, it's been awhile. Years of city and suburb living (not to mention supermarket reliance) might have wiped out a little of our rough-and-tumble dirtiness. So much so that when we cracked the seal on our bottle of milk I went immediately to pour it into tall glasses...

And nothing came out.

I shook it, I twisted it...no milk. Gingerly I stuck my finger into the neck of the bottle and touched a white, somewhat slimy but very firm substance. I looked at my husband, and in my city-like ignorance worried that perhaps we had bought a bad bottle of milk.

He took over, hero that he is, he shook the bottle, he twisted the bottle - and nothing came out. He finally gingerly stuck his finger down and touched the same firm, slimy substance and looked just as puzzled and disappointed as I did.

"Maybe it's wax, like a seal." I suggested.

"Maybe it's just not mixed together." He suggested.

We both looked down the bottle. Finally, we reached for a knife and plunged it in, sliding it straight through as easily as a knife through butter.

Of course people who have lived with cows and worked on dairy farms know what it was. Cream separated from the milk and floating to the top.

Once we scooped out enough to pour we savoured the sweetest, smoothest, softest milk we'd had in decades. It had all the weight and flavor that milk should have. It went straight down our throat and slid satisfyingly into our tummies. Filling us up far better than any of that white water they pass off for milk at Foodland. It made you think of being in the sunshine, the smell of sweet grass and dry hay, the feeling of good, clean dirt under your nails and that soft calm of cows in the pasture, soaking it all up and making milk for their babies.

And you.

After a long discussion on the goodness and joy of milk we finally had to giggle:

What a silly picture we made, screwing up our sophisticated and over-intelligent foreheads over a glass bottle of milk. We'd make a pretty good joke for a real farmer; us and our city folk ways.