We only drink fresh, raw milk and when it is not available we don't drink milk (*see below for more information about why we don't drink man-processed milk). From my raw milk, I make butter, kefir and plain yogurt (which I use to make fruited yogurt and fruit smoothies and yogurt cheese). I use the liquid left from making butter to make my oatmeal - nothing is wasted. One day, I hope to also make my own cheese, but I think that will need to wait until I am no longer homeschooling.
If cared for properly, my raw milk lasts easily 2 - 3 weeks before souring. Sometimes, I don't make my butter before the skimmed cream sours, but this 'soured' cream makes great lemon poppy seed muffins. But careful, however, that your 'soured' cream is still usable for cooking - that is does not smell off or have any discoloration, typically reddish color on the surface. If so, toss it out.
My milk comes in plastic gallon jugs. I do not have my own cow, which takes a lot of time and commitment, but I am blessed to have a close source of raw milk. If you live in the North Texas area, Lavon Farms, in Plano, sells raw milk or there are several farms a bit outside of the area that sell raw milk at their farms.
Handling raw milk properly:
1. Be sure that you bring a pre-chilled cooler with you when picking up your milk. It is very important to keep your milk cold at all times for it to last 2 - 3 weeks before going sour.
2. I transfer my milk from the plastic jugs into glass jars. The morning that I am going to get milk, I sanitize my already cleaned glass jars in my dishwasher, using the sanitize and heat dry options. (After a milk jar is emptied, I clean it in the dishwasher and store it until ready to use again. Be sure you store your clean jars with the lid off so they can air.) I transfer my milk into half gallon wide-mouth glass jars when I get it home. These large jars are available at Elliot's hardware in Plano, sometimes at other stores that carry canning jars, co-ops like Azure Standard, and on-line. A word of caution: you MUST let your glass jars cool to room temperature before pouring your cold milk into them or they will crack!
3. I then place my milk on the top shelf of my 'cold' refrigerator. Find the coolest spot in your refrigerator to store your milk if you have only one refrigerator, and turn the temperature colder while still being able to store your produce in your refrigerator without damaging it. I let the milk sit for a day in the refrigerator to settle before I start using it (unless we are completely out of milk).
4. When I am ready to use a jar of milk, assuming it has had at least one day to settle, I skim the cream off the milk to make butter. This leaves a natural milk that is comparable to about 2% milk. I purchased a small metal soup ladle at Target that I use to skim off the cream. As shown in the photos, you need to gently submerge the level ladle into the cream. Watch carefully and you will see when you have all the cream skimmed. I place the cream into a small glass container and then place it back into the refrigerator until I have enough to make butter. Typically I like to have the cream from 1 to 2 gallons of milk for a batch of butter, which yields about 1 pound of butter and 3 to 4 cups of sweet 'butter' milk which I use to make oatmeal. DO NOT skim the cream off your milk, until you are ready to use the milk. If you skim several in advance, the milk will start to sour within a few days. The cream layer keeps the milk from souring. Once skimmed, the cream will last about a week (sometimes a little longer) before starting to sour. We like 'sweet' cream butter, but you can make 'cultured' butter also if your cream has soured. I prefer to make lemon poppy seed muffins with my slightly soured cream. If I am making yogurt, which uses a gallon or two of milk, I get enough cream to immediately make butter with the cream.
5. I never set a jar of milk out on the table or leave it out on the counter. I pour what we are going to drink into glasses or measure it out for my baking and then immediately put the jar of milk back into the refrigerator. The only time you would want to leave the milk out at room temperature (or slightly warmer) is when you are culturing it, or you want it to sour.
Using these methods, my milk stays fresh for two to three weeks, minimum. We use our milk to drink, for baking, and to make:
yogurt (post coming soon)
* Why we don't drink commercial milk:
Milk that has been pasteurized or heated to kill off all bacteria in it, no longer contains the many beneficial aspects of raw milk. In fact, it no longer contains any of the good bacteria that keeps it from being unsafe. If you are interested in learning more about why the pasteurization of milk began, you should read the book, The Untold Story of Milk by Ron Schmid. A brief summary is that it was considered too expensive to improve the conditions in which the cows were being raised and what they were fed (resulting in unhealthy raw milk) thus the solution was to pasteurize the milk. Milk was needed in the cities and it was difficult to transport fresh milk for the large masses of people who had migrated into the cities during the Industrial Revolution. It was decided a good compromise would be to pasteurize the poor quality milk, rather than requiring better quality. Because people did not like this option, selling raw milk was made illegal forcing everyone to buy pasteurized milk. However, the officials making this decision, allowed one children's hospital to continue to use raw milk from cows out on pasture because they admitted that the children in the hospital would not survive if forced to drink the unhealthy pasteurized milk. I personally think we have now raised a generation of people who are all too unhealthy to continue drinking pasteurized, homogenized milk.
The second and just as unhealthy practice that was adopted was homogenization of the milk. Homogenization changes the particle size of the milk, so then the cream does not rise to the top of the milk. Unfortunately, this practice came about and was readily accepted as people got more and more modern conveniences in their homes. It is definitely much easier to pour milk directly out of a jug than to first skim the cream off. So this second practice is more associated with laziness. But there is a price to pay for this 'convenience'. The smaller particle size of the milk is unknown in a person's gut and causes many digestive problems because it can leak through the gut undigested.
Even worse, they are now adding vitamins to milk. These vitamins are man-made vitamins that are not absorbed by our bodies (which is why I do not recommend eating anything that is 'enriched'). Rather than buying foods that are enriched by man, one should look for the original unadulterated foods that contains the natural vitamins and minerals and co-factors and other things we don't even understand yet in just the right combination and balance.
"God saw all that He had made, and it was very good." Genesis 1:31a
