The Complete Patient

Oake Knoll Ayrshires farm sits less than two miles from Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA, where the New England Patriots play football, and yesterday it had its version of a big tailgating party.

In a highly improbable scene—given the recall last week of raw cream in California, the color branding order for raw milk in North Carolina, the shutdowns of dairies in New York and Pennsylvania, and the sting operations in Michigan and Ohio—Oake Knoll actually passed out samples of raw milk in small paper cups to dozens of visitors, most of whom seemed to be young parents and small children. (The photo accompanying this posting, of Oake Knoll Ayrshires farmer Terri Lawton demonstrating to children her milking technique, perhaps illustrates the contrast best, especially when compared with the photo from Organic Pastures on my previous posting.)

There were newbies like Christopher Adamo, who had never before had raw milk, yet drove the thirty miles from Providence, RI, with his wife and young daughter. “I have not been a big dairy fan, but I believe in consuming raw food.” He liked what he saw and tasted yesterday and was going to give the milk a try.

There were also veterans like Ellen Whalen, who drove an hour-and-a-half from Orleans on Cape Cod to pick up more than a dozen half-gallon jugs for a nine-family co-op in her area. Even though it's a schlep, she's glad to have a raw milk outlet within reasonable driving distance. “Since my family switched to raw milk and coconut oil, we rarely get sick,” she told me.

It was “Massachusetts Raw Milk Dairy Day”, the first-of-its-kind event, organized by the Northeast Organic Farmers Association of Massachusetts. The event was an open house at seven raw-milk dairies, most of them in the distant western part of the state, with Oake Knoll the only Boston-area participant.

The co-operative promotion by the farms certainly worked for me, as I now have a raw milk outlet less than half an hour from my home. I also learned that Massachusetts is fairly tolerant of raw milk. Sales from farms are legal, so long as individual towns don’t ban raw milk, which most don't.

The only officialese occurred when, as a first-time customer, I had to listen to owner Nancy Lawton tell me “raw milk can be dangerous” and then fill out my name, address and phone number “in case of a recall.” I don't care to have to provide identity information when buying food, but given the current climate around raw milk nationally, it seemed a reasonable sacrifice

Oake Knoll is a 25-acre dairy that has for many years produced milk for a local pasteurized brand. But a year-and-a-half ago, Terri Lawton, the 27-year-old daughter of owner Nancy, decided to establish a separate operation, including its own ten cows, selling raw milk directly to consumers.

Terri obviously knew what she was doing in terms of Massachusetts regulations, since she spent several years before coming back to work at the farm she grew up on as a Massachusetts dairy inspector. She says the farm now has more than 100 regular customers, and is growing.

The dairy sells two varieties of raw milk—“pasture-fed,” which is from cows fed only on pasture, and “traditional,” which is from cows fed a traditional diet for the area, including grass, clover, hay, soy, silage, and corn (the entire plant). In my own taste test, the traditional seemed a bit sweeter than the pasture-fed.

Not surprisingly, the pasture-fed milk, at $4.25 a half gallon, is toughest to keep on the shelf, even though traditional is priced lower at $3.75 a half gallon.

Terri demonstrated the milking process to dozens of eager children. She also explained to visitors the differences in milk consistency between Holstein and Ayshire cows; the Ayshires produce a somewhat lower-fat milk that is closer in consistency to goat’s milk, she said.