a full day before dawn

this seeking work and space is a process with many furrows and ditches. to be seeking a roof and a place at a table is proving to be more difficult than i expected...i was, however, treated to a day's work at the Blue Hill Farm which works to provide dairy, eggs, beef, chicken and pork directly to the Blue Hill Farm and Stonebarn restaurants of New York City and Westchester.

the man who oversees the space and the animals, Sean Stanton, gave me directions. through many shades of green and gray, at 4:30 in the morning, before the first beams of light swung down from the ridges and poured, i ascended hill and hummock. the air was still and at a slant and mist hung in the mud ridges at the foot of a red barn. the sign was prim and plain.

we milked 15 cows of a broad range of pedigree and breed- norweigan belted, gurnseys, jersey, swiss. all named and dozing while the milking machine thumped agreeably. three bull calves in pens howled for breakfast. 

Sean's gentle cows are smaller than conventional dairy breeds, those who famously produce outrageous quantities of inferior milk- a paler, watery milk, lower in milk fats and hardly worth drinking. his cows are fed on grass during the warmer parts of the year and hay during the winters. absent from their diets are grains, soy, genetically modified feed or any nutrients that have been processed with pesticides or other chemicals. nor are the cows treated with antibiotics, likely because their natural diet and regular exercise boosts their immune systems and helps them maintain a resistance to such infections as cystic ovarian disease, mastitis and staph.

it was astonishing the amount of milk from the cows, gallons and gallons from their first milking (with a second to follow in the late afternoon).it was weighed, recorded and poured into a cooling tank to await the arsenal of glass bottles stacked against the back wall. from the 15 cows roughly 75 gallons of milk were collected and poured off into buckets.

none of the milk sold from Blue Hill Farm is pasteurized- a heating process which neutralizes some of the incredibly nutritious fats and, more importantly, fat soluble vitamins such as vitamins A and D which help the body absorb the milk's calcium, and enzymes like lactase (which is absent in the digestive systems of those individuals who are lactose intolerant,) which aids in the digestion of the milk itself by breaking down lactose and which boost the efficiency of digestion in general. additionally these fragile fats contribute to the deep yellow color, richness and complexity of the milk which is incredibly delicious. laws across the country differ in their opinions of how raw milk should sold and distributed (or not). in Massachusetts, where the farm is located, raw milk is legal for sale only at the location where the cows are milked and put to pasture. larger scale distribution is not allowed, nor is raw milk legal to use in the cultivation of yogurt or the fermentation of cheese. 

so, in summation, this milk is special. the bottles have to be procured at the farm, near the cows, which seeds a relationship between milk drinker and animal. its nutrition panel is far superior to commercial milk, rich in antibiotics, production enhancing chemicals, and devoid of taste and color. how lucky to spend time in the company of the quiet animals whose warmth radiated in the barn while the cold nipped like a blade outside. 

not all of the milk was collected for cooling. some was set aside to be separated into cream. the cream separator was a horrifically loud device, all stainless steel and mounted on an  old steel bombshell from earlier days. seriously. milk was poured into a reservoir at the top and separated by virtue of its weight and speed of the machine's motor and funneled out into two long tongues of metal where it collected in respective buckets.

from the 60 gallons that were put aside to be separated, roughly 6 gallons of cream were skimmed. the bi-product of skimming cream is, of course, skim milk and in Sean's opinion the only creatures fit to consume 54 gallons of skim milk were his pigs. this was put aside for a trip down into the wooded slopes behind the farm where the pigs and piglets slept in sand and deep shade to roam comfortably at their leisure.

 

this being an industrious little dairy, the day's cream in addition to twice against as much from previous milks was put to use in the butter churn. butter is made most easily at a temperature of about 54 degrees. the cream stored in the refrigerator from roughly 5 days ago (useful because its slight fermentation adds a noticeable depth of flavor in fresh butter in addition to undertaking slight antimicrobial qualities) was about 37 degrees. the cream separated an hour earlier from the morning milk was 85. 16 gallons of milk, then, were poured back and forth in predetermined fractions, to result in a three buckets of cream roughly 56 degrees each. it was a beautiful closed circuit system of logic and timing. 

the cream was divided into two batches and put into the churn where it processed for roughly 15 minutes achieving the texture of whipped cream and then, abruptly, changing cadence and pitch as the cream  solidified into butter (whose texture resembled couscous) and liquid. the liquid of course is buttermilk, or more specifically 'sweet' buttermilk which has not been fermented or 'soured.' Sean cautioned me against overwhipping butter which can re-emulsify if treated too roughly and then be unfit for buttermaking or consumption. once the couscous texture satisfied Sean's careful eye the butter was washed (sent back into the churn with equal parts water and poured off over and over until the water ran clear). we had roughly 30 pounds of butter. almost. following the washing the butter was scooped out of the churn and heaped into a bowl where it needed to be 'wrung out', that is, Sean and myself had to mash slap and whack the couscous until the water which resided in air pockets was extruded. because the butter's structure depends on remaining at a cool temperature, handling the butter as much as it needed required that Sean and I soak our hands in the coldest water we could stand so as not to melt the butter as we shaped it.  we wrapped the butter in heavy paper in parcels weighing about 2 pounds each and called it quits. selling butter is another method of using raw milk that is not allowed, so it was packed into crates and taken back to the house.

it is also extremely interesting to note the nutritional panel on raw butter. most commercial butter, a solid fat, is churned and packed at a ratio of 75 - 80% fat and 20 -25% water. pastry chefs and bakers rank butter according its fat content. superior butter is any with a percentage of  85 - 95% fat. traditionally made butter however has a lower ratio of fat to water (roughly 65% fat to 35% water) because of the difficulty in manually extracting enough water to yield higher fat percentages. additionally, the fat profiles of butter made from raw, grass-fed, milk indicate high levels of conjugated linoleic acid (or CLA) a polyunsaturated Omega-6 (similar to those fats in fish oil). this amazing fat has an impressive resume, known to remove fat from the abdomen, raise metabolic rates,  boost muscle growth, reduce insulin resistance, strengthen the immune system and lower an individual's likelihood of developing food allergies!  To be clear, these health benefits can be derived from only those products made from raw, grass-fed milk. i've never seen or smelled such beautiful butter.

following buttermaking the calves were fed; they are slowly being weaned from their mothers and are just learning to eat communally at a large bucket fitted with pink nipples that radiate from a center vessel. the feeding bucket can accommodate roughly a dozen shy calves. that day was only the second time the calves had had a go at the communal feeder and i was interested to see if they would catch on.

 no problem.

the last part of the day involved bottling off a few gallons of milk to stock the farm stand and a taste test off the cooling tank's spigot.

 

we left the farm at one o'clock having spent a full day's work in the gray sleep of pre-dawn. coffee is taken at 'the half way mark,' and the rest of the chores are tended to following a meal and a nap in the deep grass.

Sean estimates that he and his two current interns work 60 - 100 hours a week with the higher number reflecting time spent haying. the stipend provided for an intern, who was given housing in a tent on the farm house lawn, was $100 a week. that's roughly $1.25 a hour for the duration of the warm months.

i shook his hand at the end of the afternoon, having another interview to attend, covered in calf slobber and cow manure. i had butter in my hair and under my fingernails, i had cream all over the front of my shirt, pig bristles in my boots, mosquito bites on my eyelids and a sunburn on my nose. i was happy and i was offered a job. i told him i'd take it under serious consideration.

*for more information or resources for obtaining raw milk where you live you can visit www.realmilk.com

**for more information about nutritional healing (where i got most of my information about the chemical make up of butter) you can visit http://www.westonaprice.org/
***for more information about Blue Hill Farm you can visit www.bluehillfarm.com