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HOST: Dairy Herd Shares on this "Farm to Fork Wyoming."
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Fresh, unpasteurized, raw milk straight from the farm,
it seems simple enough, but it's far from common,
not just in Wyoming but throughout America.
Drinking raw milk is controversial.
Serve it to your family, and in some states,
you're breaking the law.
According to the FDA, raw milk is a prime environment
for dangerous pathogens to grow and therefore is banned
for consumption or transport across state lines.
But many believe this ban goes too far...
The perception of raw milk that has been brought out there
by many different levels of government
and possibly some advocates that are against it,
most of them are very overexaggerated
and in my opinion, fear based, fear based attacks.
I would never do my kids harm and I want the absolute best
for them and, in my opinion, raw milk is the best for them.
Consumer safety regulators have recently allowed for herd shares
in Wyoming, but they still maintain that raw milk
is a high risk food.
For Frank and his herd share owners,
this access seems long overdue.
FRANK: Some of these people were actually living in Gillette,
Wyoming, driving five and half hours to a raw milk cowshare
dairy that they bought a share in in Colorado and driving back,
with their milk, so they could feed their families real milk,
that some of them were intolerant to the pasteurized
milk that is commercially available here.
So that's where we really became involved in
the food rights issues.
By allowing for herd share agreements, Wyoming has
essentially washed its hands of the health liabilities
consumer safety regulators associate with raw milk.
Some states, and Wyoming is one of them, still has an outright
ban on selling raw milk, but we were able to change
the definitions and the interpretation of the food rule
so that it's very clear that you can own an animal
or a share of an animal and be able to use that milk.
So that's the way that folks who are really looking for
this product are able to get it in Wyoming is because
they're able to buy a share of a herd.
It's clear, with the present demand,
herd shares are likely to grow in Wyoming.
FRANK: We have 93 families that are, or single people,
drinking milk from the cows that they own,
so it's exploded, it really has.
A lot of bottles.
Yeah, I don't know how many bottles I own, our shareholders
own, but it's a lot of bottles.
Yeah.
Kefir's working now?
Yes, finally.
And your mom's got started with it?
Yep.
Wonderful.
At Frank's dairy delivery in Gillette,
you can see how diverse these customers are.
FRANK: I have from young early 20-year-old guys and girls that
are workout fanatics, helps them build muscle and be strong
and have lots of energy, I have families with young kids
that are feeding milk to their children.
They believe that it's more nutritionally valuable
than what's available in the commercial system, they think it
gives their kids strong teeth and strong bones and to grow up
as good strong people and to reproduce, actually,
there's some benefits to having a good body
if you're gonna have kids in the future.
I've got people that are cancer survivors and they're using
the nutritional value of the milk to gain some weight back
after some horrible chemotherapy and irradiation treatments
and things like that.
And then there's the people that are, what the scientists or
the food experts say are lactose intolerant, but if they try
raw milk, suddenly they're able to drink milk so it's really,
they're not lactose intolerant,
they're pasteurization intolerant.
SUE: That's actually one of the things that I love
about this issue, it brings together the extreme ends
of the political spectrum.
So you've got extremely conservative, agriculture
families and consumers on one end that are concerned about
the free market, who are concerned about their rights
and their freedoms to choose the foods they want and to eat
the foods they want and to do that in an economic way
that's not interfered with by government.
And then on the other hand, you have the extreme left wing group
that are the environmentalists, the foodie groups,
the locavores, folks that see government as the solution
to everything are on the same page when you start talking
about food and access to local food and fairness and justice
for agriculture people and for consumers and health and
environment and all of those things, so that's really cool.
Herd shares have been a foot in the door
for raw milk advocates around the U.S.
Just to give you an example, in California,
we have two licensed raw milk dairies and 150 cowshares.
We started with one or two cowshares in Colorado
and now there are dozens.
We started with one or two cowshares in the state of
Virginia and now there's dozens and this is the last ten years.
Pennsylvania, when we started, there were 36 licensed raw milk
dairies in Pennsylvania, now there's almost 150,
plus another, probably an equally number of unlicensed
dairies selling milk through private arrangements.
The obvious result that the farmers benefit,
it's good for the local economy.
But gaining regulatory acceptance remains
the ultimate challenge.
SALLY: We've also been very diligent in putting together
the proof that raw milk is not a high risk food,
it's not inherently dangerous, it has a very low risk profile
and we'd have practically no risk if the regulators would
work with us for reasonable standards and I've always said,
I do want some regulation in this by people who believe
in the product and not by people trying to
put you out of business.
I asked Monica Corrado, Certified Nutrition Consultant,
to explain some of the thinking behind
this movement for raw milk.
We didn't always pasteurize our milk.
Why did they start pasteurizing milk?
Because people got deathly sick from it.
Why did they get deathly sick?
Because they had brought cows into factory buildings in Boston
and they all got to stand around in their own excrement,
we can say filth, if you'd rather, but they're
standing around in windowless factory buildings, no grass,
no sun, and no sanitation.
And then they're feeding them swill from the breweries
as their food and you wonder why people got sick.
And now we don't have them in factory buildings, but we have
them in confinement feeding operations, you know,
with some of the same stuff going on.
So, what we're wanting to do is go back to getting dairy
from cows that are raised the way they're meant to be raised,
which is on grass, on pasture.
Herd shares are a very different business model.
Shareowners buy in and pay a management fee and the farmer
is able to pass along some savings by cutting out
processors and distributors.
FRANK: There's been some real tough times in the commercial
dairy world in the last few years.
Lots and lots of them have gone out of business because
they just can't, they can't live on what the milk processors
are paying them.
Whereas, the raw dairy and the cowshare, or the local dairy,
the producer is actually bypassing all those middlemen
and he's able to get enough income to actually survive,
and in some cases, thrive because he's getting basically
all that money that's skimmed off, ha ha.
Many producers like Frank walk a fine line
to be as organic as possible.
Some refer to this approach as "beyond organic."
FRANK: I don't use genetically modified corn or soy beans
or anything like that.
My first choice would be to buy from a local farm here or
a couple of local farms that are kind of like me, they don't go
to the expense because then they have to raise the price and then
I can't afford that, but they're producing some grains that
have not been sprayed with herbicides or pesticides
and things like that.
Most of my operation would be certifiable if I chose to
take that expense, but that's an expense I'd have to pass on
to the cow owners, for example.
So Judy's asking about coming out and visiting
her milk cows and --
And I would much more prefer to be inspected by my consumers
that are eating the food that I produce.
...then milk out there, they won't even have to walk
up to the house, they just stay on grass 24/7.
A popular line of reasoning says in a perfect world,
grain has no place in these animals' diets,
but Frank sees a place for grain in his operation.
FRANK: Our chickens need some grains and our pigs need some
grains and we do feed a little bit of grain to our milk cows.
Our beef cattle get no grain from birth to harvest.
In the natural world, a cow would actually get some grains
just by eating the tops off of the grass,
it's just the overfeeding of grain.
The milk cows that are available today are not quite as,
they're bred to produce a lot of milk even though I don't try to
get the maximum out of my cows, if you try to put them on just
grass, on my world, which is no irrigation, just the native
grasses, they'll do okay but the milk production will be minimal
and they'll lose weight during the lactation cycle.
So we do give a little bit of grain, less than one percent of
their body weight, but their primary diet is the native
grasses, and hay in the wintertime, of course, here,
and that makes the highest quality of milk that I believe
can be produced, with the exception of being able
to be totally on grass.
And there are some parts of the world that that environment
is able to do that, the people that live in the nice irrigated
valleys can keep their cattle on some real lush, very good hay
and grass all year long and they're able to succeed
without doing grain.
A lot of the raw milk dairies are primarily grass,
but a lot of them also do a little bit of grain.
The largest raw dairy in the country, Organic Pastures
in California, does use a little bit of grain.
It's just the overfeeding of grain and that's, you know,
if you're a commercial dairyman, you're on a contract with some
milk producer somewhere who's paying you basically for volume,
so the more volume you can get those cows to pump out,
the better your bottom line or the less your red line is.
From what I read and see, a commercial dairy cow pumped
full of antibiotics, fed corn silage, pumped full of hormones,
they basically wear those cows out in maybe three,
four, five years.
I'm hoping the way I treat cows, which is pretty mildly,
very easy-going life, no stress, good diet,
they should last 12, 15 years,
but I'm not pushing them to get the last drop of milk.
I'm not pushing them to get eight gallons of milk a day.
I'm happy with three gallons a day because of the quality of
the milk is what we're selling, we're not selling quantity,
we're selling quality here, that's what we're looking for.
So, yeah, three, four gallons a day is good for me.
And the herd's calves are an important part
of the dairy operation.
FRANK: I keep the calves attached to their mothers,
the first couple of weeks, they are with their mothers
the full time and then we slightly wean the calves,
I guess, whereas, I take my milk and the cowshare owner's milk
first, but leave some for the calves.
So the calves are on good, wholesome mother's milk,
they learn to, they learn their manners from their mothers,
and also the calf is the most efficient milking machine in the
world, mother nature designed it, it's amazing, and they strip
all of the milk out of the cow and thus I have no inflammation
problems that are common in big dairies or even small dairies
that take their calves off of their cows.
There's no mastitis or inflammation problems ever,
I've never had a case, so that's a huge benefit.
I get some feedback from people saying, how do you manage that,
what's the logistics?
It's not too tough, we keep the calves in the corral after
they've been slightly weaned and after I milk the cows, we have
the cow standing there eating some say, probably just to be
content while we're waiting to finish the milking, we open
the gate and all the calves run, "mama, mama,"
and go get their supper.
I marveled at the seemingly endless variety
that Frank packs into his operation.
Well, all of the dairy products I cannot sell but as part of
the services to the cow owners that own the milk, we produce
kefir which is kind of an enhanced yogurt, blackberry
kefir, blueberry kefir, pineapple kefir, plain kefir,
we have heavy cream which is the top of the line, you can see
we've had to spoon this into the jar this morning and it's
so thick, it will not take the air bubble out.
It won't pour.
I mean, it will pour but it's very, very thick.
But then we do a few extra things, now we're doing
some Kombucha, which is a probiotic drink.
Basically it's an ancient drink made from fermented tea
and sugar and, in our case, we put a little bit of
fruit flavoring in it.
And then we do some other fermented foods, here we have
the raw sauerkraut which is a very good probiotic food,
very good at helping building your immune system
with the probiotic cultures that are in that.
(phone ringing)
How do I get it done?
If I had my way, I wouldn't waste eight hours sleeping,
but I do go to bed but there's always a big list of things
that are, need and want to be done.
We start about eight in the morning, generally.
First, I want to have these animals do their work and go out
and graze and work on the bugs and work on the flies
so I don't feed the chickens in the morning and I don't feed
the pigs in the morning.
I feed them in the afternoon so they work for a living first,
but I do want them to be full and I want them to be growing
fast and I do want them to be producing eggs so I do give them
their extra food in the afternoon or early evening.
A big help and a big part of our lives anymore is
the WWOOFer Program, the Worldwide Opportunities
on Organic Farms, WWOOF.
Is an organization, worldwide, that takes host farms like
ourselves and they have young, not always young, but a lot of
times, young men and women come and stay and learn about organic
farming and in exchange they help with the labor a little bit
and, in our case, they probably get some of the best food that
they'll ever get on a WWOOFing farm, I'm sure there's others,
but I brag a little...
(chuckling)
So in the last three years, we've probably had close to 15,
young and old, some of them older than me, from around
the world, from Australia, Israel, France, Germany,
both coasts of the U.S., from the Midwest.
The steaks look so good, I ask Frank to share his recipe.
First you get a cow and a bull, you put them together,
nine months later, you have a calf, you put him on grass and
his mother's milk and a little bit of salt for two years
and then you hang him up for about three to four weeks
and then you put him on a hot fire.
That's my recipe, with salt and pepper.
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The question of where the next generation will come from
never seems far from the farmer's mind these days.
FRANK: Real estate prices are so high that young people don't
have the capital to start farming and the consequences
of that, all the farmers are getting old, so when all those
old fogies die off, who's gonna put food on the table?
We gotta find some young guys and girls to start in farming.
At the Pinedale Local Fest, I ran into Frank and a couple
of his herd share owners.
And I have cowshare owners with me,
legally drinking milk from their own cows.
They're kind of combination WWOOFers and cowshare owners and
they're actually WWOOFing on a goat farm in Washington State
and we are talking about maybe them coming back and becoming
partners on this place and maybe starting a little dairy with
goats because there is a demand for goat milk, and then maybe
producing some goat milk soaps and maybe getting them
a start in farming.
That might be a way that I can help young people
get into farming.
Besides it's fun to have young people around and you learn
a lot from other people, even people that don't have
agriculture experience, they come up with some really,
really cool ideas, and sometimes some weird ones
but those are fun, too.
These small ag opportunities seem to be making
a big difference in people's lives.
FRANK: The milk cow sharing operation that we're doing has
actually allowed me to quit my corporate job, it's allowed me
not to have to go to town and push out shopping carts
and say welcome to blank-Mart.
I'm able to stay on the ranch, I'm able to keep my aging
parents here rather than put them into storage in some old
folks home, all the money that I make is basically spent here
locally with a few exceptions of buying milking machines on eBay
or something like that that've all disappeared in this part of
the world, but there are some still available out there
if you're willing to look for it.
Here in Campbell County, we're not a poor county, but if you
go to Torrington or I went over and looked at a milk cow in
Hot Springs, South Dakota, just across the border from
Wyoming, that little town used to be vibrant, it used to have
a little butcher shop, it used to have a grocery store where
people could go buy milk and eggs and other local produce,
the town is a ghost town.
Everybody drives to Rapid City to go to the big box stores,
the Kmarts, the Wal-Marts, which if you want to centralize
your economy, that's the way to do it, but not my goal.
I would like to have more stable, local economies.
If you're looking at it from a lot of different angles,
besides just being good for you and being good food, there's
some national security issues to not having a local food economy.
National security and nutrition security...
Steve and DeeAnn Doyle of Riverton started working on
the local food idea about five years ago.
STEVE: We're thinking all along about building a sustainable
farm or a self-sustainable homestead and a milk cow
is an essential part of that.
So that milk that we get from the cow helps feed our baby
chicks, bum lambs, steers and, of course, we drink a lot of
milk and then we have cheese and we have butter, we had piglets
and we still have more milk available from one little
800-pound Jersey cow.
With nearly 30 shareholders in the Riverton area,
Steve and DeeAnn have gone from one family milk cow
to a productive operation.
STEVE: There's a huge need for little dairies like this.
Two generations ago, there was 1,014 farms that had sold
dairy products, that was in Fremont County.
Right now, I think we're at one, us, but there'll be more.
DeeAnn is the expert of the dairy operation and for her,
it was love at first sight.
What first got me was the eyelashes.
The first drive-by, when someone told me there was a cow
for sale, and she was right at the fence and she looks at me
and she has these great, big long eyelashes.
DeeAnn is also great at cheesemaking so I asked her
to make one of her favorites, queso fresco.
Now I should mention, queso fresco, like other soft cheeses,
poses some serious health risks, most notably from
listeria contamination.
DeeAnn's method would not satisfy consumer safety experts
so if you want to make cheese at home, do some research first.
The queso fresco, if you skim the milk, it's a much,
much dryer cheese and the recipe that I'm making today
is more of a softer cheese.
This is one gallon of milk and it'll make two cheese wheels.
You can use store bought milk as long as
it's not ultra-pasteurized.
If it's ultra-pasteurized, it won't set.
And we'll add two tablespoons of plain salt, I just use a canning
and pickling salt that has no anti-caking agents in it.
You generally see when it's about to get 190,
the top will start to steam and foam a little bit.
We don't want it to boil or it'll taste a little scorched.
Just gotta foam over the top so I'm gonna check
that temperature again.
This little gadget is great, we're looking at 190.
There we go.
Turn it off.
Now I'm gonna pour in a half a cup of vinegar
and it will change to curds immediately.
We'll pour this in slowly.
You can see how it's curdling and you'll see the whey is
getting -- it'll get clearer and clearer as it sits.
We're gonna let that sit for five minutes.
The milk cow is kind of the rock, it is the center of
everything, it's the center of our life because you can't
go anywhere, but it's also, it feeds everybody,
it feeds the chickens, it feeds us, it feeds the pigs,
it feeds the calves, and it's versatile.
If we have too much or we get a kicked bucket or whatever,
it's fertilizer, it promotes,
the live enzymes promote the soils.
After five minutes, the cheese has cooled
and curdled enough to strain.
Once I get more of the whey out, we will let this set
for about 15 minutes.
So what I'll do is just kind of turn it on its side
to help it drain and this is what it would look like,
like a crumbly cheese, like that.
It's great to put on salads, sprinkle over enchiladas
or any kind of casserole that you would want some nice
cheese flavor on it.
You can change the texture on however you like it
or what recipe you want it for.
Drain it longer to get a dryer, more firm cheese.
You can also press it and the more whey that you leave in it,
it'll also make it creamier.
So then I'll take it and just use the heel of my hand
and cream it and kind of breakdown the cheese.
When we first got it out, it's quite warm.
The longer you work it, you can get it to the texture
of cream cheese, just about.
Not quite as smooth, but that creamy.
It just depends on your patience.
This was whole milk, you salt your milk first, heat it to 190
degrees, you need to stir it to make sure it does not scorch on
the bottom and once it hits 190 degrees, you add a half a cup
of white vinegar or any kind of vinegar you would like
and then you leave it sit.
You stir it in well, leave it sit for five minutes
and then you drain it.
About there for the creamy texture, and then I put in
about a quarter cup of jalapeno peppers
that are chopped pretty fine.
This recipe, you can add whatever herbs you would like,
but we just love the jalapeno peppers and you can use fresh
or canned, and I'm using canned right now.
Kind of like pickled?
Yes, pickled.
Oh, I love those.
And then I will put it in a little cheese press here.
I'm getting hungry.
It is pretty soft.
So we'll put it in here and follow it with a little chaser.
It does not look like I got exactly half
'cause this a thinner wheel.
And you just press it on through.
Oh, that was quick.
For storage, I will take it and put it on a, this is a food
dehydrating rack, it's just a drying rack and after one day,
I'll flip it over and it'll dry on the other side and the air's
allowed to circulate around it and dry it
and make a little rind on the outside.
STEVE: The people who are in our cowshare program,
they own part of the cows, we look after the cows.
Well, that makes them sort of part owners on our farm,
doesn't it?
And once that happens, then they start taking a real interest in
how the farm is evolving, what kind of rules and regulations
we have to hurdle, our relationship changes.
It's not just simple customer, seller.
It's a relationship that gets stronger and the bonds are
stronger for them, to our farm, to our soil.
These weren't things we foresaw that we're experiencing,
pretty rich.