local milk

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

In the past few months there have been several threads on this community about local milk and/or milk delivery. It has been pointed out that Crescent Ridge Dairy delivers local milk to towns all around Somerville but not to Somerville itself (see their delivery map which conspicuously omits our entire beloved town from existence).

I emailed Crescent Ridge a while back to ask about the chances of them adding a Somerville delivery, and got back a typically wishy-washy answer from a sales-type person (you know, "we are always considering new opportunities" or something vague like that).

I also did a little looking into other options for acquiring locally-produced milk in the area, and found that:
* Shaw Farm milk is sold at Kickass Cupcakes. However, since most of my shopping would be done with kids in tow, it just isn't feasible to be going into a cupcake store on a regular basis. ;) Also, it's inefficient for me to have to buy four quarts when I want a gallon.
* Shaw Farm milk is also sold at Wilson Farm in Lexington. This is a bit far for me to justify going on a regular basis just for milk.
* Shaw Farm's website does not list Kickass Cupcakes on its list of stores that sell its products, which leads me to wonder where else it might be available that isn't on the website.
* I heard a rumor that Dave's Fresh Pasta carried local milk, but this turns out to be incorrect (at least according to the somewhat confused person behind the counter there this evening).
* I also heard a rumor that McKinnon's Meat Market in Davis Square carried local milk, but have not investigated this yet since I'm a vegetarian and the place intimidates me.
* You can also get Crescent Ridge milk at Whole Foods, which is an okay option but still not really convenient for me (and again only available in quarts, at least at the Central Square location).
* Hood delivers, but the milk is not necessarily local and (from what I can see) is factory-produced.

Anyway, with the foregoing in mind, my questions to you are:
* Do you know of anywhere else in the immediate Davis Square area where locally-produced milk can be purchased?
* Do you know of any other establishment, besides Crescent Ridge and Hood, that delivers milk to Somerville?
and finally,
* Would you be interested in signing up for regular milk deliveries from Crescent Ridge if they added Somerville to their delivery area? I was thinking that it might work better if a bunch of us banded together to approach them saying "here are x people representing y gallons per week who really want to give you their money." If you would be interested in that, please post here (or email me at this username at gmail) and let me know.

Thanks everyone! Now let the flaming begin. :)

Comments

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

Just some more info: The reason dairy "farms"/CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) use so many antibiotics is because the animals are so packed in that they're extremely susceptible to disease. All that concentrated waste runoff is quite damaging to the local environment, not to mention that high use of antibiotics leads to the evolution of resistant strains -- and people get those antibiotic-resistant diseases, not just animals.

As jadelennox says below, "farm within 100 miles of Boston" pretty much means "small-scale and following the general principles of organic, even if they haven't spent the money to get officially certified." So the choice isn't so either-or around here. Lucky us!

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, the other reasons CAFOs use antibiotics are
a) they are feeding the cows corn, which is not a natural food for the cow, and which is difficult for the cow to digest and causes internal bleeding/infections
and
b) they are using artificial hormones to make their cows produce more milk, which causes mastitis (inflammation of the mammary glands) which requires antibiotics to treat it.

having had mastitis myself once or twice, I gotta say I wouldn't wish it on anyone, human, bovine, or what have you.

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

Yup (about the corn)! And I didn't know the mastitis bit, but that makes sense.

In summary, CAFOs are a Bad Scene, for just about everything and everyone concerned. Switch to local/organic animal products! *gets down off soapbox...for now :) *