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

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Neither of the two farms that I mentioned in my original post, Shaw Farm and Crescent Ridge, use growth hormones. It's right there on both their websites (in fact the Shaw Farm website includes a glorious rant about the illogic of the state's labeling regulations).

I understand your sentiment but I think that in the VAST majority of cases, if you buy your milk from a small, local, non-factory-using, independent-businessman farmer, you're going to be getting hormone-free milk. The small farmers just don't use that stuff because they care about their cows and understand all the complex reasons why hormones are bad. The only place you really find growth hormones being used is in the huge "factory" dairies, where they care more about profits than the health of the cow OR of the consumer.

[derekp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my comment wasn't meant to say that those two dairy's use hormones. Rather, it was a response to people saying that buying local milk was preferable to buying growth hormone riddled milk.

I'm glad to hear those two do not use growth hormones. My wife does the shopping and we usually end up with Organic Valley, Stonyfield Farm or something like that - not really local, but it's at least organic. I got a couple glass bottles of Shaw Farm (I think) chocolate milk at Wilson Farm... my goodness it was yummy.