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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 17, 2005)
Minding Your Body THE RAW DEAL A local farmer offers raw goat milk for the love. By Kera Abraham icky Joy Wade and her husband Bob own 80 acres of rolling pasture near Deadwood, Ore. They call the farm Paradise, and their delight stems from the babies living in their home — triplets and twins, born just days apart. “You should see the gorgeous little kids we have right now,” Vicky gushes. She bottle- feeds them every morning, and Bob, a tough ex-Marine, goes gooey when he plays with them. The triplets — named Stella, Chrysie and My Sweetie Clementine — are only a few weeks old, but they’re already potty trained. They sleep in a cardboard box next to the stove. They’re purebred Nubians. Goats, that is. VICKY WADE V nutrition and unclean production methods led to milk-induced outbreaks of tuberculosis, diarrhea and undulant fever. Pasteurization, heating to kill microorganisms, promised a cleaner product. But pasteurization also destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin potency, breaks down pro- “Raw milk is a real tough business, and thus there aren’t many around,” Paulson says. “After farmers realize that they’re burning more gas than they’re selling milk, they burn out on it.” At last count, the Wades had 36 goats, five of them producing milk. Vicky milks the ani- bread, you can get rid of all your anxiety through your hands. To me, milking is the same way. It’s satisfying. It’s calming to the soul.” The milk has the highest quality nourish- ment when it’s right out of the goat, Vicky says. It loses most of its enzymes within the The milk has the highest quality nourishment when it’s right out of the goat. Vicky, 65, and Bob, 70, sell raw goat milk to a handful of local customers, but it’s more a hobby than a living. The Wades live on Social Security, and the goat milk enterprise pulls in a little extra income. “The goats are pets more than anything,” Vicky says. “I’m not a very good businesswoman when it comes to profitability.” Profitability isn’t the point. For Vicky and thousands of other raw-milk advocates, fresh unprocessed milk is one of nature’s most per- fect foods. So she does it for the love. Y ou can’t stroll into your neighborhood grocery store and find raw cow milk on the shelves. Instead, you’ll find cow milk that has been pasteurized and homogenized. “When you buy a pasteurized product in the store, it has met a standard that has been determined by science,” says Eric Paulson, dairy specialist for the Oregon Department of Agriculture and Food Safety. All milk was raw until the advent of pas- teurization in the 1920s, but poor animal teins and kills beneficial bacteria. According to www.realmilk.com, pasteurized milk is associated with a host of health problems including allergies, infant colic, growth disor- ders and heart disease. Homogenization, another standard process in milk production, emulsifies fats and makes milk uniform. According to naturopathy doc- tor Ron Schmid, author of The Untold Story of Milk, homogenization robs the body of but- terfat’s benefits (immuno-boosting fatty acids, vitamins and anti-oxidants) and may even contribute to heart disease. In contrast, Schmid exhorts the raw stuff as a panacea that can boost immunity, build healthy bones and fight cancer. Despite raw milk’s alleged health benefits, pasteurization laws have squeezed most small raw cow milk producers out of business. In Oregon, consumers may purchase raw milk directly from farms with no more than nine milking goats or two milking cows. Retail sale of raw goat milk is legal, but not cow milk. mals herself and then drives the fresh milk to her regular customers. But she says the demand for raw goat milk far exceeds the local supply: “Dozens of people want the stuff.” She would like to set up a cooperative with other small farmers to supply raw milk to customers in the Eugene/Springfield area. Vicky works hard to keep her goats, and thus their milk, clean. She tosses together bread, organic produce, alfalfa pellets and a corn-oats-barley mix, then pours the feed into a pine trough she built herself. In the pasture, the goats nibble on fresh grass and blackberry bushes. Vicky avoids giving her goats shots or pills, preferring to treat them with herbs when they get sick. On principle, Vicky, who has milked live- stock since she was a child in Cheshire, Ore., doesn’t use milking machines. She cleans the goats’ udders, milks into a plastic pail, strains the milk and bottles it in half-gallon plastic jugs. “Milking by hand is good contact and bonding with your animal,” she says. “Like my grandmother used to say about kneading first three hours after milking, but it retains its vitamins. Vicky likes to pour it cold over her cereal or just drink a glass straight for an ener- gy boost. And the taste? “Since my girls only get fed the blackberry vines in the hillside and all the organic stuff that I give them, their milk is very sweet and mild,” Vicky says. “It’s the best I’ve ever tasted.” ■ RESOURCES The Untold Story of Milk: Green Pastures, Contented Cows and Raw Dairy Foods. By Ron Schmid, ND. Washington, D.C.: NewTrends Publishing Inc, 2003. For more information on raw milk, visit www.realmilk.com For local raw goat milk, visit www.great- glen.net or e-mail Vicky Wade at realmilk@greatglen.net Sundance Natural Foods sells raw goat milk produced at Echo Mountain and Organic Pastures farms. Vicky and Bob Wade’s goats FEBRUARY 17, 2005 13
