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