Grass-based Dairy Farming at PastureLand

We had a great time at the Perennial Plate pizza party on Saturday night at Two Pony Gardens near Long Lake, MN. Outdoor spring parties are always a gamble here, and you gotta love people willing to cheerfully hang around outside in the cold, drinking beer and tomato wine, waiting for pizza to come out of the wood-fired oven! The chefs were warm by the oven, but everyone else was bundled up against the 30 degree temperature at party time.

The gardens are beautiful, even now when they are barely awake, and it was lovely to be with people ready to shed winter and celebrate local food together.

We have enjoyed being part of Perennial Plate’s first year documenting local food, and look forward to tracking them as they head off for a cross country Real Food Road Trip!

In this rational and informative article in the Spring 2011 issue of  Gastronomica, “In Bacteria Land”: The Battle over Raw Milk” author Anne Mendelson lays out the benefits, suspicions, myths and lost common sense about raw milk.

We haven’t been able to find a link to the full article (you can buy a copy!), but to give you a taste of what she says, here is the abstract:

Beginning at around 1893, America’s initial raw milk wars pitted proponents of pasteurized milk against advocates of a complex scheme for “certifying” clean, uncontaminated raw milk. The certification program, unsuited to modern commercial economies of scale, soon faded into obscurity. When a new version of the raw milk movement began gathering strength in the 1970s, scarcely anyone remembered the terms on which a certain amount of rational debate had once taken place. Part of the reason is that over the course of the twentieth century, the scale and structure of the fluid milk industry had undergone drastic changes that turned a highly variable, fragile product into a nearly featureless one poorly understood by consumers, regulators, or polemicists. Meanwhile, new dairying and processing practices had begun creating hospitable conditions for pathogens that were unknown during the first controversies but that urgently need to be considered today. Unfortunately, discussion of the raw milk question is now almost wholly dictated by intolerant ideologues on both sides, in an atmosphere of profound historical amnesia. Given the great complexity of the issues involved and the serious implications for public health, the general tone of debate is at best counterproductive.

Minnesota Food Association and Savories Bistro in Stillwater, MN are partnering to raise funds to feed the hungry with a Harvest Dinner at Savories on April 8. PastureLand Farmdog Blue with polenta cheese croutons is in the first course, and the meal features pork for our friends at Hidden Stream Farm.

All donations are matched dollar for dollar. This is a great opportunity to make a difference in our food system. Harvest for the Hungry doesn’t just give food to hungry people, it also trains new farmers through internships at Minnesota Food Association’s Big River Farms.

Click here to listen to PastureLand Farmdog raw milk blue cheesemaker Jeff Jirik of Caves of Faribault talk to Anne Saxelby from Saxelby Cheese in New York. Fascinating to hear Jeff talk about playing with grass-fed milk for the first time.

CSK? It’s a Community Supported Kitchen. Check out the new CSK project from Scott Pampuch at Corner Table Restaurant in Minneapolis. Sounds like a great way to make family dinner delicious – and easy – actually happen!

Our medium raw milk cheddar is now available in 2.5 lb blocks. This new size is great for shipping, and fits easily into our smaller coolers, cutting shipping cost to you – important as we approach warm weather. Beginning May 1 we are going to discontinue the UPS Ground option – as we did last year. Speedee Delivery will be the best option for deliveries in the Midwest, and UPS 2 Day will be required for shipments outside the Midwest. Butter is coming and we are getting ready!

Enter code 1519 on our order page and get $10 off on 5 lbs artisan aged raw milk cheddar!