Raw milk does taste better

A few years ago there was a controvesy in America over dairy farmers supplying milk from their cows directly to customers without going through pasteurization or going through any official channels at all. Farmers were prosecuted for it.

The matter was resolved by everyone involved claiming it was sold only for bathing in! Once you had it, drinking it was up to you.

I tasted it in my childhod and and still remember it as tasting richer.

It was when we were living at 41 Campbell st in Innisfail. The farmer had his herd where we could see it from where we lived. His name was Augie Sorensen. He used to supply unpasteurized milk (probably illegally) to quite a few Innisfail households -- including ours for a while. People would leave out a container and Augie would come along and fill it with very fresh milk.

The memorable thing about him however was his milk delivery vehicle -- a white horse-drawn cart that looked rather like a chariot. It did however have pneumatic tyres. The milk was stored under cover at the front of the cart and Augie stood up at the back to "drive".

I can still see Augie, tall and thin with his typically Scandinavian golden-brown skin and wearing his white pith helmet while standing up proudly in the back of his white cart guiding it along with his long reins. His big chestnut horse always used to have blinkers on -- probably needed if it was to be driven among motor vehicles.

My mother did not patronize Augie for long. She went back to bottled milk -- probably because of health concerns.

I think he was eventually shut down by the govenment. It was a loss. Back-to-nature enthusiasts would have applauded him. He was certainly a brilliant example of low-tech

The reason raw milk was eventually banned is that it was thought to transmit TB from infected cows. So it was amusing a few years later when we schoolkids all had to be tested for TB -- using the Mantoux skin test. We were all positive! We had all had TB without knowing it and were perfecly healthy. Augie's milk could have had something to do with that.