dairy Feed

December 27, 2010

Top Ten Posts of 2010 at Year of Plenty

According to Google Analytics these were the most popular blog posts on Year of Plenty in 2010.

1. Newsflash: Dairy Industry Wants You to Eat More Dairy - What's So Controversial About That?

This post created quite a stir. It got picked up by the president of Dairy Management Corp. and was emailed to all of his contacts. The folks at Domino's Pizza linked it all over the internet. James McWilliams at the Atlantic Monthly credited Bill Bishop at the Daily Yonder with being the first to grasp the way this story was being misreported, but I think I was the first one on the story. My first official big scoop.

2. World Comparison: Fresh vs. Processed Food Consumption

Google placed this high on their search criteria, so it has received a steady flow of clickers all year and also got picked up in some online communities.

3. How My Little Blog Out-Reported the New York Times

This was my follow up to the Newflash post about Dairy Management.

4. Roast House Coffee Newest Roaster on the Spokane Scene

This year I actually started doing some in-the-field reporting, visiting local businesses and writing up short narratives. Roast House was one of the first.

5. What Would You Do If You Had One Year to Live?

This was my first and only blog post to get "Dished," meaning Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish linked to it as one of his "Quotes of the Day". 

6. Wendell Berry: Gardening as Health Regimen and Holy Sacrament

This post got picked up a couple different places on the web.

7. American Farm Bureau President Declares War on "self-appointed and self promoting food experts" 

Unlike the post on Dairy Management where large ag interests were eager to see my blog as an asset, this post led to quite a push back from folks at the AFB and the conventional farming community. The AFB PR took issue with my characterization that the AFB president had declared war on consumers concerned with large ag. practices. 

8. Why You Shouldn't Rototill Your Garden

I did a whole series of gardening posts last Spring and this was the most popular of the bunch. Other popular gardening posts include; How to Turn Your Lawn Into a Vegetable Garden, , How to Make Your Own Professional Seed Starting Soil Mix, Tips for Planting the Garden, 

9. How to Get Started Raising Chickens in Your Backyard: Choosing You Chickens

This was part of a series of posts on raising backyard chickens. The other posts included one on building and designing a chicken coop and another on convincing your spouse it's a good idea.

10. Year of Plenty | The Book

I'm told the book goes to print on January 15 and will be released on March 1, 2011.

Thanks for everyone who has contributed and commented on the blog in the last year. If you want to follow along in 2011 you can sign up for the RSS Feed , you can follow the blog on Twitter , or click the Like button below to follow on Facebook.

Posted by on December 27, 2010 in agriculture, backyard chickens, Books, Chicken Coop, community, Current Affairs, dairy, deep thoughts, faith, farmers, food policy, gardening, health, links, local business, local Manufacturers, locavore, Pacific Northwest, politics, Spokane, vegetables, Weblogs, Wendell Berry, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 19, 2010

Food Safety Modernization Act Debate: Farmers vs. Foodies or Farmers vs. Farmers

The food blogosphere has been abuzz this week with news about S 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. Go here and here for background. It appears that amendments to the bill to allow more flexibility for small farms are going to make it into the bill. Yesterday, in response to these developments, a cadre of large vegetable grower organization wrote a letter to congress. Go here to read the full text. Here's the key excerpt:

Comments from Senator Tester and supporters are now making it abundantly clear that their cause is not to argue that small farms pose less risk, but to wage an ideological war against the vast majority of American farmers that seeks to feed 300 million Americans. We are appalled at statements by Senator Tester reported today in the Capital Press that “Small producers are not raising a commodity, but are raising food. Industrial agriculture, he said, takes the people out of the equation."

I think that sentence highlights an important piece of the equation that maybe is lost in the way the story is being reported. Whereas the headlines are pitting farmers market foodies against farmers, this actually is primarily a debate between farmers in the ag community. Tester is talking about two different ways of farming. He probably has in mind the small farmers he knows from Montana more than he has in mind Michael Pollan or locavores. The small scale farmers I know are the biggest critics of large scale, "commodity" farming.

For example, I recently spoke with the folks from the small local dairy, Spokane Family Farm. I wanted to get their perspective on the recent Dairy Management controversy. The husband and wife team were "shippers" with Darigold for many years, which means that they had milking cows that they harvested milk from, and their responsibility ended when the Milky Way truck drove away with their gallons of milk. They had many frustrations with the system. They didn't like that their milk was being mixed together with other milk, regardless of quality or bacteria counts. They were discouraged by the complicated supply chain between cow and customer. As Trish Vieira described the milk chain, the milk leaves the farm in a non-refrigerated truck where bacteria multiply at rapid rates. Then the milk is unloaded and because of high bacteria counts has to be boiled to 285 degerees which effects the quality and the nutrition. Then, because so much nutrition has been boiled out of it they then add back in undisclosed additives to meet government standards.

Trish made a great point when she said everyone at these different stages along the way is doing a good job, for the most part. The problem in her mind, is that everyone can do a good job at what they are assigned to do in the current system, and the end result is not so good. You end up with farmers' who are forced to have thousands of cows in order to make a living, which forces them to borrow a lot of money, and in some cases cut corners on quality. You end up with milk processors who are so paranoid about food safety that they "kill" the food in order to sell it. And you end up with consumers who are getting a food that is less nutritious. Trish had a lot to say about the negatives effects of homogenization, and the way it changes the fat molecules so that they are more easily absorbed in the intestines. I'll have to do more research on that before I ring the alarms on that one. Trish also said that the current system leads to excess milk in the food chain, which is part of the reason why Dairy Management is having to work so hard to sell cheese.

My point is that this is a farmer who is not happy with the current system and their response has been to go small and local. The Tester amendments are intended to help people like the Veira's be able to have 30 head of cattle and make a living without being squeezed to death by beauracracy in the new Food Safety law. Business is hopping by the way and they are trying to figure out how to meet the growing demand among consumers for local, nutritious, farmer connected milk.

Here is a comment from a dairy farmer in response to my post on Dairy Management:

Thank you for clarifying this! I actually sit on one of the local check-off boards and also as a dairy farmer some of my check-off dollars go to DMI. I agree that the NYT article is a bit confusing and the headlines that were chosen as it was reposted went for the "taxpayer outrage" strategy. I can already hear the dairy industry focusing on this confusion and not on the fundamental problems in the industry and how farmers and eaters actually fare in the system. We have a system based on the assumption of ever increasing volumes of milk (and all other crops for that matter). This is the issue and family farmers are getting hurt by this oversupply and eaters are getting crappy-food promoted to them to get rid of the surplus. This is the problem. Don't get distracted people, keep watching carefully! Thanks!

I like the way he highlights how "farmers and eaters" aren't fairing so well in the current system. We have a food system dominated by corporations, and they are really the ones who see the food as a commodity. It's the farmers' and the eaters who are struggling in their own ways to reform the system. The current debate on the Food Safety Bill is a reflection of this struggle.

So let's remember that it's not the foodies against the farmers. No one is more aware of problems with the food system than farmers. If the system is going to be reformed it's going to take the eaters and the farmers working together to change it.

Posted by on November 19, 2010 in dairy, food policy, health, justice | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

November 10, 2010

How My Little Blog Out-Reported the New York Times

On Monday I wrote up a post on the much heralded New York Times article, While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales. This kind of story is the bread and butter of the fast evolving food blogosphere, of which Year of Plenty is a very small part. A large media outlet like the Times does the original reporting and then it gets echoed throughout the blogosphere, Twitterverse, and Facebook Friend-Feed-Frenzyverse. It received so much attention that I initially wasn't going to bother linking to it, assuming that everyone had already seen it. But when I got around to actually reading the Times article, something didn't seem quite right. The article was factually correct in its reporting but cryptic in the way it described the relationship between the USDA and the Dairy Management Corporation. It hinted that the U.S. taxpayer-funded USDA was pulling the strings on the Domino's marketing campaign.

This subtle hint in the article was turned into the brash assertion all over the internet that U.S. taxpayers were not only paying for the $12 million campaign with Domino's for extra-cheesy pizzas, but that the USDA, and therefore the government, was running the ad campaign. While I highlighted in my post some smaller blogs that reported the story this way, Bill Bishop at the Daily Yonder gives a good summary of how this played out among some of the most influential people and news platforms in America:

Food writer and journalism professor Michael Pollan tweets that “our tax dollars (are) at work promoting Domino’s pizza.”

Kerry Trueman (co-founder of EatingLiberally.org) states on the liberal that Domino’s Pizza is selling gobs of cheese with the help of a “government handout.” 

The Atlantic says the “government wants to fatten you up with cheese.” Paul Waldman at The American Prospect writes a government agency uses “taxpayer funds” — “your tax dollars” — to promote double melt cheeseburgers.  Matt Yglesias writes a headline saying "Tax Dollars Going to Subsidize Cheesier Dominoes (sic) Pizzas," adding that this is the kind of “government spending…we could entirely do without.”

Because of previous stories I've done on the agricultural checkoff programs, these assertions didn't sound quite right. So I did something that Michael Moss, "ace New York Times Reporter" didn't do; I made a couple phone calls and actually talked to someone at Dairy Management about the program. As far as I can tell, in all the reporting that's been done on the story, I'm the only "reporter" that talked to Dairy Management to better understand their relationship to the USDA. I also talked to a representative of United Dairymen of Idaho to get a better understanding of how the checkoff system works.

Moss explained in the article why he didn't have those conversations:

The Agriculture Department declined to make top officials available for interviews for this article, and Dairy Management would not comment. In answering written questions, the department said that dairy promotion was intended to bolster farmers and rural economies, and that its oversight left Dairy Management’s board with “significant independence” in deciding how best to support those interests.

The crux of the whole story is the nature of the relationship between the USDA and Dairy Management and Moss didn't speak to anyone at either entity? He apparently got a written response to questions from the USDA. This may be a case of the USDA and Dairy Management not doing their job of accurately explaining the nature of the relationship, but I'm baffled that I could get through to them to ask probing questions and he couldn't.

So is it possible that I did a more thorough job of reporting on the relationship between the USDA, Dairy Management, and taxpayers than the New York Times?

I'm flattered that the "So Good" food blog seemed to think so. In assessing the reporting on the USDA and Dairy Management the blog says;

The most accurate breakdown of this organization’s role in this story can be found in this post on Year of Plenty, Newsflash: Dairy Industry Wants You to Eat More Dairy – What’s So Controversial About That?

I'll let you read my blog post to decide if I did a more thorough job, but I do know that because of those phone calls I didn't take the "tax-payers paying to promote cheesy pizza" bait, like so many others.

There are a couple of lessons for me in this;

1. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

2. Don't believe everything you read in the New York Times.

3. When it comes to food politics and debates about food systems, the problem is not the demonization of food, as the Daily Yonder proposes. The problem is the demonization of people. In this case the demonization of people at the USDA and Dairy Management as evil cheese-conspirators.

If this is the problem than the solution is to talk to people and give their perspectives a genuine hearing. In other words, to be in relationship with people. In my case, when it comes to writing about food, that means being in relationship with small local farmers and large scale farmers, conventional and organic, following Grist and #agchat on Twitter. It takes all perspectives to get the story straight. Go here for a recent post on why living in an agricultural region like Spokane where I am in ongoing relationships with people involved in all aspects of the food system makes me a better food blogger.

One of the grand lessons from our year-long experiment in eating local is that relationships with people involved in bringing food to market is the key to developing just and sustainable food systems. This includes farmers, but it also includes business people. The core crisis in the food system is a break-down in the relationships between people involved with bringing food to market and those sticking the food in their mouths. Relationships breed accountability, pride, quality, health, and sustainability. A vaccuum of relationships creates paranoia, pollution, corruption, unhealth, shoddy practices, and most of the other ills in the food system. That's why I am committed to eating locally and promoting local food.

My diagnosis of the situation is more than just about good reporting and blogging. (Warning: If you don't follow my blog this is going to sound totally random.) It's actually rooted in my Christian faith and my role as pastor at a Presbyterian church. My focus on relationships arises from my understanding of Jesus' commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. In my judgement, this call to be in relationship with people is the key lens through which to see everything, including food. In my upcoming book I have a chapter dedicated to explaining this perspective. I hope it will be a helpful contribution to food debates that too often get bogged down haggling about food miles, carbon footprints, or cheesy marketing campaigns.

Posted by on November 10, 2010 in dairy, faith, farmers, food policy, health, justice, local, local business, local economy, locavore, politics, sustainability, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

November 08, 2010

Newsflash: Dairy Industry Wants You to Eat More Dairy - What's So Controversial About That?

The headlines have been blaring all over the internet since the New York Times reported, While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales. The story highlights the work of an organization called Dairy Management to promote extra cheese on Domino's Pizzas. Here's how the NY Times article describes their work:

Dairy Management, which has made cheese its cause, is not a private business consultant. It is a marketing creation of the United States Department of Agriculture — the same agency at the center of a federal anti-obesity drive that discourages over-consumption of some of the very foods Dairy Management is vigorously promoting.

So the story gets framed as the U.S. Government pushing cheese like a drug dealer while at the same time creating "Just Say No to Fatty Foods" initiatives. With the narrative framework in place it has been cast as yet another sensational example of big government hypocrisy and waste.

Huffington Post made it a and the message about this being a government plot evolved into headlines like, Uncle Sam Wants YOU to Eat More Cheese and .

While I have often been critical of large U.S. agricultural interests on this blog, in this case I think the story is misleading.

The biggest misunderstanding is that taxpayer dollars are behind this promotional campaign. The NYTimes article states clearly,

Dairy Management, whose annual budget approaches $140 million, is largely financed by a government-mandated fee on the dairy industry.

But the article then proceeds to muddy the waters with the very next sentence,

But it also receives several million dollars a year from the Agriculture Department, which appoints some of its board members, approves its marketing campaigns and major contracts and periodically reports to Congress on its work.

If you read the whole article it actually does a good job of reporting accurately that Dairy Management "received $5.3 million that year from the Agriculture Department to promote dairy sales overseas." But if you only read the first page it's easy to misunderstand, as some have, that U.S. tax dollars used to fund the USDA are being used to promote Domino's pizzas with extra cheese.

I spoke with a representative of Dairy Management Inc. this morning and she clarified that the U.S. Dairy Export Council, which is not involved in domestic marketing partnerships like the one with Domino's, received $5.3 million of its $20 million budget from Foreign Ag. Services, an arm of the USDA. Those are the funds referred to in the Times article.

But what about the staff from USDA that provide oversight of Dairy Management? The NYTimes article hints that tax dollars that pay for employees of the USDA are being used to support Dairy Management. According to the representative of Dairy Management, the USDA does provide oversight of their programs as mandated by law, but Dairy Management reimburses the government for the costs of this oversight. I was also told that USDA employees do not sit on the board of Dairy Management, but do attend board meetings in their oversight capacity.

The other major misunderstanding is that somehow the government is running this program or "pushing" for cheesier pizzas. Dairy Management and its board of 80 dairy farmers are the ones who run the program and they are the ones who pay for it.

At the behest of the dairy industry, a law was passed in 1983 known as the Dairy Production Stabilization Act of 1983.

It, therefore, is declared to be the policy of Congress that it is in the public interest to authorize the establishment, through the exercise of the powers provided herein, of an orderly procedure for financing (through assessments on all milk produced in the United States for commercial use and on imported dairy products) and carrying out a coordinated program of promotion designed to strengthen the dairy industry's position in the marketplace and to maintain and expand domestic and foreign markets and uses for fluid milk and dairy products.

This established what is known as the Dairy Checkoff. Every commercial producer of dairy in the U.S. is required by law to pay a fee per 100 pounds of product. For example, Idaho dairy farmers pay a total of 16 cents per 100 lbs of milk. Of that, 10 cents stays in Idaho to fund a state version of Dairy Management called United Dairymen of Idaho, 1 cent funds the Idaho Dairymen's Association that lobbies for dairy interests, and 5 cents goes to Dairy Management for national programs.

With the Domino's Legends Pizza promotion, Dairy Management set up the marketing campaign nationally, and in Idaho's case, the United Dairymen of Idaho Communications Rep. did radio interviews and ran statewide radio advertisements. All of this paid for by dairy farmers, not tax-payers. Their activities are regulated by the government according to the 1983 law to ensure they are using the funds legally, but it's disingenuous to suggest then that the government is therefore promoting fatty fast foods and dishonest to imply that taxpayer dollars are being used for such programs.

I'm not a big fan of promoting fast foods to consumers, but I'm not sure why it's controversial that dairy farmers are paying for programs to promote the sale of their products. It's like saying it's scandalous that Starbucks wants consumers to drink more coffee.

Behind the faux controversy of tax-payer funded promotions for cheese pizza is a very real controversy about the juxtaposition of Dairy Management's promotional work and the USDA initiatives promoting a healthy diet. Marion Nestle and her Food Politics blog is a good place to start in getting up to speed on this ongoing debate. But let's not give dairy farmers a hard time for wanting us to eat more cheese.  They already have enough challenges.

Posted by on November 08, 2010 in agriculture, dairy, food policy, health, politics, Science | | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

May 13, 2010

How to Make Your Own Butter

Butter2Here's another re-post from early in our year long experiment about how we figured out how to make our own butter.

We discovered in our research of Inland Northwest dairy producers, that there is no local butter. Darigold comes from west of the mountains and I'm not sure about the other brands. Strict health regulations have caused the consolidation of specialty dairy producers. It's more cost effective to ship stuff given the high cost of meeting the regs. Inland Northwest Dairies operates their bottling operation only four days a week because it takes four hours every night to clean up. The benefits of operating one more day are outweighed by the operational costs of clean up. The shipping operaton on the other hand operates all week.

We're starting to see that this is a lesser known reason for the de-localization of food items. It is driven by the almighty dollar, but in a different way than you might expect. It's not greed so much as the pragmatics of production. It's generally cheaper to ship than produce locally and until those metrics change it's hard to see the trend turning around. That's one of the reasons we can't find any cheese makers in our region. Aside from small goat cheese operations and and the WSU creamery there is nothing nearby.

Okay, back to the butter.

We haven't done much research on local cooking oils, so in the short term we decided to see if we could figure out how to make butter. A little googling turned up a variety of techniques that all start with whipping cream or heavy cream. You can use a jar and shake it around for 30 minutes or use a blender. We tried it with a Cuisinart with great results.

- Pour in a quart of cream and whip it with the plastic blades for about five minutes. It works best with four cups. I tried it with 2 cups and it splattered too much and stuck to the sides of the container.

- Keep an eye on it and watch it start to get yellow and before long the butter will separate from the butter milk. Stop the machine as close to that moment of separation as possible.

- Pour out the buttermilk, and squeeze the butter together in your hands.

- Place the butter ball in a bowl full of very cold water and squeeze it with your hands. You'll see the remaining buttermilk ooze out. Continue squeezing until no more liquid comes out. It's helpful to change out the water in the bowl to see if more is coming out. It's important to get as much liquid out as possible, or else it can go rancid.

It's fun to make and my kids are so impressed, I think I've got them convinced I can make anything.

Posted by on May 13, 2010 in dairy, kids and family | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

March 27, 2010

100 Years of Eating in America in Four Handy Charts

The USDA's Economic Research Service now has a full century of data on food availability in America.

This one-of-a-kind data set measures which food commodities are available to eat at the national level and provides the foundation for estimating if the nutrients available support a healthy, well-nourished citizenry. The data date back to 1909, allowing researchers, marketers, and policymakers to examine historical consumption trends and shifts in food demand.

The four charts below from the linked article are great ways to absorb the data and see the trends in what foods are available per/capita. I'll take a stab at giving the charts names.


The "Have You Ever Noticed that Half the Items
on a Restaurant Menu Have Chicken" Chart

Chicken2


The Cheesehead Century Chart

Cheese


The "Sweet Potatoes, We Barely Knew Ya" Chart

Potatoes


The "I Wonder What Foods the Government is Subsidizing
and Throwing the Whole System Out of Whack" Chart

Percapita

Feel free to offer you're own "lame attempts at humor" chart names if you like.

Posted by on March 27, 2010 in agriculture, dairy, eggs, food policy, fruit, health, pork, poultry, vegetables, wheat & flour | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

March 25, 2010

WSJ Article Gives New Meaning to Dairy Bubble

A dairy farmer spent $150,000 to line his open manure pit with plastic only to have it detach and form huge bubbles of gas from the 21 million gallons of decomposing cow manure. The article at WSJournal that describes his predicament offers a telling window into the current plight of many large scale dairy farmers. It also offers these astounding statistics:

How Much Manure Does a Dairy Cow Produce?

  • 148 lbs. per day
  • 1,036 lbs. per week
  • 4,440 lbs. per month
  • 54,020 lbs. per year

Go to the article to see a picture of what an open pit of 21 million gallons of decomposing manure looks like. Doesn't exactly make me want to drink milk or eat cheese.

    In light of the complexity of the situation facing dairy farmers it seems weird to me that many think the answer for the industry is for more farmers to use rBST. It sounds too much like someone saying the answer for the current mortgage mess is to further leverage the market. 

    Posted by on March 25, 2010 in dairy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

    March 15, 2010

    Idaho Dairymen's Assoc. Encourages Idaho Dairy Processors to Lift Ban on rBST (Artificial Growth Hormone)

    According to the publication Dairy Today, the Idaho Dairymen's Association is circulating a letter encouraging Idaho dairy processors to "drop the ban" on using rBST. The hormone is known as recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST), recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), or artificial growth hormone. Monsanto has marketed it in the past as POSILAC. 

    I spoke this morning with Bob Naerbout, the executive director of the Idaho Dairymen's Association about the letter. He explained that all processors in Idaho currently require farmers to sign off with each delivery that their milk is rBST free. They are advocating for processors to lift that requirement in order for Idaho dairy producers to compete with dairies around the country that are not confined by that restriction. He stated that over 90% of the dairy produced in Idaho is shipped out of state and they are at a competitive disadvantage. rBST helps cows produce more milk.

    Mr. Naerbout said that the ban was initially put in place because of anticipated consumer demand for rBST free dairy products, but he said that is not the case and that the "vast majority" of consumers are not demanding rBST free products. A "vocal small minority," he said, are the ones who oppose rBST.

    He said that the bottom line is that consumers deserve a choice, and they are free to make that choice, and the processors should be free to choose when it comes to rBST as well.

    The problem with the power of consumer choice is that the source of dairy products is very difficult to pin down. I recently checked the source of dairy products in my fridge and they were from all over the country and none of them had any information on rBST.

    I have a call into the Washington Dairy Products Commission to find out about Washington Rules and Regulation re: rBST. Mr Naerbout did say that Darigold processors don't take milk with rBST, and Inland Northwest Dairy in Spokane is owned by Dairgold.

    Posted by on March 15, 2010 in dairy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

    March 08, 2010

    Live Blogging My Fridge's Dairy Products Via New Web Site: Where's My Milk From?

    Found this great new site (via GOOD) that allows you to type in the number on your milk jug and determine where the product came from.

    I typed in the numbers on our gallon of milk from the fridge and sure enough - it's from Spokane. It even shows what other products are made at the Darigold plant in Spokane. I sure wish we had this available two year's ago when it took the skills of an investigative reporter to source our milk.

    This doesn't guarantee that the milk is from a nearby cow. Milk flows like a commodity and Darigold is a huge company. If you want a guarantee go with Spokane's Family Farm.

    Now let me try it with Albertson's butter...Darnit! It's from Tulare, CA. 

    OK, this is getting interesting. What other dairy products do I have in the house?

    Challenge Butter. Let's try this one. Foiled again! Greenwood Wisconsin. We have really fallen off the local wagon. Let's pause for a sentimental moment to remember that year where we made our own butter from local cow milk.

    OK, what's next? Albertsons light yogurt, and the snazzy new web app saaaays - Fullerton, CA, right next to Disneyland. The carbon footprint of my fridge is really feeling self conscious at this point.

    In case you're wondering, it's true, I am actually live blogging all of the dairy in my refrigerator. I know it's riveting stuff, so let's move on to the Darigold Sour Cream and Cottage Cheese. - Seattle. That's better.

    Western Family Half & Half, - . I can live with that.

    Mountain High Yogurt - Engelwood, CO. They don't call it Mountain High for nothing.

    Doesn't appear to work with ice cream, cheese or other dairy products.

    It's a fair question at this point to ask if maybe I don't have better things to do on a Monday night; like say finishing a dissertation or writing a book. I hear that and I promise, I'm about to get productive, but let me conclude by highly recommending this "Where's My Milk From?" site for those looking for ways to avoid doing things like finishing a dissertation or writing a book.

    Posted by on March 08, 2010 in dairy, local, locavore | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

    December 05, 2009

    Cougar gold Who needs a football team when you have the WSU Creamery kicking but in the world of cheese making. They have of their 3 year old extra aged Cougar Gold cheese. You might still be able to get some from area Costco stores. Much respect to the creamery from this UW Husky. Go here for our field trip report to the Creamery from awhile back.

    Posted by on December 05, 2009 in community, dairy, local, local Manufacturers, random fun | | |

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