READ MORE FROM OUR “MILK” FEATURE HERE.
BY: ANN CHRISTENSON & TOM KERTSCHER
The History of Milk Delivery
Houses of a certain age sometimes still have a milk chute – a little pass-through door that, in the days before home refrigeration, would hold the dairy deliveries from the neighborhood milkman.
The milkman is far less common these days, but you can still get your farm-fresh dairy beverages delivered. Two companies offer service to Milwaukee County – Elkhorn-based MariGold Dairies and Oberweis, headquartered in North Aurora, Illinois.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
MariGold sells assorted milks (in plastic or glass bottles) and creams from dairy farms mostly in Wisconsin. A half-gallon of 2% in a reusable glass bottle costs $4.69 with a $4 flat delivery charge.
Oberweis gets its milk from independent farms whose grass-fed cows are free of antibiotics and hormones. The milk comes in traditional ($5.29/half-gallon of 2%) and organic ($6.29/half gallon of 2%) with a $5.99 delivery charge.
Both companies require deposits for the reusable bottles.
Know Your Milk Fats
Milk labeling can be bewildering. But all these dairy differences trace back to how the milk is processed. Once the milk leaves the farm, it heads to a facility where it’s pasteurized, homogenized (using pressure to make the fat particles smaller and uniform) and separated from the cream. Then some of the cream, known as milkfat or butterfat, gets added back in. In the case of 1% milk, that means it contains 1% milkfat. Here’s a closer look at the fat percentages in common dairy products:
Skim (or nonfat) milk: Cow’s milk with the milkfat skimmed off. Technically it contains less than 0.5% fat.
Whole milk: Contains about 3.25%-3.5% milkfat
Half-and-half: Contains equal parts of whole milk and cream, 10.5-12% milkfat
Whipping cream: 30%-36% milkfat
Heavy cream: Sometimes called heavy whipping cream, it has 36%-38% milkfat.
Sour cream: Cream with about 18-20% milkfat, plus a lactic acid-producing bacteria to provide its sour flavor
Crème fraiche: The French term for “fresh cream,” this is similar to sour cream, but richer, with at least 30% milkfat.
Buttermilk: While it used to be made with the residual milk from butter-churning, it more commonly refers to a fermented milk beverage – an active culture added to whole or low-fat milk.
Lawmakers Look to Bring Sales of Unpasteurized Milk Out of the Shadows
Wisconsin generally prohibits the sale of raw milk, except for what the law calls “incidental” sales – the farmer selling it on the farm to an individual, on a non-regular basis.
But if you’re determined, you can buy it in a more or less regular way.
Public health authorities consider raw milk a health danger because it hasn’t been pasteurized – heated enough to kill bacteria. But about a dozen states allow raw milk to be sold in stores. Advocates say it’s more nutritious, though experts say that hasn’t been proven.
A flashpoint occurred in 2013. Sauk County farmer Vernon Hershberger was convicted of a misdemeanor and fined in connection with selling raw milk. But he continued. His loophole: selling only to “members” who pay annual fees to buy his dairy goods.
Closer to Milwaukee, Chaz and Megan Self’s Grassway Organics in East Troy, known for “pizza on the farm” and live music events on weekends, sells raw milk – also, to members only (membership costs $10 per year). Chaz Self hopes a bill, introduced in the Wisconsin Senate in December, will bring raw milk sales out into the open. It would create licensing for farms that want to sell raw milk.
“In Wisconsin, you can regularly buy and consume raw ground hamburger from Brazil, raw oysters from Washington, raw tuna from Japan and raw romaine lettuce from California,” Rep. Elijah Behnke, R-Oconto, said in announcing the bill.
Self is confident. “There’s still a long fight to go, but it’s definitely coming, for sure,” he says.
