On looking for a caring and compassionate place in which our father could rest his dear tired bones on discharge from hospital, my sister and I alighted upon Ashgrove House Nursing Home in Purton.
Purton. That rang a bell in my information-crammed (bra)inbox! Yes! There was a farm, wasn't there, a rare source of unpasteurised milk, very closeby? Yes!
And so, after our first visit to inspect Ashgrove House, we veered off the winding road out of Purton onto The Hyde, a narrow pest of a road which led, finally, to the source of the longed-for goodness. There it was! The farm, and a wee kiosk, selling eggs, meat and liquid manna! Gosh I was excited!
Dora's Dairy. A small farm run by Jon Cook, a radiantly smiling, smooth-skinned man in his fifties, whose passion for raw milk and health (true health) is, in my experience, unsurpassed. He is one of those people who loves to share his knowledge (sometimes quite wryly). His generosity shines from his youthful eyes.
Why on earth was I so eager to find a source of raw milk? What are its qualities, and why is it any different to pasteurised milk? I will quote from Dora's website:
"It is unpasteurised and unhomogenised and therefore has not been subjected to any heat treatment or mechanical processing. When milk is pasteurised, the heating process kills bacteria but it also destroys many of the nutrients that make raw milk beneficial."
I knew that this was a source of nutrition that I wanted to imbibe. On the website, Raw Milk Institute, it says,
'In many ways, raw milk is similar to breastmilk: both are completely natural, fresh, and unprocessed milks. They both contain a wide variety of essential nutrients, fats, proteins, anti-inflammatory and digestive enzymes, bioavailable vitamins, and minerals, all in a natural form which is most easily utilized by the body. In addition, raw milk facilitates production of lactase enzyme in the intestinal tract, allowing many people who are lactose intolerant to digest raw milk with no problems.'
I have suffered from asthma almost since birth, and although I am quite accustomed to utilising a steroid inhaler (and am incredibly grateful for it), I have never been able to gain any improvement naturally. Herbal remedies haven't helped, and neither has homeopathy.
A stubborn old bugger, asthma!
However:
The Protective Effect of Farm Milk Consumption of Childhood Asthma and Atopy: The GABRIELLA Study
All interesting stuff!
I had also recently stepped from the keto onto the intoxicatingly interesting carnivore path and I wanted to do an 'in vivo' experiment on myself! What if I could improve it? Or even cure it? I thought I would give it a good old go. I was not desperate or urgent; just intrigued. But I realised, at the same time, that any positive experience might potentially help others. And that really did excite me!
So, the old jamjar weighed down with eight litres of pure and creamy raw milk, we headed on back to our digs, our father's beautiful flat in Old Town, Swindon.
When I poured some into one of my father's 'good' glasses, it took me quite by surprise! As different to pasteurised milk as Jersey cream is to Elmlea, I could find no words to sufficiently explain, even to myself, how delicious it was. I still can't. It was almost a religious experience!
It did put me in mind of the only other fresh raw milk I had drunk, and which I was obliged by courtesy to drink one day in Kent in 1962. I had not liked it!
Even now I clearly remember, aged four, sitting at the rough old kitchen table in the farmhouse next door to our modern chalet bungalow. Mr Kettle, the farmer, was so kind, and yet I couldn't bring myself even to speak to him! So shy was I. His gentle and equally kind wife came in from the yard, lugging a great metal jug of foaming milk. She heaved it up and onto the wooden draining board. China cups of the still-warm milk were placed in front of me and my sister. We drank some. It was not good to my tiny taste buds! Was it the warmth, the resultant sweet-ish flavour? I don't know. I think I was just too young and overwhelmed by my surroundings. But I know I shuddered. I may even have cried.
But this! This Wiltshire kind! I'm older now, I suppose, but, good Lord, I shall drink it until the day I die. I will seek to travel each week (I am now back in my home in Gloucestershire) as I would to Lourdes! I will do my bit in, not only supporting my own health, but in supporting this extraordinary man and his farm.
He is a fount of knowledge and is, to top it all, a passionate advocate of regenerative farming. Here he is being interviewed on A New Table podcast.
I have loosely transcribed Jon's description of his realisation that the use of artifical fertilizer starves the land and compromises its natural renewal:
"I came about it by accident … I had a field that wasn’t producing grass for the cattle … I was putting fertiliser on it … and it was just sterile, dead …. and it was effectively a field that was costing me money … we bought the field 25 years ago … the first year we had it, it grew just like that … we thought we had the golden goose … the first crop we had about 110 bales from 7 acres ... From a normal field you would get about 10 bales to the acre. Wow! We had four cuts that year. But it went from 110 to 70 to 40 to 30. So I looked into it. It didn’t matter how much inorganic fertiliser I put on. Manufactured stuff. It just wouldn’t grow. And it was because it had stripped that field, stripped its guts out ... over the course of a few years. And then I realised I needed to put some organic matter back into into it, and that was the key to realising that we need to find a way of restoring. at least putting back in, to what in effect is hungry ground. I put manure on it and it just disappeared. I put 160 tons of compost on the land and it didn’t even look like you had even been out there … I am using a lot more clovers to put nitrogen back into the land … and phosphorus …. we haven't used fertilizers now for ten years ... we are trying to maintain and build ... "
He goes on, describing his philosophy and resultant passionate approach to his land.
There is so much information now regarding regenerative farming and its importance to our planet's health and to that of its occupants.
Anyone with integrity and conscience can see that our good dairy farmers need our support more than ever now. And we need them!
PS. I am now taking less steroid inhaler ... from the recommended 2 x 2 puffs per day, I have now reached 1 puff x per 9 days!