real milk

The content of today's blog post is the entire text of a news release I received yesterday. It is the official response from Michael and Diane Hartmann, owners of the Hartmann Dairy Farm, to charges that they sold raw milk that infected four people with E.coli 0157:H7. It is the only public statement that the Hartmanns have issued so far. Although I have talked to Michael Hartmann off-the-record twice since the story broke a few days ago, he has been advised to refrain from giving any public interviews.

May in Minnesota is off to a chilly and often cloud-covered start, but I do vividly recollect a too-hot-to-touch steering wheel in April and a stretch of 40-plus degree days in March that turned feet of snow to vapor. According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, this is the first year since 1878 that nary a smidgen of snow has fallen during March, a notable anomaly considering that historically, Minnesota receives its heaviest snow during this month.

Not only has this phenomenon significantly affected our farmers, but it has also had a near crippling effect on seasonal allergy sufferers. The symptoms are formidable: fatigue, itchy and burning eyes, sneezing, headache, runny nose, sore throat, brain fog, nasal congestion, depression, and digestive disruption. As snow melts and the spring rains come on, the ground becomes muddy. If the earth is holding on to more water, then so too shall we, causing congestion and allergies for many folks.

Every Tuesday morning, the supplier, under cover of pre-dawn darkness, packs up his truck in rural Minnesota to make his weekly delivery. His drop-off site is a nondescript, middle-class home in a Minneapolis suburb, where his regular customers begin to converge around 8:00 a.m. They drive up, park, pick up their orders, leave cash, then return to their everyday lives.

What they’re doing is illegal, but the contraband isn’t cocaine, krugerrands or even Cuban cigars.

It’s milk. Straight from the cow. Whole, non-pasteurized, non-homogenized, non-industrialized, raw milk.