Raw Milkaggedon

I recently re-watched the second half of the documentary Farmaggedon, a film that I had watched a while ago and convinced Adam he should watch, too. I couldn't exactly remember all the details, but I had remembered liking it - and by liking it, I meant "it pissed me off and made me feel bad about our world, but it had some glimmer of hope at the end". We routinely nixed it from our watch list because he said it would be depressing (it kind of was), but he finally watched it. I caught the end of it and was reminded what the main topic was: raw milk. Well, it was more about government's harmful hand in local food co-ops and small scale farms, but many times people were being "shut down" or raided because of legal issues surrounding raw milk. It blew my mind that raw milk was actually controversial. I also never really considered the milk at the grocery store being "cooked", but that's essentially what pasteurization is.

The documentary included anxiety-inducing recounts of small-time farmers or co-op owners that were raided by the entire town police force, guns drawn. I remember footage of law enforcement officials dumping out gallons of raw milk that had been driven across state borders. I couldn't believe it was actually illegal to bring MILK across state borders - and that it's a federal fucking crime to sell. A FEDERAL crime! Holy shit! But it is legal in some states, though the restrictions on exactly where you can sell it vary (some states allow retail sales, some require sales on at the farm, etc.). I was intrigued by it, but I knew it had a biased spin, even if it was a bias I bought in to. You can't throw a stone at a farmer's market without hitting some food that has a cult following swearing by its healing properties. So, I felt for the farmers and small business owners getting shit on by the government, but I wasn't convinced I should run out and buy raw milk just yet.

The second viewing of Farmaggedon had me curious if Massachusetts legalized the sales of raw milk, and we found that MA only allows farm sales (my home state of NH allows retail sales). It conveniently listed the few farms selling raw milk, and one happened to be relatively close by. Adam joined me in Sudbury, Framingham, and Marlborough to check out the Bay Circuit Trail in that area - basically, he hiked around with me while I got paid. My job is rough, folks. We stopped by Eastleigh Farm in Framingham on our way home to buy some raw milk. I contemplated driving it across state lines to really solidify my gangster street cred. Next time.

Photo Cred: www.eastleighfarm.com/store

Eastleigh Farm looks like any small scale New England working farm - a smattering of antique trucks, picnic tables, evidence of how busy it can get on weekends, etc. The storefront looks like an old bank or or fallout shelter for nuclear warfare, but the inside is much more inviting. Large glass windows allowed us to watch two men making cheese. I was entertained, but the ice cream counter caught my eye. I assumed the ice cream was made from their raw milk, but I can't find evidence on their website that says so. Either way, I eagerly bought a pint of their pumpkin ice cream. I also picked up homemade strawberry preserves (so good) and sweet pickle chips (so so good). And of course, the -BUM BUM BUM- raw milk.

I was excited to try it, and Adam kept telling me he thought it would be good for me. "Maybe it'll help your allergies. I think it'll be so good for you because people drank it forever before pasteurization was a thing." I pointed out that people also used to die at, like, 40, but that's another issue. The first thing I noticed was the difference in color, it almost looks like eggnog. It's hard to tell from the picture, but it's a pretty noticeable difference. It had the texture of whole milk, very rich and creamy, and it tasted like vanilla ice cream. The taste, though subtle, was markedly different than the milk I've been drinking for almost my whole life (mainly skim, though I had a soiree with whole milk for a while). As I drank it I Google'd "raw milk" and found pages of support and equally as many horror stories, but one point I took to heart was to not drink too much at first. A website recommended starting off small amounts so your body could get used to the bacteria. That makes sense, I thought as I sipped my small glass, I'll just start with this. It's good. I'm going to ignore the CDC website that promises days of diarrhea.

Not ten minutes after finishing my first glass did I dive into "nay-sayer" pages, namely the Center for Disease Control and Federal Drug Administration. I was blown away by the CDC's Q&A page about raw milk, which essentially said that even if the raw milk came from a reputable farmer that tested the milk, had a small-scale organic operation with healthy, happy, grass-fed cows, I was likely to be sitting on my toilet with a trash can in front of me soon after I drank it. The CDC reports between 1998-2011 there were 2,384 illnesses and 2 deaths from dairy products, and almost 80% of them came from raw milk. That caught my attention. It seemed that if I was going to get sick from dairy products, it would probably be raw milk (or cheese made from raw milk) that did it.

Uh oh.

Well, I survived the night. I woke Adam up in the morning to read him the CDC Q&A fact sheet and muse over how extreme it was. But I let the thoughts bounce around my head the that morning - there obviously is a risk, did I want to take it? Was it worth it? It was then that I realized that the CDC infiltrated my brain. That's a bit dramatic. But what clicked was a comment I had made to Adam that morning about all the other outbreaks in the past few years; spinach and peanut butter immediately come to mine, and the only thing that's ever made me sick is meat (and that one time I ate half-cooked brownies, but that was my own fault). I did some searching and found that in the same time period of 1998-2011 meat, poultry, vegetables, and fruits were all bigger offenders of causing health issues, from general illness to death.

I can use nice stock photos, too, FDA.

I was curious to see what governmental agencies said about raw vegetables since proven to be biggest source of illness. The FDA's page gave consumers solid advice (that I can almost guarantee you no one follows to a T), but what stuck out to me most was how much nicer the webpage was. It simply looked nicer, with beautiful stock photos of berries and lettuce being washed. Not only was it more aesthetically pleasing, but the descriptions of what could "go wrong" were very different. The site on raw vegetables says eating contaminated can lead to food borne illnesses, while the site on raw milk  mention vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever, headache, body ache, and other fast-acting symptoms that can be chronic, severe, and life-threatening. The site on raw veggies also says that it is okay to eat packaged veggies labeled as "pre-washed", and this is after an outbreak of a deadly strain of E.Coli in pre-washed spinach that killed several people back in 2006.

I read another article written by someone that went through the same process I did - trying and enjoying raw milk and finding horror stories online. She tells stories of young people with serious medical issues including kidney failure and paralysis. It seems reasonable to stop doing something after you see other people dying (or almost dying), but I wondered if she had read this article by CNN listing the #1 cause of foodborne illness as fruits and vegetables, and the #1 cause of death from foodborne illness as meat and poultry. Vegetables are good for us, so we don't stop eating them just because they sometimes cause illness.

On the same token as vegetables, I am not convinced that I need to stop drinking raw milk because there's a chance I may get sick. I know that comparing raw milk to raw vegetables is almost comparing apples to oranges since proper storage and washing often eliminate the dangers of illness, whereas you cannot "wash" raw milk. But plenty of people still get very very sick from supposedly "safe" vegetables, from cooked burger patties, etc. I'm not a full fledged raw milk convert yet, but I'm not convinced I need to stop drinking it. What I am convinced of is how ridiculous it is to make raw milk illegal because it may make you sick, while we legally distribute a bajillion harmful narcotics that absolutely DO make people very sick.

So, do you drink raw milk? Do you love it? Hate it? Did you sit on your toilet with diarrhea for a week? TELL ME ALL ABOUT IT!

Great Story

My AmeriCorps program requires a lot of reporting, there's a lot of paperwork to keep up with. I understand the necessity, but it usually makes me groan. One avenue of reporting that I have taken a liking to, though, is "Great Story". Every few months we have to submit a great story about a highlight from our service. I figured the first great story submission wouldn't be that impressive since I'm not far long in my service. I had no idea what I was going to write about, but I found my story earlier along than I expected. Here it is:

Your senses are different when you live in a city. It is something that creeps up on you. You don’t feel much different, but somehow you learn how to sleep in a not-quite-dark room that abuts your building’s parking lot. You can pick up on the sound of a dump truck two blocks away and just know that it’s about to come make a racket on your street. You are an expert at predicting which car is most likely to cut you off (hint: it’s all of them), and you can blend offensive and defensive driving with style and grace.

Home sweet home

This set of “city senses” was foreign to me when I came back to Boston to start my service year. I had spent three months working for the Appalachian Mountain Club, my current host site, running teen volunteer trail crews in western Massachusetts. For all intents and purposes I lived in the woods, though we did have “special things” like cell service and days off. My home was either an 8x10’ canvas tent or a 1-person backpacking tent. It was dark at night. Like, really dark. Birds sang, coyotes howled. My commute to work included mud-caked clothes from the day before, medical kits, extra water, food, and tools. We worked with our hands. Teenagers are generally a noisy bunch, but life was overall much quieter.

It was a sad realization that my outdoor senses wouldn’t be necessary on a day-to-day basis, at least not in the same way. Even still, I was excited to start my service with the AMC on Bay Circuit Trail. My first few weeks were jam packed with meet-and-greets and field visits to the BCT. The BCT is a patchwork of towns that host a section of trail, so there were a lot of dedicated volunteers to meet. I was looking forward to field visits, which usually meant hiking parts the trail, often with a point person for that section. Beth, my supervisor, was attending a conference on my second full week of these types of meet-and-greets. She set up a few hikes so I could continue connecting with people involved on the BCT. One of those people was Al.

So real.

Al French has been a big name for the BCT since its conception, and he has stayed involved in several organizations connected to the BCT in his retirement. I was to meet him at his home in Andover, MA, at 8:00am on a Wednesday morning.  As I ventured out into morning rush hour, I realized how much my city driving senses had returned to me. I could ponder why Interstate-95 North was a bonafide parking lot (shouldn’t cars be going INTO the city?) while lackadaisically honking at the person that just cut me off after crossing four lanes without a turn signal – and not rear ending him! I watched the minutes tick by as I sat in another traffic jam at the exit for Interstate-93. Why would they make the meeting of the two biggest highways in the state so terrible? Who designed this? I thought as I saw a BMW try to cut the line of stopped cars on the exit ramp. Oh no, he was not cutting the line and sneaking in front of me. I think I actually said, “No, you will wait your turn”, out loud as I closed any potential gap he could get into. I looked in my rearview mirror at the 18-wheeler behind me and silently rooted for him to join me in this vigilante traffic justice. He heard my calls and made sure this rogue line cutter had to wait his turn. I actually cheered. That’s when I knew I was back in the belly of the Boston beast.

I hastily arrived at Al’s house ten minutes late, profusely apologizing to him for the delay. He smiled, shook my hand, and invited me inside. He offered me breakfast as we sat and chatted by the fire he had going. I mused about how different my scenery had become in such a short amount of time.  Al took me on one his favorite stretches of the BCT, he told me it would be a slow walk because of his old age. Al doesn’t give himself enough credit. The first question he asked me on our walk caught me off guard: “When someone asks you what this job is, what do you tell them?” I said, “Well, Al, I’m an AmeriCorps member so I tell them that this is not my JOB, it’s SERVICE…” Just kidding. The first time I answered I spit out the small blurb you develop in any job, the standard response to “what do you do?”. He asked me again, and I realized he was urging me to dive deeper. What is this thing I’m doing? What is the Bay Circuit? Why am I here? I was hooked.

I didn’t mind the slow pace, because Al had a wealth of knowledge, stories, and advice to share with me.  I was fascinated, curious, and eager to hear what he had to say. But he was more interested in talking to me, hearing what my thoughts were on almost any topic. He said he loved to talk to younger people and that’s why he enjoyed running his local outdoor store; he chuckled and said, “The young folks there had to talk to me, they didn’t have a choice.” Mostly, I think he was interested in bridging the age gap that exists in the conservation world.

Al also enthusiastically answered every question I asked him, and his answers always had a tidbit of advice or wisdom. I asked him how many times he had hiked the entire trail. He gave his best guess, and then the conversation turned to something else. A few minutes later he stopped in the middle of the trail and said, “you know, I thought more about how many times I’ve hiked it. I think it was three, my wife and I went together once. You should really get out without your cell phone and go do something like that with someone you love.” It was simple yet powerful.

We neared the end of our walk and stopped at a viewing platform overlooking a large wetland area. Al said he loved this spot because it was a great place to come sit, read a book, eat a sandwich, whatever you wanted to do. I agreed, saying it was nice to have a place to get away from the hubbub of everyday life, noting that technology distracts us so much nowadays that we’re rarely ever truly present. His response was, “Ah, yes, now that’s a good lead-in. I ask all of my grandkids this – in your opinion, what is the purpose of education?” It caught me off-guard, made me pause and really think. Al had turned a simple meet-and-greet walk into something much more all-encompassing and thought-provoking.

Our hike ended with a stroll through the Mary A. French Reservation, where he showed me a beautiful bench constructed to memorialize his late wife whom the Reservation is named after. We parted ways at his car; he shook my hand and told me it had been a pleasure. There’s not many times you can actually say “it’s been a pleasure” and truly mean it, but I was happy to say it as a whole truth. Needless to say, it was a much more pleasant drive home.

Back like a Bad Habit

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack........!

............on my own blog.

Okay, so it's not very impressive. I say I'm back like a "bad habit" because I have a bad habit of starting blogs, maintaining them for a few months, forgetting about them, coming back to them, deleting thing, starting new ones... you get the idea. I decided to come back to this one because it already exists and I don't feel like making another one. It was intended to just be a blog about my summer in the woods, but why not just continue along? I'm still in the woods, sometimes.

That being said, I feel like I need a new name. It's not summer, and I'm writing this from downtown Boston.. sooo... suggestions, please!

Here are some highlights since my return from the woods:

• ROAD TRIP & GUNS. Immediately after my season ended, I went to Pennsylvania with Adam to spend some time at his grandparent's house. Major highlight: I shot a gun for the very first time.

Terrifying / Kinda fun

• I GOT A REAL OFFICE SPACE. I started my new position with MassLIFT-AmeriCorps (Massachusetts Land Initiative for Tomorrow), where I am the Community Engagement Coordinator for the Bay Circuit Trail at the Appalachian Mountain Club until the beginning of August, 2015. Try saying that 10 times fast. Next time someone asks me what I do I'll just throw a business card at them and tell them to figure it out themselves. It's great, though. The transition period was a little rough, but thankfully I had a little while to get settled before our AmeriCorps orientation at Harvard Forest in Petersham, MA.  It was an intensive week of orientation to all things MassLIFT-AmeriCorps. There was a lot to wrap my head around, and I'm still trying to do so a month and a half later. We also attended the Land Trust Alliance Rally in Providence, RI, and were able to attend really cool workshops relating to our service.

Walking tour of Harvard Forest

So official!


• I WALK AROUND THE WOODS A LOT. Most of September was spent orienting myself to my new position, meeting lots of new faces at the AMC, connecting with people in the Trails Dept. that I knew from my position this summer, and learning the ropes of the Bay Circuit. This meant many field visits where I met people of importance (regional reps, long-term volunteers, etc.) and walked around the woods with them. October finally saw the start of some of my projects. I will complete 6 "capacity building" projects in my service year here, and once the groundwork was laid out I was able to progress on some of those projects. I still feel as though I'm orienting myself, but now I'm orienting myself in these projects, not just in my position as a whole. My time is split about 50/50 in the office and in the field - not too shabby. I have had the opportunity to meet many fun, quirky, dedicated folks, as well as see parts of Massachusetts I would never have otherwise. I've also really ENJOYED the hidden gems of Eastern Massachusetts, something I never thought I would say. Don't worry New Hampshire, I still love you so much harder.

Taken on a scouting hike at Walden Pond

•  FALL IS HERE.... though the weather of September and much of October didn't feel like it. It's finally cooling off! I made it up to New Hampshire to peep the leafs along the Kanc, as well as go apple picking and see the sites of the Deerfield Fair.

Apple picking at Lull Farm

Giant pumpkins at Deerfield Fair

• EMMA KEEPS GROWING UP. Why do kids get old so fast?! Jeesh. Emma turned 6 in early September and started 1st grade. She rides the bus, for goodness sake! I can't believe how time has flown by. We celebrated her birthday with a My Little Pony rainbow cake in our yard with family friends.

Her reaction will go down in history

 

•  I LIVE IN AMONGST THE WEALTHY. Two poor people, namely Adam and I, weaseled their way into Newton. We have been enjoying the new neighborhood in a more "grown up" apartment. Things are finally settling down from the move, and we hosted our first potluck for our REI buddies.

So much food!

• WE FINALLY WENT HIKING. I say that I hike a lot for my job, but really I'm walking on flat ground in the woods. It's lovely, and it's not uncommon to hike 5+ miles at a time, but it doesn't carry the allure of higher peaks. Adam and I finally got our butts up to the Whites and hiked Pierce and Eisenhower on a beautiful day.

Summit of Mt. Pierce

• MY KNEE EXPLODED. Kind of. I took a full swinging step that landed my knee cap square against a giant metal demon on the side of the dumpster for my building. All seemed well aside from a generally sore knee, but things have gotten worse in the past few days. I got X-Rays last night and luckily nothing is chipped or cracked, but I do have some fluid build up in my knee that may need to get drained if it gets worse. Not a huge deal, but it's potentially making me sit out the trip to Mt. Washington we have planned for this Monday. Booooo.

So continues my knee injury saga

And that's what my life has been since I left the woods of the Berkshires. I don't expect to update this nearly as much as I would like to, but I hope to maintain it as I progress in my new position. Happy trails!