Into the Woods

While in the Winston-Salem Whole Foods on Monday, I was pleased to see milk from a local dairy in the dairy case. It’s grass-fed milk, and the dairy is Wholesome Country Creamery in Hamptonville. Hamptonville is in the Yadkin Valley not far from where I grew up.

Not since I was in San Francisco have I been able to buy milk from a local dairy. That milk came from the Strauss Family Creamery in Marin County.

The Winston-Salem Journal did a story last year on Wholesome Country Creamery, which I did not see at the time. It’s an Amish dairy, and the creamery grows all its own feed. The dairy also uses a lower-temperature pasteurization process.

I’m old enough, and my rural roots are deep enough, that I remember when relatives, including my grandmothers, used to keep cows. That’s important, because I remember what milk should taste like, and I will never forget. My grandmother no longer had a cow after the early 1950s, but a few of the neighbors kept cows up until the early 1960s, and we used to buy milk from them.

It’s pricey, but I could get used to local grass-fed milk.