Local Milk
One way to help make sure that not all of the Long Island Sound watershed is turned into subdivisions and strip malls is to buy food from the farms that have managed to survive in the area. Plenty of people – my family and I among them – prefer stuff produced as close to home as possible.
It turns out that six dairy farms in Connecticut have caught on to this and are now selling their milk locally under the “Farmer’s Cow” brand. Here’s what the New Haven Register reported:
The Farmer’s Cow brand — which sells half-gallons of whole, 2 percent, 1 percent and skim milk — first hit grocery store shelves nearly a year ago, in October. All of the milk is bottled at the Guida’s Dairy processing plant in New Britain.
The Farmer’s Cow is a group of six Connecticut dairy farms — Graywall Farms, which Chesmer owns with his son, Lincoln; Fairvue Farms in Woodstock; Hytone Farm in Coventry; Mapleleaf Farms in Hebron; Cushman Farms in Franklin; and Fort Hill Farms in Thompson. …
While the six farms do not use growth hormones in producing The Farmer’s Cow milk and the milk is labeled "natural," it’s not organic, which requires cows to graze in pastures.
It’s also more expensive than other milk. But it’s probably cheaper in the long run than another housing subdivision.
Urban Development ... Redeveloping the region’s cities is also good for land preservation, for the obvious reason that it helps keep development pressure away from the countryside. SoundWaters, as part of its Business & Environment Lecture Series, is sponsoring a lunchtime talk on September 20 by Graham Stevens, an environmental analyst, with the Connecticut DEP, on how to convert so-called brownfields – urban areas that aren’t pristine but aren’t toxic dumps either – into developable land. Here’s the e-mail address for details: soundbusiness@soundwaters.org
Hawks … One of the best places to see big numbers of hawks during fall migration is Greenwich Audubon, which is on just enough of a ridge to attract south-flying raptors which, as I understand it, travel on the thermals that rise from the ridge. I always preferred to go during the week, when it wasn’t crowded, but weekends are good too, and next Saturday and Sunday they’re having their Hawk Watch Festival. Info here.
Trash Talk … You can also help out with the International Coastal Cleanup, on Saturday. Check out Save the Sound’s website for details. Long Islanders can help out in Oyster Bay (and many other places, I’m sure), where Friends of the Bay is organizing a cleanup.
Coast Talk … if you’re interested in what’s been learned about the vulnerability of coastal areas following Hurricane Katrina, you’ll be interested in the lecture series that Martha Smith has put together for the Center for Coastal and Watershed Systems at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. If you e-mail her, she’ll probably send you details. martha.smith@yale.edu
It turns out that six dairy farms in Connecticut have caught on to this and are now selling their milk locally under the “Farmer’s Cow” brand. Here’s what the New Haven Register reported:
The Farmer’s Cow brand — which sells half-gallons of whole, 2 percent, 1 percent and skim milk — first hit grocery store shelves nearly a year ago, in October. All of the milk is bottled at the Guida’s Dairy processing plant in New Britain.
The Farmer’s Cow is a group of six Connecticut dairy farms — Graywall Farms, which Chesmer owns with his son, Lincoln; Fairvue Farms in Woodstock; Hytone Farm in Coventry; Mapleleaf Farms in Hebron; Cushman Farms in Franklin; and Fort Hill Farms in Thompson. …
While the six farms do not use growth hormones in producing The Farmer’s Cow milk and the milk is labeled "natural," it’s not organic, which requires cows to graze in pastures.
It’s also more expensive than other milk. But it’s probably cheaper in the long run than another housing subdivision.
Urban Development ... Redeveloping the region’s cities is also good for land preservation, for the obvious reason that it helps keep development pressure away from the countryside. SoundWaters, as part of its Business & Environment Lecture Series, is sponsoring a lunchtime talk on September 20 by Graham Stevens, an environmental analyst, with the Connecticut DEP, on how to convert so-called brownfields – urban areas that aren’t pristine but aren’t toxic dumps either – into developable land. Here’s the e-mail address for details: soundbusiness@soundwaters.org
Hawks … One of the best places to see big numbers of hawks during fall migration is Greenwich Audubon, which is on just enough of a ridge to attract south-flying raptors which, as I understand it, travel on the thermals that rise from the ridge. I always preferred to go during the week, when it wasn’t crowded, but weekends are good too, and next Saturday and Sunday they’re having their Hawk Watch Festival. Info here.
Trash Talk … You can also help out with the International Coastal Cleanup, on Saturday. Check out Save the Sound’s website for details. Long Islanders can help out in Oyster Bay (and many other places, I’m sure), where Friends of the Bay is organizing a cleanup.
Coast Talk … if you’re interested in what’s been learned about the vulnerability of coastal areas following Hurricane Katrina, you’ll be interested in the lecture series that Martha Smith has put together for the Center for Coastal and Watershed Systems at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. If you e-mail her, she’ll probably send you details. martha.smith@yale.edu
posted by Tom Andersen at 10:18 AM
2 Comments:
Thanks for the info about the milk. I'll look out for that brand the next time I go shopping.
I'm lucky to be living where I can buy meat and eggs at the farm gate--I too like to eat local when I can, and like to know the conditions of production. But our grocery stores are controlled centrally (by just 2 giant corporations), and there is less and less local produce available in them all the time.
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