Raw Milk

I start every day with a fruit smoothie made from raw milk. This is my breakfast.

Raw milk is unpasteurized and unhomogenized. It comes straight from the cow, with all its essential fats, vitamins, minerals, and digestion-enhancing, immune-building elements intact. Raw milk is real milk.

Pasteurized milk has been denatured, devitalized, and destroyed. The process kills all of the above components. Pasteurized milk is more than nutrient deficient. It is also bad for your health.

Milk is pasteurized to ensure that all possible pathogens are killed. Why is this done? Because milk is produced on such a large, industrial scale that the worst possible case must be eliminated to keep the system intact.

Raw milk from local farmers who know what they're doing poses no threat to consumers. In fact, the opposite is the case. Raw milk is one of the best possible health foods going.

Too bad it's available to such a minority of the population.

Saturday A.M.; Wednesday A.M.

Each Wednesday and Saturday morning from May to November I go to the farmers' market in town to do most of my shopping for the week. It's a great time to be alive. I feel privileged to partake of the abundance created by some very dedicated people.

Farmers' markets do more than put you on the right nutritional path. They also lift the spirit and help you sort out your values.

The transactions here are about more than food for money. You stop to chat with vendors and shoppers alike. You hear and learn people's stories. You form bonds.

This is the sort of community that we need to re-weave in this country after so much sprawl and scale.

On the way home I dash into the supermarket for those items I absolutely can't get at the farmers' market - lemons, avocados. The cavernous space feels alien, empty, and just plain wasteful. I am in and out of there as quickly as possible, having spent the fewest possible dollars.

The Revolution Starts Here

At some point, people will begin to realize that our country's mainstream food supply is tainted. If it hasn't been poisoned on the farm, then its nutritive value gets destroyed in processing.

Poor diet is the biggest factor in poor health. People are slowly coming to this realization. In the years ahead they will grow more of their own food or get it from reliable sources.

I presently spend about $10 a week at the supermarket, buying items I can't get elsewhere. Elsewhere for me is my local farmers' market, as well as neighbors who raise chickens and eggs, lamb and lobster.

The mainstream food system is slowly weakening from the inside out because it sells convenience, not nutrition. More people realize this every day. They are the architects of the new system which is rising in the field or garden, right outside each and every door.