Sadly the farmer has pulled the plug on the milk due to lack of sales volume – we plan to get our own cows later in the year and will announce the availability of raw milk then

Buy raw unpasturized milk
direct from the farmer

vending machine available to use 6am – 10.30pm tues – sat & 7am-4pm sun

Fresh taste

Farm-fresh “green milk” is just as it comes from the cow – unpasteurised and unhomogenised. Mass-market milk is pasteurised to kill harmful pathogens. This is particularly important when you don’t know where your milk has come from “Nowadays, in industrial scale production pasteurisation is a practical necessity. Collecting and pooling milk from many different farms increases the risk that a given batch will be contaminated, and the plumbing and machinery required for the various stages of processing afford many more opportunities for contamination.”

What is pasteurisation?

Pasteurisation is a compromise. You can kill all bacteria and make milk sterile, but that significantly affects the taste and nutritional value. When milk is pasteurised, it is heated to a high enough temperature to kill certain (but not all) harmful bacteria whilst minimising alteration in taste. At the same time the process also destroys beneficial immune factors and enzymes . Milk is pasteurised by heating to 62.8˚ C for half an hour or 72.8˚ C for 15 seconds.

Where does it come from?

Our milk comes from one place: Badlesmere Court Farm near Faversham. It’s a mixed (arable and dairy) farm, family-run for four generations (so far) with 180 cows. It’s not a large-scale anonymous corporation; the family know their cows and are careful of their welfare.

The cows are fed well. In summer the majority of the herd are out on grass. Each winter, a nutritionist analyses the new silage and formulates a complete diet from grass silage, maize silage, non-GMO protein, sugar beet pulp and chopped straw. The cows have free access to this blend which provides both nutrition and necessary bulk to keep them healthy and properly ruminating.

The cows are treated well. The cows are milked in a newly-built herringbone milking parlour with automatic sensors. That means that the clusters are removed when the flow slows, so they are not over-milked.

Their milk drinks well. The milk itself is regularly tested for bacteria and TB and regularly drunk by the whole family: granddad to grandson.

“Careful milking of healthy cows yields sound raw milk, which has its own fresh taste and physical behaviour.”

Physical behaviour

Left to itself, fresh whole milk naturally separates into two layers. The cream rises to the top, leaving milk below. If you skim the cream off you have two products, cream above and skimmed (fat-depleted) milk underneath. It used to be a treat, “top of the milk”, thick, rich and cold on hot porridge (if you could get there before the siblings). And, for Mum and Dad, the cream layer was a guarantee of the quality of the product.

What is homogenisation?

Homogenisation stops the cream rising. It’s a (pretty violent) mechanical process in which milk is pushed through small, tapered tubes. As the diameter shrinks (with the flow of milk remaining constant) pressure builds up and the fat globules break apart in the turbulence. The higher the pressure, typically 2,000-3,000 pounds per square inch (psi), the smaller the particles. Before homogenization, fat globules range in size from 1-10 microns (a micron = ~0.00004 inch). After, the size range is reduced to 0.2-2 microns. All this keeps the broken fat globules evenly—homogeneously—dispersed.

All quotes are from Harold McGee’s “McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture” Hodder & Stoughton, 2004