Keep the Cream - The Book
- Cheese And Yogurt Making
- Jun 4
- 10 min read
Introduction
Like many people of my generation, I used to have an Auntie Daisy. She was actually a great aunt or possibly even a great-great aunt twice removed or equivalent. However, her main claim to fame was that she was a fully paid-up member of the flourishing “Eccentric Maiden Aunts Society - South Devon Chapter”. Losing our nation’s eccentric aunts, like real, creamy, local milk, has, in my opinion, made our nation poorer. The great news is real milk is back. And Aunt Daisy would have been delighted.
Back in the 1950s, there were complete sections of society that were, by today's standards… how can I put this… non-mainstream. There were odd-ball aunts, whacko uncles, parents’ friends and grandparents’ friends (who we all had to call Auntie or Uncle anyway) who would surreptitiously press a shilling into my hand as they left. People who came into my Dad's newsagent shop for half of Old Holborn and a packet of greens (i.e. Rizla cigarette papers), who would then quietly mutter scriptures as they rummaged through their battered purse… as well as a whole stream of offbeats my Mum regularly met and befriended from Lord knows where.
Unlike today, they weren't shunned by society: they were indulged, listened to, visited, catered for and accepted as part of life's rich bouillabaisse. If they were family, they were invited to tea and this often ended up with them staying the night. In the morning their stories would be listened to by us kids with rapt attention or disbelief. We didn't even need the threat of no pocket money if ever we were rude (i.e. walked out half way through one of their stories to finish off a Meccano project). The tales from way back were always listened to with wide-eyed, open-mouthed reverence.
With hindsight, I realise that this was simply because their earlier “Before-the-War” lives were simply so very different to our present day ones. What usually happened in our own lives (nothing) paled into boring insignificance compared to the stories from The Great Eccentrics – and Aunt Daisy’s stories were right up there with the best of 'em.
Auntie Daisy was quite whiskery, wore beaten up sludgy brown hats and was as deaf as a post, caused by (according to her) “Having my ears boxed as a child”’. She was deaf; really deaf, profoundly deaf. Deaf to the point that she couldn't hear herself parping away at the dining table. What would happen next was she would then turn and ask my Mum, “What on earth has got into those boys?” - because my brother and I had rushed out into the kitchen so we could roll around on the floor, squeaking uncontrollably with flannels stuffed in our mouths and tears running down our faces.
Auntie Daisy taught us a simple form of deaf-and-dumb language as it was then called (political correctness was not even a dot on the horizon) and best of all, related stories in her rather nasally voice from her days as the local midwife, where her stomping ground was a beautiful hilly village in mid-Kent. The stories were truly X-rated stuff: these days it would be preceded with a formal warning, “The following account contains graphic details from the very beginning that some listeners may find distressing.”
But for two lads aged about six and eight and for an older sister too, her tales were seams of the purest gold.
Mostly her stories were gory. They ranged from her being feted by the national newspapers for successfully delivering triplets at a remote farmhouse, to wrapping a placenta in newspaper after another successful delivery (apparently this ex-body part was best thing ever for growing tomato plants in her greenhouse), only to find every dog in the village chasing her on her bicycle - with the said newspaper bundle firmly tied behind her saddle as she peddled home like crazy.
At Christmas, Auntie Daisy’s gift was always opened last, simply because everyone knew it was going to give maximum enjoyment. I remember one year, my sister got a massive necklace comprising a set of large green beads but on close examination we found that two of the beads had been replaced with green Plasticine, although to be fair, it was a reasonably decent colour match. My brother received an obviously used jigsaw and we carefully counted the pieces to discover about a third missing. As a six year old, my present was a pottery ashtray with a 6d sticker on the base. Absolute joy.
However, the reason for Auntie Daisy being involved in this introduction is because of the “milk episode”. Like nearly all families, we had a daily milk delivery left in the alleyway by our back door. And one of the first things you learnt as an infant, along with tying your laces, cleaning your teeth and saying your prayers before bedtime, was that you always had to shake the milk before opening the bottle - to mix in the cream. This was the law - and an absolute, unbreakable law.
Although we could only afford bog standard silver-top and not luxury Channel Island milk (the original, from Jersey and Guernsey cows), there was still a healthy slug of golden cream floating at the top... and it simply had to be mixed in. This meant that everyone, even latecomers, got their exact share of cream in their tea or on their cereals - fairness and equality reigned supreme and all was well in the world. If the blue-tits had pecked a hole in the foil to get their share, nobody really minded – provided the sacred mixing still took place.
One morning, my brother and I were kicking each other under the table as normal when a drowsy Auntie Daisy appeared, having also just got up. She poured herself a healthy dollop of cornflakes in the bowl and shuffled over to the back door to get the milk. As she placed the pint bottle on the table, her eyes lit up: she had spotted the golden two inches of cream at the top.
“Oh! The cream! The cream! I do like the cream, boys” she hummed, as she skilfully poured off every last drop over her cornflakes, which was quickly followed by about a tablespoonful of sugar before proceeding to noisily crunch the whole lot down with a serene, satisfied, parp-free smile on her face. We looked at each other aghast; Auntie Daisy had just shattered one of the major family taboos. We realised that now we only had watery old tackle left to pour over our Shreddies and our lives would never be the same again. Unbeknown to us, this was an ominous sign of Britain’s future milk dystopia.
Fast forward to today's desperately egalitarian, uniform world. Currently over 95% of milk sales today comprise a homogenised, standardised white liquid that is available in just about every supermarket, corner shop, garage forecourt and butchers shop throughout the UK. It has no visible golden cream rising to the top, no need for any shaking or mixing, it has a bland, flat taste... and no character or subtlety whatsoever. This consistency is motivated not by the collective tastebuds of the public, but by the crushingly obvious profit motive. That’s the supermarkets of course, and categorically not the farmers. Who lose. Badly. Seasonal, flavoursome subtleties out. Predictable, corporate-controlled blandness in.
The suppliers (now giant wholesalers and the ‘big five supermarkets’) seem to be desperately distancing the content of their plastic/composite containers as far as possible away from any association with nature – namely cows. If there ever is a picture of an actual cow on the label, it will be a 'Disneyfied' happy cow's head with a smiley face, munching a cartoon representation of a flower. Not actually 'real'. Not from farms, not from animals, heaven forbid.
Mind you, if you look at the agribusiness model for dairies and milk production methods that has already happened in America and elsewhere, then you can perhaps sense this inevitability.
The number of U.S. dairies has fallen from over 678,000 in 19701 to 31,657 in 20202, a drop of over 95% - and the numbers are continuing to fall drastically. A Minnesota dairy economist (Dr Marin Bozic3) shocked many in the state’s dairy sector when he estimated in legislative testimony at the State Capitol in 2018 that 80 percent of the remaining dairies in Minnesota are “last generation” farms. Reporting on smaller U.S. dairy farms, a spokesman for Farm Aid4 said “I don't see anything that would give them hope at this point. The best advice I can give these folks, dairy farmers, is to sell out as fast as you can.”
However, the actual quantity of milk produced has probably increased, mainly because so many of the dairy farms in America have amalgamated to become enormous 10,000 plus bovine mega-cities. The rustic idyllic country image of the dairy farm: farmer with battered hat and straw between his teeth, with his wholesome wife at his shoulder and two rosy-cheeked kids at their side, has long gone. Along with the milking stool.
Their animals (livestock units) are now fed on a ration of highly processed corn and corn silage with additional nutrients and chemical compounds. The precise quantity is always metered into their bowl by computer technology, exactly in accordance with the algorithm that has been designed exclusively for maximum milk production at minimum cost. Of course this all happens automatically, with negligible human interaction: unsurprisingly, the cows don't have the luxury (or the option) of going outside - to eat grass, hay or any other 'primitive', unregulated, foodstuffs. Anything like that could possibly interfere with this scientific production tightrope – and, of course, any deviation could ruin everything.
But when the supermarket is not only King but also dictator, paymaster, judge, jury and jailer, even the biggest mega-dairying concerns, complete with their latest robotic milking parlours and leading-edge technological systems, are still vulnerable. These agri-businesses have to strive to operate on ever tightening margins: recently there have been some really major U.S. dairying concerns filing for bankruptcy, leaving all dairy farms, both big and small, in an even more parlous financial position.
There is a euphemistic term that is used for the massive mega-businesses gobbling up all these small rural dairy farms into a single gargantuan Godzilla-factory: it is called 'consolidation' but to me, another phrase, 'collateral damage' comes to mind. So I can only conclude that in my own humble opinion, the current existing dairy industry in America is a bit like the milk that they now produce – it's not fit for purpose.
And the people in Europe can't feel smug and say, “This sort of thing can't happen here” because it already has; although perhaps not quite to such an extreme extent. Yet.
However, if you want to see the dystopian end-game, I think we have to go to China. Here the Mudanjiang City Mega Farm is now happily milking well over 100,000 ecstatic cows and producing 650 tonnes of wonderful milk every day – well, at least it is according to the Chinese government YouTube video5. The farm covers 22.7 million acres (that’s not a typo - this means the farm is the largest in the world and is about the same size as Portugal) and nearly all these countless, virtually treeless acres are used for growing feedstuffs for these zillions of cows, using fields as big as a city. Despite all this enormous outdoor area, the cows are kept indoors throughout their lives. There are hundreds of sheds, each one over 300 metres long to house all of these vast numbers of ‘milk-production units’ - also known as cows. Then there is all the accommodation for the scientific nutritionists, analysts, microbiologists, packaging technologists... you get the picture.
Strangely there was no mention on the video of the impact that this enormous farm has had on the local ecosystems or the environment - or what happened to the existing farms and villages that used to be here but I'm sure this was just a minor omission.
So welcome to “The Farm” - 21st century style….
Thankfully, it doesn't have to be like this.
Quietly, steadily, emphatically, a new (old?) approach has rejected this exploitative, hyper-capitalist business model. As a smallholder supplier of nearly 50 years now (ouch!) I've worked with farmers across the UK and Ireland as they clawed their way out of the calamities of Foot and Mouth, Mad Cow disease, insane EU regulations and crippling supermarket domination. Rocketing rural suicide rates are a stain on this country’s distorted priorities. But thanks in no small part to the shift in consumer demands for more ethical, local, quality farm-to-table food, the leap from ‘milk quota’ oblivion to organic, added-value, community farming is coming back, farm by farm. It’s flown under the radar but is slowly becoming a juggernaut.
I’ve written this to inspire two audiences. One is the farmer, perhaps teetering on the brink financially or musing over which path to take as their corporate masters inevitably chisel another penny off their gate price. And the second is the public, who I know in their hearts, don’t want to be drifting aimlessly through culturally barren supermarkets, enriching tax-dodging CEOs while simultaneously shafting the local farmer and, let us not forget, leaving consumers short changed too. That pint of milk is NOTHING like real milk, despite the cartoon label of a cow. For those brave farmers who went back to producing milk the right way, the evidence is in. Just ask their accountants.
This ‘right way’ is batch-pasteurisation: small, low-temperature batches that neither homogenise nor ultra-pasteurise. Processes that have done everything for corporate profits and nothing for our consumers’ bellies, farmers’ wallets or our environment’s fertility. The difference is incredible, like a real cask ale versus a gassy lager from a giant brand. The cream remains, as do healthy proteins and flavours. Watching a child drink their first ‘real’ glass of milk after years of homogenised supermarket fodder is priceless: their eyebrows shoot up and a grin spreads across their face.
Thankfully, this silent revolution - driven by an awakening public conscience - is putting creamy, healthy milk back on the table. The problem, I think, is that it has happened in a slightly disparate manner, a farm shop here, a vending machine there and so has flown under the radar, save for the odd Guardian article. But when you see it across Britain in its totality it's clear this is a movement, a movement that restores relationships between farmers and their communities, regenerates rural livelihoods and soils, putting control back in the hands of the right people.
“Keep The Cream” isn’t simply harking on about the past. With new technology (delivery apps for example), who knows where the future will take milk? Decentralising profits and distribution means more financial cream for the farmer, who can rebuild ties with local people as they restore their livelihoods. So many farmers faced a crossroads of going big or going broke but not any more. The third way, going ‘batch’, is doing to milk what craft beer did to Budweiser and Miller in America.
In a nutshell, keeping the cream is about regeneration, not extraction. The more farmers and consumers hear the story and back the movement, the more milk vending machines will spring up, the more farms that don’t foreclose, the less agri-business lobbyists pressure our government to inject our cows with steroids.
The future is bright if we back the right horse. Or cow.
1. LaScalA Large Scale Agriculture: Large US Dairy Farms proved more productive than smaller ones (www.largescaleagriculture.com 11 August 2018 ).
The next Chapter will be published shortly...
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