Milk, Milk, Lemonade...I Feel Pain When the Grocers Paid!

 

Milk is one of those things that good parents are supposed to provide on the table daily. The experts say that children age two to eight should have two servings of dairy per day, older children should have three. Of course these servings do not just need to be milk but for the purpose of this blog we are talking milk.

 

When I was first raising a family a gallon of store bought milk cost around $2.50. Not too bad. With a herd of growing kids and a milk loving husband I could go through several gallons of milk a week but not break the bank.

 

Here we are March, 2013 and this is what I was greeted with in the dairy aisle this weekend

 Nearly $5.00 a gallon for milk that in my opinion is not even the best milk I can buy for my family. Personally I am of the raw organic milk camp. Since we are still building our own goat herd and do not have the place to keep our own milk cow yet I travel out of town to purchase the raw milk. I am very happy to live in a state where I can do this legally and I am thankful for the people who fought to keep that right several years ago.

 

 The reality is I can go buy raw, organic milk straight from the farm for $5.50 per gallon. Not only am I getting what I consider to be a superior product but that money is going directly to my fellow farmer. I highly doubt my farmer friends are seeing a single penny of this milk price increase and that just makes me angry.

 

 But I digress.

 

 My plan right now is that I will once again make my weekly trip to the farm and pay a little more to get a better product and put the money directly in the farmer's hands. I will probably need to still buy one gallon a week from the store. I usually run out on Sunday and can't purchase milk until Monday because my farm is run by Mennonites who do not do business on the Sabbath.

 

 That is my plan to survive higher milk prices. Perhaps it is not helping me save money, but I am sure that 16.50 cash payment will help the farmer's family deal with rising prices and I will have the peace of mind that I am providing the best to my family even in hard times.

 

Raw Milk!