If you've been along the back row of the Farmer's Market on a Saturday morning recently, you may have run into a long line that backed up to a gray-black refrigerated truck. This truck carries farm fresh milk of all sorts, and other goodies, which sell out by about noon on a Saturday. So it's a not-quite-so-secret secret that Nashville Foodies wants to let you know about.
JD Country Milk is a family owned and operated farm just across the Kentucky border that provides their milk on each Saturday in the Nashville Farmer's Market. We've been getting our milk from them for the last few months, and we wouldn't go anywhere else if we could avoid it. Word on the street is that they'll soon be sending their stuff over to Whole Foods, as they've already hit up local favorite The Produce Place on Murphy Road. (Anyone that supplies The Produce Place is O.K. in our books.) As the demand has skyrocketed for their products, it will get harder and harder to get your hands on their milk. It's better than anything else we've had - and here's why. They do everything in the way you would do it if you thought of yourself as a farmer.
Most importantly, the milk is fresh. They bottle on Thursdays, pack on Fridays, and sell on Saturdays. So it's within two days that you get a fresh bottle of milk. They also bottle in glass, so you don't get any plastic aftertaste.
It is significant that the milk is non-homogenized. We recently had a nutritionist friend tell us the problem with homogenized milk - it's a process that encapsulates particles that would separate and clump together at the top of the milk. The somewhat shocking collateral damage from this process is that those same particles can't be digested by the intestine after homogenization, so they get into your bloodstream where they damage your body as cholesterol build-up and other problems. Given this side effect, if it were up to us, we'd never go back to homogenized.
Finally, the milk is just better because the cows are happy. If I were a cow, I'd like roaming around the farm at my leisure, being free-range, having non-chemical grass to eat, and getting some vitamins to boot to keep up my health. That's why the farm never uses synthetic hormones or anitbiotics...and that's why we think the milk tastes great.
So on our recent trip to the Farmer's Market, we decided to introduce ourselves as members of the foodie team and ask how things were going. Our regularly present family member, who is extraordinarily kind, told us about their plans and successes (even with a long line behind us). So afterward, as only purebred foodies would do, we grabbed a brochure and called the number to ask if we could come by for a tour. Even on short notice, Edna arranged for us to be shown around on that same Saturday. Wow. So off we went to Russellville, KY, for our own private tour and chance to meet and play with these happy cows.
Turns out they make all sorts of things that are doing well at markets. A few weekends ago a Louisville paper wrote an article on them, and now grocers are practically screaming for their milk. They sell out each week, and as you'd expect, corporate grocers are the biggest hold up. We heard that Whole Foods in Nashville is now switching to their label - after already selling it under another brand - so things are looking up in the Nashville side of things. We have just bought some of their free range eggs and sea-salt butter for the first time, we'll let you know how it turns out in comparison to our Avalon Acres crop-share experience for two years. They also sell unsalted butter, sour cream, and some homemade granola. When you buy the eggs, your family member will inspect them for you to make sure you're getting a quality batch after the morning road-trip.
They sell whole "cream line" milk, 2 percent, skim, chocolate whole, lowfat chocolate, sweet buttermilk, half and half, heavy cream, and fresh egg nog. We have already been hooked on the whole milk and chocolate for so long that we purchase a half gallon of each weekly. Can you imagine what the egg nog must be like? Since we've just finished the holiday season, our recent trip to the grocery to find egg nog is fresh in our minds...we looked at the ingredients...and found high fructose corn syrup and several other preservatives on every style available. Since we loved it so much we bought it anyway, especially after our own efforts at making it produced a good sample, but we couldn't get the result uniform enough to avoid some small chunks. So with that in mind, here is the total list of ingredients in their egg nog: whole milk, egg yolks, cane sugar, pure vanilla, nutmeg. Sound good to you? Here are the ingredients for Sweet Buttermilk: cultured whole milk, salt.
Anyway, that's a part of the reason the line is getting longer on Saturday mornings. Be sure to bring back your glass jars. After the small deposit on the jars, you can get a quart of chocolate milk and a half gallon of two percent or whole milk for a grand whopping total of four dollars flat.
Well, we did find a small secret, and it just makes us more glad to be a customer. We learned that they donate any milk from their operations to the Nashville Rescue Mission. We are impressed. That's a bit of a drive, but we're glad to hear that the folks at the Rescue Mission are getting some great products and support.
We'll post soon on the results of our trip to the farm. Until then, happy eating.
