Alice Jongerden — milk fast day 16

Alice Jongerden, former agister of BC’s Chilliwack based “Home on the Range” cowshare, started on a raw milk “fast” a couple weeks ago. So how’s it going?

Alice Jongerden. photo by Shannon Mendes, Vanmag.com

For all of you who are wondering…yes I am still on my milk fast.   Whatever happened to blogging daily… Well, Day 16.  I am still feeling just as wonderful today, as I did at day 4.  I am enjoying the balanced energy I have.  No afternoon lags, yeah. 

I have had a few people mention to me that I could add coconut oil to lose weight quicker, so here are my thoughts on that.  First, I am all about Milk these days.  REAL MILK!  Fresh, raw, unpasturized, from our cows grazing in their natural habitat!  Milk is a perfect food.  Full and complete, if it is from a healthy cow, eating a healthy diet.  I am not taking any supplements.

When governments abandon the public interest — look out for your own health

From Helke Ferrie, in Vitality Magazine:

Our Constitution guarantees that the laws, from which our government derives its mandate, shall work in the “public interest.” In actuality, this mandate is mostly an experience of illusion for the public, because the government and its agencies prove to be chronically delusional. The difference between an illusion and a delusion is that an illusion is a misconception, sometimes based on deception; illusions are correctable through reality checks. A delusion, on the other hand, refers to a belief maintained despite contradictory proof. Delusional views and policies refuse to be confused by the facts.[1] Shedding illusions is the first step towards eliminating delusions. True, this is hard slogging, often painful, extremely frustrating, but unfailingly liberating. So, here we go!

Wisconsin raw milk farmer Vernon Herschberger back in court May 20th

From David E. Gumpert, on The Complete Patient blog:

“But the technical legalities of the case fail to convey that, at its heart, this is a political case rather more than a legal case. Most fundamentally, the case is about whether Hershberger has the right to distribute food privately to individuals who have contracted with him, without regulatory interference.

The reason the case is so important politically is that it isn’t just about whether Hershberger has the right to distribute food privately, it is about whether all of us have this right on either end of the equation–to distribute food privately or to contract with producers to obtain food privately. If Hershberger is acquitted by the jury of his peers, the shock effects will reverberate throughout the country, and regulators will be forced to re-examine their crackdown on private food distribution. If Hershberger loses, not only could he go to jail for more than a year, but regulators everywhere will lick their chops and go after private food more aggressively than ever.

From Quebec: “The Impossible Farm”

While we do our best, here at the Bovine, to cover the Canadian raw milk scene, along with other food politics and food rights stories, we don’t often get much news from Quebec. Now we’ve heard how fewer French people starved during the second world war because France was a nation of gardeners. And we know that Quebec has passed laws legalizing soft raw milk cheeses. That was a few years ago. The French heritage in Quebec no doubt helps people there maintain a stronger connection to the land and to food quality, than may be the case elsewhere. So it’s great to get this story, via Karen Selick, of a man who’s doing something in Quebec to stem the tide of industrialization, that threatens authentic and healthy farming everywhere:

From Dominc Lemontagne, via Karen Selick:

The Impossible Farm is a profitable homestead, about one percent the size of your average Québec farm, which has slowly been outlawed through years of legislative constrictions. It is, for example, 2 cows, 200 hens and 500 broiler chickens, grass-fed together on the range from early spring to late fall. It’s this small scale, plural agro-business, which manages it’s own slaughter, processing and marketing. In a nutshell, it is the beginning of a mom-and-pop’s driven regional revitalization effort that favors direct (and often local, farmers market driven) sales, thus promoting resilience rather than dependence.

How the CFIA defines “local”, “natural”

Remember the story that was in the news April 2nd about that Alliston gourmet burger restaurant that ran afoul of the CFIA when someone apparently complained that their “advertised as local” burgers weren’t local enough. How was local described there?

“The CFIA has told him the term local can only be used if the product was manufactured, packaged or processed in the municipality where his business is located or its neighbouring municipalities, which in this case includes Adjala-Tosorontio, Essa, Bradford West Gwillimbury, Innisfil, King and Caledon….”

Doesn’t sound like a very definitive definition, does it? Not exactly something you could apply to any other situation or locality. Well now, at least, we’ve got a better definition from the CFIA. And it’s a very strict definition.

Eco-village loses a beloved milk cow

Story and pictures from ourecovillage.org

Introduction (and pictures at bottom) by Raoul Bedi (www.biofield.ca ): It is refreshing, and even somewhat mind-expanding, to read about how the community at OUR ecovillage  had bonded with their recently departed cow “Bossy” to the point where she was  literally a family member. This article offers a very different and altogether unheard of perspective, in contrast to the modern view that sees a cow as a “commodity-producing composting unit”! Perhaps the final frontier of agriculture is not science and corporatization after all , but instead, developing a personal, sacred, relationship with water, the land and the animals, as the Native Americans have always done. As raw dairy farmer Michael Schmidt would say ,”We need to put ‘culture’ back into agriculture”.

Mike, with Bossy, the much loved community cow. Photo via ourecovillage.org

It is with huge, huge sadness that OUR community has to report in that we have had to say goodbye to OUR beautiful Bossy – family cow extraordinaire. She had been with the land for the last two years as the start to OUR onsite cowshare and brought so much learning to hundreds of children/youth/visitors who came to participate in some way to learn about hand-milking, making butter, and the joys of seeing a baby calf in OUR barnyard.

What if you drank only lukewarm raw milk, and didn’t eat anything else?

Former Home on the Range agister, raw milk advocate, and speaker at the recent Vancouver conference “Fresh Milk, Food Politics”, Alice Jongerden, has decided to go on a milk fast. It seems that a milk fast is a diet in which you drink raw milk, but don’t eat anything. Simple enough. She’s been on the fast for a few days now, and sends this progress report to the Bovine:

Author Alice Jongerden, photo by Shannon Mendes, from Vanmag.com. Original caption  “Alice Jongerden’s Home on the Range Dairy raises its herd on the back 40 of a derelict farmhouse in Chilliwack. From there, the unpasteurized milk and other dairy products travel to depots around the Lower Mainland…” Click image to go to the October 2010 Vancouver magazine article about Alice’s backstory.

I recently read an article about a Raw Milk Fast, and was reminded of a conversation I had quite some time ago, from a lady who often enjoys her raw milk fast, her longest one being 45 days . I thought to myself…Yes, that is what I should do. A Raw Milk Fast!

Being constantly surrounded with raw milk joy and controversy, it seemed a logical step to take.

I love milk, but I seriously wondered if I could really enjoy having ONLY milk for a week or two or three. I wasn’t sure if I could even make it through one day.

In addition, usually I like my milk cold. But cold milk can be hard on digestion. So if I was going to start a milk fast, I knew that I had to get used to the idea of drinking lukewarm milk.

BC ready to experiment with pot reform; So how about raw milk?

From Allison Griner, in The Tyee:

420 celebration at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Photo Clayton Perry via The Tyee’s Photo Pool.

“In 2009, three gunshot-wound patients were wheeled into Wood’s emergency room at Vancouver General Hospital, all victims of gang violence. Wood had to ask himself: why? As he began to pore over research about organized crime, he discovered how central the marijuana trade was to funding gangs around British Columbia.

Stirred to arms, Wood and a coalition of academics and professionals founded Stop the Violence BC which has been lobbying for the taxation and regulation of the marijuana industry.

Setting the record straight on the economics of local organic farming

From Lindsey Lusher Shute on TakePart.com:

Future local organic farmers of America? The 2012 crew at Lindsey Lusher Shute’s New York farm. (Photo: Hearty Roots Community Farm) via TakePart.com

“In the past year, the mainstream media featured more than a few stories critiquing America’s local and organic foods movement. The New York Times and others swallowed the findings of a Stanford study debating the value of organic foods hook, line and sinker; Time and Dr. Oz declared, “Organic food is great, it’s just not very democratic”; and NPR recently reported that growing local food doesn’t pay.

“Fresh Milk Food Politics” — Raw Milk Myths Versus Science (Part 2)

Thanks to Raoul Bedi, BASc, for writing up these detailed summaries of the proceedings from the April 6th “Fresh Milk Food Politics” event in Vancouver.

Alice Jongerden with Local Food Advocate Raoul Bedi (Photo by R. Bedi, http://www.biofield.ca )

I – Introduction:

In Part 1 of this report  about the recent “Fresh Milk Food Politics” Vancouver 2013 conference (www.freshmilkfoodpolitics.com ), we saw how numerous individuals and organizations, in the Raw Milk and Food Security movement, are independently displaying leadership, vision, and excellence in their work and activism. And that by collaborating together somehow the resultant synergy is exponentially more powerful, productive and effective.