Why and how we sanitize our milking containers. 

You may have noticed in Saturdays YouTube video that we sanitized our milk bucket, straining equipment and jars before we put milk into them. 

 The thing about bacteria in milk is, in small amounts bacteria is never going to affect a healthy body.  But if you want to make aged cheese you will have a better chance at success if your milk isn’t contaminated by bacteria. When you make aged cheese you are giving the bacteria the perfect environment needed to grow and multiply and spoil your cheese.  Making aged cheese is time consuming and I’m going to make sure I don’t take shortcuts that will make all my efforts a waste of time. That's the number one reason you see us sanitize our containers.

  Before we were making aged cheeses, when we were just making soft cheeses and simply drinking the milk, we didn’t worry about sanitizing everything, we just washed everything well. 

 Raw milk is a pretty controversial topic. But more and more folks are catching on to its benefits. When we first got our family cow and I started showing bits and pieces of her on my IG account (then less than 1000 people) I got so many questions and comments from people that were astonished that we would drink the raw milk and not pasteurize it. It got to the point where I wouldn’t even show or talk about the family milk cow because my followers ‘couldn’t handle it’. But now a few short years later I rarely, if ever have to explain the benefits of raw milk. Rarely anymore do people warn me that my boys are going to get sick from drinking fresh, warm, and raw milk that they’ve just milked into their cups. But this brings me to the first point I wanted to make in today's newsletter.

Bacteria is something that health bodies can build immunity to. Whether it's walking barefoot in the garden or mucking out stalls or drinking raw milk, your body is in contact with an enormous number of bacteria. This is why you have an immune system. The immune system can be viewed as a giant muscle, The more contact this muscle has with bacteria (and viruses) the harder it works, and therefore the stronger it gets. So, in the case of bacteria in raw milk, where does the bacteria in raw milk come from? If your cow is healthy, the bacteria will primarily come from the dirt that falls into the milk from the cow’s body and udder and teats during milking. We clean our cows best we can and are always very careful to prevent dirt from falling into the milk. However, all our children have toddled around in our barn and grown up with close contact to the soil, they have been in contact with the bacteria that resides on this property their entire lives. Their immune system is not daunted one bit by the bacteria that they meet when drinking the raw milk from our own cows.

 

 When you start drinking raw milk, especially if it’s from a farm that isn’t your own, it’s always a good idea to introduce it slowly, give your body time to form immunity to this new bacteria. Starting with half a cup or so and then building up to the amount you regularly consume.  Most folks will not ever have an issue with introduction to raw milk but some folks have lived in such a sterile and bleached environment that their immune system is underdeveloped and needs time to build immunity to this new encounter with bacteria. 

 This brings me to the other point of this email.

 Using hydrogen peroxide rather than bleach. 

  Bleach is in so many, many things we come into contact with. Laundry detergents, household cleaners, dishwasher detergent, the list is endless, and although bleach is effective in killing bacteria it works exactly opposite than the immune system does and is detrimental to developing a healthy immune system.  Bleach wreaks havoc on a healthy gut microbiome. 

 Healthy Gut microbiome is our first line of defense in fighting bacteria, pathogens and viruses.  Healthy Gut microbiome are responsible for sending the first signal to the rest of the body, telling it what kind of bacteria or virus we are facing. These Gut microbiomes are very delicate and are easily affected by many things in the modern lifestyle. Stress, poor diet, antibiotics, and other medications will all alter the balance of the gut microbiome. Bleach is one of the biggest destroyers of gut microbiome. Since bleach kills all bacteria, it can't tell the difference between the healthy gut microbiome (a form of good bacteria) or the bad bacteria. 

 Not using bleach to clean our buckets and strainers is just one small step we take in trying to protect our family’s gut microbiome.

Hydrogen peroxide is water (H20) with an extra oxygen molecule (H202). The extra oxygen molecule oxidizes. The Oxidization of this extra oxygen molecule is where the disinfection and cleaning power comes from. Hydrogen Peroxide is incredibly effective at cleaning, disinfecting, and deodorizing surfaces. It is anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-mold.  It's completely biodegradable and is a safer more environmentally friendly product than bleach.

Bleach leaves behind a toxic residue. When our food comes into contact with this residue, we ingest the toxic residue that then begins to destroy our gut microbiome.

Hydrogen Peroxide, however, is completely dissolved in water and oxygen without leaving behind a toxic residue or harmful chemicals.

How to use hydrogen peroxide as a disinfectant:  The 3% peroxide that you buy at the grocery store can be used straight. 

Our family buys 5 gallons of food grade, 35% hydrogen peroxide from our animal supply store and dilute it:

1 part 35% peroxide to

11 parts water

The reason we get ours on such large quantities is because we use it as an additive to keep our livestock tanks clean in summer time and as an anti-fungal in our garden.

 

Sometimes learning about something is just the last bit of inspiration you needed to take steps towards making a heathier choice for your family. 

And sometimes a bit of information like what is in this email seems to be the final straw that is going to break the camel’s back. It's just one more email telling you that you need to do more to keep your family healthy when you have already taken on every responsibility that you can possibly handle. If this is where you are at (and I once was) I want, you to know that adding more stress to your life by taking on more than you can handle is more detrimental to you and your family’s life than using bleach based cleaners. You can do much more for your own health and that of your family’s by waking up each morning with a song of praise and a prayer like the serenity prayer: