Some time around the summer of 1984, I last drank a glass of milk. I was on top of Snowdon at the time, on a blisteringly hot day, and somehow it just seemed to be the right thing to do, a bit like saluting magpies, or complaining about the weather.
That is to say that, for the last three and a half decades, milk and I have gone our separate directions, unless it is over a bowl of cereal or a cup of tea. It all just got too watery, uninspiring, and wrapped up in the overt politics of health tsars and supermarket price games. Through no fault of the cow, milk just depressed me.
Until this evening.
This evening, I bought milk from a little kiosk as close to the cow that had dispensed it as I could be without actually being in the same parlour. Farm gate milk has been a long time coming, but it is here now, or should I say back here, and it’s the most exciting thing that has happened in my life since David Warner got banned from professional cricket for 12 months a couple of years ago.
I bought two litres, which is ridiculous. We get through about a litre a week these days, but one bottle simply wasn’t enough for the over-excitable dopamine neurotransmitters in my brain, and they kept screaming ‘More! More!’ until I had done the operation twice. I would have gone on filling bottles until I had a dozen had the farmer in question not said; ‘are you really sure that you need that much?’
Having brought it home with the same excitement that I used to bring home the glazed dog-turd looking things that passed for my papier mache art work at primary school, I made myself a cup of tea and almost inhaled it; then I poured bowl of cereal and almost lay in it. Finally, I poured a glass and, for the first time in 13.100 days, drank it back. It tasted too good to be true, and I was genuinely delighted.
But there was much more to this than just the taste; there was revolution. ‘The journey of a thousand miles,’ said Lao Tzu, though possibly not about dairy products, ‘begins with a single step.’. And by that one tiny gesture of solidarity with a local farmer, I felt I had uncoupled myself one tiny stitch more from the deceptive tyranny of the supermarket. First the honey, then the vegetables, then the refillables and now the milk. The National Office for Statistics will tell you baldly that the farm gate price paid for milk at the moment in the UK is £0.2756p, and the various supermarket websites will tell you that the same litre will retail at around £0.80. I paid a little bit more than that and, acknowledging that I am very lucky to be able to do that, and to have the time to do it, I just feel that those extra few pence are working harder, working smarter and doing so in our local valley.
Supermarkets have their place in life, and they have undeniably made life easier and (occasionally) cheaper for people. But anyone who falls for the old fib that we are all better served paying less and less of our income towards the farmers who provide it is destined to be very disappointed about ten or so years down the road.
So, with apologies to anyone who likes their milk skimmed to within a gnat’s whisker of water, here is where you can buy it if you want to plant your own, revolutionary, steps in the joy of authenticity.
https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&tbm=lcl&sxsrf=ALeKk02ycasuFC4gk3yIh8ENh9Qc46V2Mw%3A1600800245490&ei=9UVqX8m3HZuD1fAP57aciA0&q=buddington+farm+map&oq=buddington+farm+map&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i160k1.28807.29515.0.29784.4.4.0.0.0.0.108.388.3j1.4.0….0…1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.4.386…0j0i22i30k1.0.e8UKPr4XdPQ#rlfi=hd:;si:;mv:%5B%5B51.01327324354161,-0.6917001875906781%5D,%5B50.979322107634395,-0.7654287489920453%5D,null,%5B50.99630078064403,-0.7285644682913617%5D,15%5D
(Postscript. Many people have asked me what the actual name of the farm is. It is Buddington Farm, and its cows are waiting to serve you 24 hours a day)
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