by Barbara
(Indian Head, Maryland)
My older brother, Bob, lives in a small university town in upstate New York. He rents rooms in his house to college students, usually young men.
There are many small family dairy farms in his area. Basically the people live off of welfare, food stamps, WIC and other government programs and keep a couple dairy cows. They're too remote to get their milk to the bigger markets so they consume it themselves or trade for other things they need.
Bob is a hardware engineer. Although he could have gone off and made lots of money he couldn't bring himself to leave his nice little town. Back in the 1980's he went on a one man campaign to get all his welfare/dairy farmer friends on the internet. He built them computers from bits and pieces he picked up in odd places and they paid him with whatever they had - usually milk, but occasionally an old slammer of a car or some help fixing Bob's old house.
One day the young men in Bob's house mentioned how nice it would be to have some REAL fresh milk. Bob told them he knew where to get some fresh milk so he'd pick some up. A couple days later the guys were sitting around the kitchen table in the morning when Bob walked in and set a bottle of fresh milk on the table. The guys were thrilled - until one of them reached over and touched the bottle. "it's warm!" He said. "You said you wanted to try fresh milk", Bob replied. "It doesn't get any fresher than that. That milk was in the cow less than an hour ago". The guys just about turned green. They wouldn't drink the milk. Bob had it all to himself, which was OK by him.
Bob likes nothing better than to dip a spoon into the top of a bottle of fresh milk in which the fat has separated, and remove some fat for his coffee in the morning. He may be a computer geek, but he knows what's good for him.