Udderly Divine

Okay - I couldn't resist the punny title. If they have their own website, I want to know the address for the Homestead Creamery in Wirtz, Virginia. Apparently they have ice cream too, which makes me jealous of people out in Smith Mountain Lake - something I never thought possible! The milk is heavenly - I always drink skim/nonfat milk - but their nonfat tastes like pure indulgence, better than any whole milk. The cows are grass fed and hormone/antibiotic free, and there is definitely a taste difference. I feel like I've been walking through the dessert my whole life and now I've come into the promised land of milk and honey - and this is the milk. The honey came from one of my coworkers who has her own apiary. I've always loved milk, but now I know why it was part of the promise of the promise land.

Of course, it's not only organic, but it's also local - that's a whole new level of environmentally friendly. They use recycled bottles, and when you return the cleaned bottle, you get $2 back - so even though it's $2.67/half gallon (other milks are $3.5o/gallon or organic for $5.60/gallon), it ends up being much cheaper - only $1.40 for a gallon! Now that's incredible - treat your taste buds, recycle and support organic, sustainable farming, all in one cereal bowl! Yay!! And the butter is soft and perfect too - and my girlfriend is, at this moment, baking it into a cheesecake crust. Mmmmm.... creamy goodness awaits.

The Green Monster

No - it's not a funny looking mascot from a once long suffering team. The green monster is the current fad to go "green" - but is actually quite difficult once you begin to inform yourself. There is a lot of "green" and "organic" and other buzz words used out there by marketing firms to make people feel better about buying the same old stuff they've always bought. I've enjoyed watching the show The Lazy Environmentalist which comes on some channel - but I watch it on my Wii via Netflix.

It's got a great concept - you don't have to do much or put that much effort into becoming a better person for the environment - but I've come to the conclusion that it will not be easy to reverse the many problems we've created by not taking care of our God-given Earth (yes, I'm a Christian - I'm also a liberal and a democrat... they do go together). I came to this conclusion also thanks to Netflix - after watching Blue Gold, and Food, Inc and then just being a Biology major who now teaches environmental science. I would love for all the people to do the simple, lazy things - that's a place to start. If 1 billion people woke up tomorrow and did the simple, lazy change of using a reuseable water bottle, and getting their drink out of the tap, then it would be a significant contribution. But ultimately, to really make a change would require 1 billion people to wake up tomorrow and decide to use a sustainable method for getting to work - walk, run, bike, carpool, use hybrid bus, whatever. It will be inconvenient - I'm a fatty and I don't want to bike the ten miles to work... I could - if I started working on it, and working out... but I don't. I'm lazy too.

But it's time to change - it's time for me to be an active environmentalist. Once you look into the problems, it becomes more than an ecological issue... it becomes a human rights issue when you look at workers conditions at factory farms and conditions at remote villages whose water rights have been stolen by others... it becomes a public health issue when you look at the E. coli outbreaks from factory cattle operations... It grows and grows the more you look. It means I'm going to be trying to make the hard decisions now - I love meat, but to afford the grass fed, antibiotic free, free range beef, I'm going to have to eat a lot less since I'm surviving on a teacher salary. This blog, sent out into the ether will be a place for me to share my thoughts and experiences as I move beyond the lazy environmentalist, to the hard core, granola eating, tree-hugging creation-caretaker I'm meant to be.