Every two weeks, on Thursday at 11 a.m., I satisfy my need. White as the cotton clouds that sometimes bless the blue endearing sky. Soft in texture like liquid silk streaming forth to quench the sour and stifled. Taste enhanced beyond that which most any of us were reared or became accustomed. I relish the arrival of this day and my anticipation builds into something surreal and, frankly, over done. Yet I can’t stop myself from building to this frenzy. The funny thing is, this build up to my one gallon refill of goat milk is always punctuated with disappointment.
One of hardest pursuits of a natural foods aficionado turns out to be acquiring regular raw milk. Seizing, unpasteurized, right from the teat, bacteria, enzymes and all, raw milk. If you are, like myself, insistent on that thick white silky slick nectar being pulled from the big teat of a small goat…the problems in procuring become factorial. Take it from me, a simple fella (for sure, and in more ways than one), realizing raw goat milk has as many foibles as there are among the folks who claim to furnish it.
Selling goat milk must be profitable, but it seldom is. If you own milk cows, you quite quickly conclude there is more net profit in your durable gorgeous Guernseys than your adorable Oberhasli or cute Nubians. If you wish to be one of the few, the proud, who sustain goat milk customers, you might resort to a sort of slight of hand; substituting bovine product for caprine, pulling goat udder from another source…even if it’s illegal and unethical. These are two obstacles I’ve encountered. Then there is the small operator: A few goats with a few customers and some spare time. What could confound this colloquial conformation?
The modern milkmaid comes in many forms but few resemble the ones from childhood stories and medieval tales. This one does. Simple, unassuming, and shy. An ethnicity that is hard to finger but reasonably it could be Mediterranean, if one is pressed to guess. She possesses such a subtle beauty that it escapes definition but it surely possesses. Though clad in modern casual dress, one with a fertile imagination can imagine her in a white ruffled bonnet and a blue apron attending to the chores of her rank. Though sturdily built, the feminine figure and delicate form of her wrist and hands betray a softer quality. The reality for the infrequent buyer, however, requires more than imagination to complete the commerce.
As we all know, good intentions are more sentiment than substance. Also, sometimes persistence will flag while perseverance will often fly. So I found in my continual attempts to do whey business. The first obstacle to commerce was communication. The business number was never answered. The messages were always delayed in delivery. The delivered messages, when received, were immediately forgotten. And when forgotten messages were remembered, it was time for obstacle two: scheduling.
Because of kids and chores and cause galore getting an order filled requires a gauntlet run of all things priority and a precise timing required of the buyer with no guarantee from the seller. Once agreed upon, the actual consummation of the goat milk merchandise exchange reverted back to the communication fiasco. There was a simple solution but the buyer, me, couldn’t fathom what it would be. It became incumbent upon the modern milkmaid to discover the failing communication flaw and to confect a resolution. One day the light came on, she had her eureka moment.
She knew, and only she of the two, that she got her text messages always, all the time, and on time. Phone messages came late, mostly. They came infrequently, surely. They were forgotten, immediately. So, that would be it: Text your request to me for a sure response and scheduling. And a bonus idea: Make it every other Thursday at 11 a.m. for one gallon of goat milk. A plan set up by the milkmaid for the persistent customer to buy precious product. What could go wrong now? It’s all straightened out.