Maple Field Milk: Any Excuse to Eat Horseradish

Reader Contribution by Nick Snelgar
Published on October 16, 2013
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This is to do with resting after a Sunday processing run. Milk collected from Hannah at 8.30 am. Coolness of the morning appreciated and talked about. Both of us busy. Things to remember and get right. Feeding the people with fresh ‘ready to eat’ food is serious.   Her cow with the pinched spine after calving is up and walking again thanks to her quick and immediate intervention. People sleep in Pentridge as we rush past with the bowser of fresh milk at 3.6 degrees centigrade bent on getting to the plant without a drop in temperature. 

Pumps on.  Pasteuriser up to temperature.  Wirr and rush of machinery.  Cooling tanks cooling. Bail radio hitched to K.T.Tunstall new discovery totally devoted, wonderful, white coats on, hair nets. We’re off.

Three hours later all that milk is pasteurised, bottled and ready for market, lying safely in the cool room at a steady 3 degrees.

Just before 7 am this morning that milk was still in the cow.  3 hours before that it was in the standing grass waiting for the dreadful rasp of Hannah’s cows reaching for their breakfast. That’s how fresh all this is.  Does it matter?  I certainly think so. Many nutritionists world wide think so. (K.T.Tunstall – ‘Invisible Empire’ –just listen it’s on Bail FM now)

Now the product is in the chill room and we can eat cheese and freshly made chiabata with nearby cheese and horseradish sauce. Chutney is providing the background fragrance in the cabin. Ribston Pippins and onions and green tomatoes swim about in a bath of righteous vinegar and brown sugar. Pete arrives with the ash logs, long promised and summer seasoned; their cut ends glowing pink with resin, with the chatter of the violent chain saw riven across their palms.  Autumn has arrived in a rush and a wheeze and a downpour. 

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