Raw Milk, Cream & Butter - A Tasty Trio

I think milk is amazing! This one product our beautiful Jersey cows give to us also gives us so many delicious foods - cream, butter, buttermilk, cheese, whey, kefir, yogurt, etc. While I wish we could carry all of these things at our farm, current Raw Milk Laws in Utah only allow for the sale of milk, cream, butter, and cheese that has been aged at least 60 days. We’re not set up to make cheese yet, but we do have the first three at various times during the year.

RAW MILK: This is a staple at the farm. Our Jersey cows only eat grass, sprouts, and hay which means their milk is top notch in flavor and quality. While we consistently have milk in stock year-round the number of gallons does change at times. The amount of milk our cows give adjusts based on the seasons - as does the milk itself. As the weather turns cold in the fall, the components of their milk will be slightly different as the butterfat content increases, and the cows also start to give less milk with the lowest amount through the winter months. Then when the temperature warms again in the spring, butterfat decreases and they begin to ramp up their milk supply. This is when the fun begins as we are able to do more because we have more milk!

RAW CREAM: First and foremost, we never separate cream from the gallons of milk we sell. Those are always 100% in tact. But when there are weeks we have extra milk then we are able to have cream. It’s easiest to separate it when the milk is warm so it’s all done at the dairy during milking. We bottle it into pints and have it fresh in our farm store. Any cream not sold after a few days is frozen to be sold later if needed. (And yes, you can make butter from frozen cream. We’ve done so a number of times and the butter is wonderful!) There are times when we start to get a big stockpile of cream and that’s when we look at our next product -

RAW BUTTER: Our giant butter churn is SO cool! We warm the cream to 60 degrees and then let the churn do the work. In about ten to fifteen minutes we have the most beautiful golden butter. Once it’s rinsed, we package it and stock it in the farm store. It is rare to find butter on the shelf just because it’s a bit of a process to get it. We need to have extra milk that we skim cream from, and then need to have quite a bit of extra cream to make the butter. It’s during the summer months that it will usually make an appearance. :) The butter also freezes well, so you can stock up on it when we have it available. (Sadly, we cannot legally sell the buttermilk we get from the butter. We hope to introduce some legislation next year to change this.)

Long story short: raw milk is available year-round, raw cream will show up in the summer & fall, and raw butter might make an appearance a couple of times during the summer. Since it’s hard to find raw butter in Utah, think about trying to make your own. It’s easier than you think - especially when we have cream already separated and ready to go. We have our favorite recipe posted here: Making Raw Butter