As consumers, we don’t always have access behind the scenes to see where our food comes from and how it’s made. The past few years, our family has hit the road to check out many Indiana farms. We’ve driven far and wide across Indiana and we’ve visited farms that are right here in Central Indiana.
Our desire to visit farms isn’t because we are concerned about our food, but because we’ve grown to love the farmers behind our food, we’ve enjoyed their stories and learning about the legacies they’re working hard to create. Also, my kids really like the animals.
Recently, I had the opportunity to visit Kuehnert Farms for the second time and also to tour Prairie Farms, the facility that processes, bottles and distributes milk to our local stores. Both are located in the the Fort Wayne area.
Our family worked for a few months on a video called The Story of Milk and we’re so excited to share it with you. When you watch the video, you should keep this timeline in mind: the milk is in the cow today and typically on the shelf in the grocery store tomorrow.
Milk is a 24 hour operation and is truly one of the freshest, most local foods you can buy. Something you’ll see in this video is a fast growing way of milking cows…robotic milking. For real! The coolest part is that the cows decide when they want to be milked.
Growing up in California, I heard the local milk ad campaign for many years, “Good cheese comes from happy cows, happy cows come from California.” I’d like to say that the Indiana cows I’ve met are pretty happy. The cows at the Kuehnert’s farm get a little spa treatment every time they are milked, they have these back scratchers that whirl around and around and scratch the cow’s back. Treats. There are treats for the cows every time they get milked, some of them try to get milked more often so they can get more treats (sounds just like my dog) and they love music. Right now they’re jamming to country music but sometimes they relax to the sound of classical music.
My milk is happy. I am happy.
This article and vide0 were sponsored by Indiana Dairy. All stories, thoughts and opinions are mine.
