Good cooking requires good ingredients. Fortunately, there are so many working farms around here that it’s getting to the point where I can seriously consider the possibility of not having to buy things like milk, eggs and meat from the supermarket. And I will be loving it, because what I will be buying is so much more flavorful than anything I’ve seen in any supermarket.
‘Got milk’ but don’t like how bland it is? Then drive up to Bethany Farms in Glenmoore, PA, where Dan Messener makes some of the best milk you will ever taste. Dan, a former motorcycle mechanic, began farming organically following the tragic loss of his 9-year-old daughter to leukemia in 1994. His experience of two harrowing years watching his daughter and other sick children go through rounds of chemotherapy at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia convinced him that he should rededicate his life to improving the health of children by producing great food that is free of drugs and pesticides and full of naturally occurring, life-promoting minerals and other substances.
Dan milks Holstein and Jersey cows, which are fed an all-grass diet and produce milk that is naturally 96% fat free and loaded with flavor. The milk is also rich in a substance that goes by the impossible to remember name of conjugated linoleic acid — a reputed antioxidant that is also reported to shrink tumors. Whether or not Dan’s milk is healthier than milk from grain fed cows interests me much less than how it tastes. And the taste is superb. Part of the secret of what makes Dan’s milk taste so good is that it is not pasteurized or homogenized. When milk is pasteurized it is heated, which destroys flavors that make milk taste, well, like milk. Homogenization also destroys flavor and ruins much of the metaphorical value of milk by making it impossible for the cream to rise to the top of the container. Of course, not all dairy farmers are allowed to sell unpasteurized milk. Only farmers who have been awarded a license by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are allowed to sell raw milk to the public. As Dan says jokingly, “It’s easier to get a permit for a nuclear power plant than a license for a raw milk dairy.” The milk is tested every other day by an independent lab to ensure that it is safe (It bears noting that farmers who pasteurize their milk are not required to be as hygienic as raw milk farmers like Dan, who have to keep their dairies and cows extremely clean.).
Dan also sells grass-fed beef, goat milk in season and eggs. Like most free-range eggs, Dan’s eggs are brown ones from Rhode Island Red chickens, and they are a pleasure to cook and eat. They aren’t graded like the ones in the store, so the eggs are various sizes. The yolks are deep yellow, sometimes orange, depending what the chickens foraged in the few days the egg was being formed. I’ve become something of a fresh-egg aficionado since moving to Pennsylvania, and think these are the best I’ve had thus far.
Bethany farms also makes cheese and sells other goods too numerous to recount here except for one: Susannah Stoltzfus’ “Whoopee Pies.”
Now, as a chef who believes that the only true path to happiness is the one that leads to the kitchen and cooking your own food, I am usually reluctant to recommend anything that you might otherwise make yourself. But, because these cream-filled wafers of soft chocolate cakes are so good that they just might inspire you to put on an apron and try to make some yourself, I’ll risk my reputation as an advocate for home-cooked food and suggest that you try them.
Alright then, get milk—raw milk, that is.
Bethany Farms
71 Fairview Road
Glenmoore, PA 19343
610.942.3996
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