Joy and Pain of Managing Coop

There are times I wish I were not so passionate about Raw Milk. Running the coop mostly gives me great joy. In the past 2+ years, it has been so cool to bless a lot of families we would likely have not met if not for the coop.

On the other side of the joy is the pain and sorry when things go wrong. It gets really personal for me to want to fix the problem or to find the source of the problem.

Dealing with the taste issue really has put me in the pain category and a lot of less of the blessing category since November. At first it was easy to discount the kids not liking the milk as a seasonal change. But it lingered and then got worse!! Before when there have been taste issues they were short lived.

Pursing the problem just seemed to open more cans of worms. When I sent Jennifer Tessier at Cows R Us an email to alert her our group was having taste issues with the milk. Jennifer and I bounced around ideas; we did discuss the changes in the grass, we discussed perhaps it was the changes from a drought season to a rainy season. Over a couple weeks, I learned that perhaps the milk we use to get was less grass-fed and more grain-fed milk ~ truthfully, I could actually sort of understand this simply because of some Google Maps pictures I had seen of the Diamond Hill Dairy over the last 3 years; there was more orange clay showing than green grass. When there was not a taste issue with the milk, I just never questioned what the cows were eating.

The information I had been given verbally from other coop people and from what I read online about the dairy said Grass Fed. Well, like very thing else in live, it is all just words. Cage Free eggs does not mean the chicken are outside all day eating bugs, it means they are not locked in little cages; instead they most likely are in huge building size cages with dirt floors. Nice! So if the cows had access to some grass, then they would be grass fed. The information I read never said they were no fed feed and I never questioned how much feed they might be getting; nor did I ask where the feed came from or what it was a mix of.

Just thinking on what I did not ask or even know to ask, I cringe!

Bottom line: while the milk tasted yummy and did not upset my tummy, I was a happy camper. And so was generally everyone else.

Then there were the issues in our own home over the milk; while my kids still drank it, they just cut back their consumption by half. I pretty much had given up drinking milk for "pleasure" as well; I just did not crave it any longer. When I had it, the taste was not "bad" ~ it was just well "milk" ~ something to have with my lunch or dinner.

But now we were in a different place
unhappy kids = unhappy parents.
Unhappy parents = reduced membership
Big question: how long can coop survive

Often while searching for an answer I've made a fool of myself and most likely the Tessier family at CRU must think I am a bit crazy; here she and her husband have raised dairy cows for 20+ years and I am doing "armchair" diagnosis ... well maybe not diagnosing as much as throwing out ideas for Dale and Jennifer to consider. I console myself that at least I care enough to keep looking for an answer instead of just giving up and quitting.

In the midst of the pain of struggling with uncertainty, the frustrations, the disappointments, there were there have been many God moments. God moments shared with coop members, with the Tessier families, with my non-coop friends.

My sister suggested laying hands on the cow and praying for God healing. Okay, that would have taken me a leap of faith before this all happened, but through this process, Jennifer has often said that she needed to release it to God. So I mentioned the idea of laying hands on the cows to Jennifer. She didn't think it so nutty; she said she often uses that time to pray and she is with the cows, so why not lay hands on then and pray to God about them and their milk??

Another God moment happened when a new person to the coop emailed me that this situation was an attack of the enemy that did not want her family to eat healthy foods. She said if the kids would not drink the milk then she would have beautiful shiny hair and glowing skin ~ took me a second to realize that she was going to the milk for her beauty needs. It made me laugh in spite of the frustrations.

Struggling with helping people know what was at stake via email that often does not translate in a tone I was using in my head as I wrote it but in the tone the reader assumes was challenging. The issue of how transparent should I be with people was called into question.

I'd be a liar and a martyr if I said doing this and perservering through this mess has been easy; it has been gut wrentching. I have questioned: WHY AM I DOING THIS? IS IT WORTH IT?? DOES ANYONE ELSE GIVE A CARE??

The frustration of not being able to get stuff right the first time is a source of grief. The frustration comes in all shapes and sizes ... what bugs me today when the rest of my world is right could really upset my apple cart when my world is shaking and quaking.

Scheduling drivers is still a source of frustration ~ someday I will either to get a backbone and "assign" spots or figure out a way to juggle the senior members dates so that newbies drive within 6 weeks of joining; this way our group does not get stiffed with a no driver if the new member gets bored with drinking Raw Milk before they make their trip to the dairy. Still praying God will give me some Divine inspiration on that front.

Today the following passages of Romans 8 came to mind as I worked on this blog:

²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

³¹ What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?

The reason I drink Raw Milk is because I truly believe God wants us to get our foods from as close to the source as possible instead of relying on middle men or the government. There are many in our group who believe similarly.