Dear Denice,
FYI we think the milk this go-round is delicious!!
Maybe it WAS the jugs?
Thanks for all your hard work!
Love getting comments like this.
Love getting comments like this.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Yea ... positive feedback
Well this has been such a happier week. The comment from members have been so positive ... here is one I received in today's email ...
Thursday, February 19, 2009
The Scheduling Challenge
In years past, when it came to scheduling driver's I just put out the dates and let people pick their choice. In general, it worked "okay" for the most part ... that is until someone new wanted to join the coop.
Since new members are suppose to drive within 9 weeks of joining the coop, it becomes the challenge to insert a new driver into a driving date. The potential problem with failing to get new member to make the drive to get our milk, is that if they get "bored" with doing the coop, they leave without contributing to the coop. In 2008, we had 3 new families who failed to contribute their time to pick up the coop products in SC.
Why did this happen?
Simple, senior members were not thrilled with letting the new member have their upcoming date and having to be shuffled to a later drive date.
Truth be told: I have been wimpy at dealing with this aspect of organizing the coop. So far I have not found a practical way to handle this aspect of the coop management.
I've been burned both by new incoming members as well as senior members.
Last spring when I substituted a new family into an upcoming spot, the member who had that spot believed she did not have to fulfill her obligation at a later date. Unknown to me, she was job searching in another state ~ had I known she might have been moving, I would not have taken that date. Since this new family took "her" spot, she believed she did not have an obligation to drive before she moved away for the area. Huh?! Obviously I did a poor job of handling this although I contacted her on every available milk run before she moved away to try to get her to make the trip; she just always had an excuse for not making the trip.
Then there were a couple senior members who had scheduled a date at the end of 2008. Due to a variety of circumstances, these families left the coop. Sadly, most of them did not offer to take a driving date before they left. Those who did make the offer to drive were working into the schedule and those people truly blessed our life.
So how should I schedule drivers??
Am thinking this year to ask each member family to prove me with 4 possible drive dates, one for each quarter along with a request they alert me if their status with the coop will be changing. This way I will have more flexibility with scheduling the families.
Of course I am sure that folks will grumble ... but hey, what's new??
Since new members are suppose to drive within 9 weeks of joining the coop, it becomes the challenge to insert a new driver into a driving date. The potential problem with failing to get new member to make the drive to get our milk, is that if they get "bored" with doing the coop, they leave without contributing to the coop. In 2008, we had 3 new families who failed to contribute their time to pick up the coop products in SC.
Why did this happen?
Simple, senior members were not thrilled with letting the new member have their upcoming date and having to be shuffled to a later drive date.
Truth be told: I have been wimpy at dealing with this aspect of organizing the coop. So far I have not found a practical way to handle this aspect of the coop management.
I've been burned both by new incoming members as well as senior members.
Last spring when I substituted a new family into an upcoming spot, the member who had that spot believed she did not have to fulfill her obligation at a later date. Unknown to me, she was job searching in another state ~ had I known she might have been moving, I would not have taken that date. Since this new family took "her" spot, she believed she did not have an obligation to drive before she moved away for the area. Huh?! Obviously I did a poor job of handling this although I contacted her on every available milk run before she moved away to try to get her to make the trip; she just always had an excuse for not making the trip.
Then there were a couple senior members who had scheduled a date at the end of 2008. Due to a variety of circumstances, these families left the coop. Sadly, most of them did not offer to take a driving date before they left. Those who did make the offer to drive were working into the schedule and those people truly blessed our life.
So how should I schedule drivers??
Am thinking this year to ask each member family to prove me with 4 possible drive dates, one for each quarter along with a request they alert me if their status with the coop will be changing. This way I will have more flexibility with scheduling the families.
Of course I am sure that folks will grumble ... but hey, what's new??
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Jug Change Request
In one of a recent conversation with Jennifer from Cows R Us (CRU), she mentioned that Dale had purchased some milk jugs that were different from our normal Yellow jugs. These jugs were clear with twist off caps.
After the most recent discouraging email from a member whose children were refusing the milk, I thought perhaps they saw the milk was from a different color jug than they were use to. Their mom had said that if they would not drink the milk, she would be dropping from the coop.
In hindsight it sounds rather lame, but God can use the goofiest opportunities for His glory.
On Wednesday, I emailed CRU requesting the coop milk be packaged in the clear jugs for the February 14 pick up. I explained that perhaps it was a psychological thing with the new kids not liking the milk. It was sort of a last ditch effort .... what did we have to lose??
After the most recent discouraging email from a member whose children were refusing the milk, I thought perhaps they saw the milk was from a different color jug than they were use to. Their mom had said that if they would not drink the milk, she would be dropping from the coop.
In hindsight it sounds rather lame, but God can use the goofiest opportunities for His glory.
On Wednesday, I emailed CRU requesting the coop milk be packaged in the clear jugs for the February 14 pick up. I explained that perhaps it was a psychological thing with the new kids not liking the milk. It was sort of a last ditch effort .... what did we have to lose??
Could It Be?
On Saturday, Jennifer from Cows R Us (CRU) called to inquire what I thought of this batch of milk. I admitted we had not sampled it yet as it just arrived in Smyrna. She asked I go get a glass while she had me on the phone. So I did ~ it taste good; I was not able to taste any "off" favor. I also had some of the Harmony milk in the fridge that was 2 weeks old but figured I'd do a taste test. They were amazingly similar. Dear hubie could not taste any difference as well. Kids still thought Harmony had less of "after taste" than CRU but said would drink either. Good thing as they will be getting CRU milk.
Did an informal poll with other coop members.
Did an informal poll with other coop members.
- One family said CRU milk tastes very good although still thinks it tastes basically the same at when it was in the Yellow Jugs. We could not compare those b/c we had no milk in Yellow Jugs.
- Other family said kids still complained of "funny" taste in CRU milk packaged in clear jugs. But she added a little chocolate milk and they were content to drink it.
- Last family said it tastes "okay" but still not as good as milk from where they use to live.
Eating Grass
Must have been something in my last email to Jennifer; I was so discouraged. The Tessier are so passionate about finding out the source of the taste issues.
Jennifer called to let me know she and husband Dale went into the pasture on a fact finding trip. They decided to do a taste test of the winter grasses.
For real!!
She said that the Rye has a very distinctive taste that was similar to the mystery taste in the milk.
Thankfully, the spring grasses will be up soon.
Feel pretty blessed the Tessier take this matter so seriously.
Sure would have liked to see Jennifer and Dale sampling their grass samples. :P
Jennifer called to let me know she and husband Dale went into the pasture on a fact finding trip. They decided to do a taste test of the winter grasses.
For real!!
She said that the Rye has a very distinctive taste that was similar to the mystery taste in the milk.
Thankfully, the spring grasses will be up soon.
Feel pretty blessed the Tessier take this matter so seriously.
Sure would have liked to see Jennifer and Dale sampling their grass samples. :P
Am I Bi-Polar?
The past weeks have been filled with so many highs and lows
After getting last email, I hurt ~ mostly emotionally; just wanted to quit. Sent the email to Jennifer, not as a complaint but just as a "help me, I am drowning in the sea of despair."
Brain has been on overload. Very tired and exhausted from dealing with the grind.
Praying for Cows, Jennifer and Dale, grasses, hay, feed, cleaning ....
Low: more complaints about taste issuesFeel like I am on a psycho roller-coaster.
Low: member may quit coop if can't find resolution to taste issues; kids won't drink
High: name of different dairy selling raw milk
High: dairy milk is very good
Low: reality check ~ can members handle "rustic" aspect of new dairy?
Low: reality check ~ what about if taste changes if we move?
High: support of coop in considering change
High: new member added ~ family loves milk
Low: stress of creating unbiased comparison
Low: stress of writing "strong" email to members
High: Cows R Us wins vote by clear majority
Low: coop member quits coop with lots of ugly written words
High: support from members that I was not offensive or rude
Low: coop member's kids refuse to drink CRU milk
After getting last email, I hurt ~ mostly emotionally; just wanted to quit. Sent the email to Jennifer, not as a complaint but just as a "help me, I am drowning in the sea of despair."
Brain has been on overload. Very tired and exhausted from dealing with the grind.
Praying for Cows, Jennifer and Dale, grasses, hay, feed, cleaning ....
Saturday, February 14, 2009
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:
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.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.
31 What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?
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