W9: Adventures in Snowville Creamery Land

I am not a farm girl.

Never have been, never will be. I'm still harboring a tiny bit of resentment toward my parents for plucking me out of suburban Cincinnati in the fifth grade to middle-of-nowhere Clarksville, Ohio. People think Athens is the middle of nowhere but I assure you, Clarksville has the Bobcats beat. I am not exaggerating when I say my high school was literally surrounded by corn fields, or that the idea of a "totally awesome" senior prank was to ride to school on John Deere tractors.


I've had big city dreams for as long as I can remember. Needless to say, my excitement for visiting a dairy farm, a.k.a. Snowville Creamery, was seriously in the "mehh" category.

 However, I was pleasantly surprised. And, just because I don't like farms doesn't mean I don't respect them -- especially well-kept, morally sound ones, like Snowville.

Even though I'm a coffee fanatic, I'm really not much of a milk drinker. And when I do need some milk for lattes or cereal or Oreo dunkage, I turn to soy milk. My roommate is lactose intolerant, and so soy milk is prevalent in our apartment. And, after trying it in various lattes over the summer, I've come to the conclusion that few things are more delicious that steamed vanilla soy milk.

Although I'm not an avid milk consumer, I still understand and resent the horribleness of CAFOs and how mass-production dairy cows are treated. So, I was glad to learn that Snowville likes to have happy cows and lets their bovine friends sort of chill out like normal cows would do. They're not fed a gross amount of fake cow food or forced into producing crazy amounts of milk. Happy cows = good milk = happy customers.

Our tour guide mentioned that she didn't see a real problem with drinking raw milk. And, I don't know ... it sort of weirds me out, mostly because of the processed-food culture I (and basically my generation, plus a few others) have grown up with. There's just something animalistic about drinking a glass of milk straight outta the utter. On the other hand, I'm a germaphobe, so I would also like to avoid drinking concoctions of possibly harmful chemicals that have been added to the cow and/or milk.

 I think what impressed me most about Snowville (aside from the small size of the staff and the crazy amount of milk they produce daily) is that they even allowed tours. I wasn't the biggest fan of The Omnivore's Dilemma, but I did really like the portion about animal rights -- especially when Pollan said that factories and butchers should allow people to see the process. It may still terrify people, but at least the option is there for them to look. I don't think Snowville is doing anything horrific (even though it was sort of suspicious that there weren't any cows ... anywhere ...) but I still really appreciate (as a customer) the opportunity to see what exactly happens during the process.

And, granted, the chocolate milk was pretty darn good. ---