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| Mr. Bowman poses beside a pasteurization vat. Karl Kazaks |
For kids: Milk's trip from cow to you
On their dairy farm, two brothers oversee the journey of milk from their cows into cartons and finally to corner markets.
from the November 13, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
When making chocolate milk, eggnog, or ice cream, the Bowmans add the extra ingredients to the milk in the pasteurizing vats. (That's also where Vitamin D is added to the milk, as required by law.)
After pasteurization, the tasty mixtures are homogenized just like milk. One exception to this rule is ice cream, which is homogenized at a higher pressure because it is thicker than milk.
Homogenized ice cream is then transferred to machines that stir the mixture at cold temperatures until it freezes. These machines work in much the same way as the ice-cream-makers that some people have at home – although the ones at the creamery are much larger!
Milk is bottled by a machine that can be adapted to handle various sizes of containers – gallons, half-gallons, quarts, and pints. Once the milk is bottled, it's stacked in crates and taken to cool storage to be delivered to local stores, restaurants, coffeehouses, and bakeries.
The Bowman brothers take turns managing the milk plant. One week Chris is in charge, while David manages the cows and the fields. Then they switch.
On bottling days, the work starts while you're still asleep in bed: One of the Bowmans has to get up by 2 a.m. – sometimes at midnight – to start processing milk!
Around 5 a.m., two employees come in to help, and the three of them process milk until around 11 a.m. Then it's time to freeze ice cream, make butter, or help out with the other farm chores. Sometimes they can squeeze in a short nap.
The old-fashioned equipment at Homeland Creamery works slowly compared with the modern equipment at today's larger milk-processing plants.
But the extra effort comes with an extra benefit, David explains. "Vat-pasteurized milk tastes richer and creamier than other milk."
"I've had [older] people tell me our milk tastes like milk used to when they were growing up," Chris says."
"We make milk the way it used to be made," David says, "and our milk tastes the way it used to taste."
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