New skills

We love living here in Barbados, but one of the things that people who are moving here are told is that if you can remember Barbados is still a developing nation you won't be disappointed when you get here. If you expect things to be like they are in the states, you will be continually frustrated. Things seem to break frequently and get fixed slowly, houses have strange quirks (which can be either interesting and endearing or just annoying) and groceries at the supermarket are expensive and often old. Most of this we encountered in The Bahamas too, and are neither surprised by nor all that upset over, but we do have a few challenges.

One of the things our family really enjoys which isn't readily available to us is fresh milk. The only milk available at the grocery store is a disgusting ultra-pasteurized blend of fresh milk and powdered milk. It is vile, and we could barely stand using it in our cereal much less having an actual glass of milk to drink. We put up with this for the first four months or so here, but luckily we now have found a solution! One of the small local dairies that supplies the Bajan milk producer (makers of the vile stuff they sell at the store) will sell us fresh milk out their back door. The dairy is at the old Greenwich plantation, which has been turned into an antique store and furniture restoration business. This is what you see as you turn off the road (notice no sign for a dairy)

And this is a shot of the house/antique store.


If you continue on back around the house you can finally see the pastures and the milking area, and you are greeted by the sound of 5 dogs telling you in no uncertain terms they really don't like visitors. If you make it this far though, a very nice British lady will make her way out to the back door, shushing the dogs all the while and ask if you are there for milk. She knows me now and just gets our milk ready for us when she sees the car, but if I have Ryan with me he likes to get out and say hello to the cows. He always remembers to say thank you to them as well when we are leaving. "Bye cows, thanks for the milk, see you next time..."

Here are a few shots of Ryan looking at the milking area. You can't really see it in the pictures, but this is also where they keep a calf, and there is one worker who always brings the calf over for Ryan to pet if he is there when we stop by. Ryan really just enjoys talking to the calf, but is a bit nervous about touching it. "Hi Calf, what's your name? Your name Calf? What you doing today Calf? You like milk too Calf?"

They keep a few of the cows in this area, but most of them roam around three large pasture areas that surround the house. I just like this shot because of the random use of an old tub to water the livestock!

The milk I buy is fresh from the cow so when I get home I have to separate the cream (so we aren't drinking whole milk all the time) and then pasteurize it. I know lots of people drink unpasteurized milk and are perfectly fine, but living on an island with questionable health care doesn't seem to be the right place to be courting infections. The whole process takes me about 45 minutes to an hour (most of that time is cooling the milk down in an ice bath after the pasteurization) but it is so worth it to have fresh milk. The major investment in time is the drive out to the farm, it takes between 35 and 45 minutes each way depending on traffic.

The upside to having to separate the cream is that I make homemade ice cream with it once or twice a week, depending on how much milk we go through. The milk costs $15 Bajan (or $7.50 USD) for 1/2 gallon which is only slightly more than the stuff in the store, and infinitely better.

So now we have fresh milk available to us, with some measure of effort on our part, and I have a new skill I never imagined I would need!