Forty-two Gir and Sahiwal cows on eleven acres outside Pune. They graze in the morning, eat what we grow in the afternoon, and are milked by the same four people every day.
- 42
- cows, every one named
- 11
- acres of fodder and grazing
- 23
- minutes from udder to 4 °C
- 0
- middlemen between us and you
The herd
Native breeds give less milk than crossbreds and need more care. We keep them anyway: they are calm, they live long, and their milk is rich enough that we never add anything to it.
The cold
Milk stays sweet when it gets cold fast. Ours goes from the pail through a cloth filter into a closed steel chiller and reaches four degrees in twenty-three minutes. It stays there until it is in your hand.
The lab
A small lab beside the chiller tests every batch before it can be bottled: fat, solids, added water, antibiotic residues. If a batch fails, it becomes ghee for our own kitchen and the bottles wait for tomorrow.
The glass
Glass keeps milk colder and tastes of nothing. Leave last week's bottles outside the door and the driver takes them back to be washed at 85 °C and filled again. Each bottle makes about forty trips.