Colonel's Blog, Earthdate 26 March 2023...
Hey Y'all!
Good morning and happy Sunday from Air2Ground Farms! It is a beautiful day on the farm today, cool this morning with sunny and 60s this afternoon. We didn’t enjoy our Sunday chaffle brunch today. As I mentioned, the farmers market starts next Saturday. Market day is a really busy day, starting early and finishing late. In fact, it is normally the busiest day of the week for us. Thus, we decided to just shift our ‘weekend’ by a day and got started this weekend. Saturday is the new Friday at Air2Ground Farms! The animals are all good today, especially the beef chicks. We moved 5 chicks from the hospital brooder into the main brooder, leaving 6 needing special attention. It looks like we may be able to move 2 more soon. The bottom pic is a few of the beef chicks showing off their new wing feathers. The 2nd and 3rd pics are the hill where the beef cows spent most of the winter. The green strips of new grass are some of the first bales we unrolled while the tan strips are some of the last bales we unrolled. We are excited to see the transformation and eagerly await the new grass. Today we plan to start Spring Cleaning, starting with the porch. The house project tools and scraps of wood have collected on the porch over the past few weeks and it’s time to get things back where they belong. We are going to be on the road quite a bit over the next couple of days. We’re going Oklahoma to pick up more pallets from Uncle Carl tomorrow. Tuesday we pick up feed and we’ll get the pork from the processor on Wednesday. Of course, we plan to make some cheese and yogurt in-between trips.
What is A2/A2 milk and who really cares? Many people suffer from Milk Sensitivity, which spans from milk allergy to milk intolerance. A milk allergy is when someone’s body has an immune response to milk and foods that contain milk. It’s often referred to as Cow’s Milk Protein Allergy and is most often seen in babies who outgrow the allergy by 3-5 years old. It looks like a normal allergic reaction with hives, itching, swelling, and even loss of consciousness. Milk intolerance is what most folks think of when discussing issues with milk, normally described as ‘lactose intolerance.’ Lactose is a milk sugar and people with an intolerance to that particular sugar experience bloating, gas, and diarrhea when they consume milk or milk products. Nevertheless, scientific studies show that many who experience those symptoms are actually sensitive to the A1 beta-casein found in most commercially produced milk, not the lactose sugars. Beta-casein is a protein found in milk and comes in two forms, A1 and A2. Genetically, cows used to only produce milk with A2 beta-casein until somewhere around 10,000 years ago when, during domestication, there was a genetic shift that caused the A1 protein. The result is that today cows can be A1/A1, A1/A2, or A2/A2. Humans produce A2/A2 milk and our bodies can most easily digest the A2 protein. Most commercially produced milk is either A1/A1 or A1/A2, thus the only milk most people have ever drank contains the A1 protein. Back to the studies…it appears that there are a lot of folks who experience the symptoms of lactose intolerance that are actually A1 beta-casein intolerant and when they consume A2/A2 milk, experience none of the symptoms described above. Although none of our immediate family has A1 issues, we purchased our Jersey cows specifically because they are genetically tested to be A2/A2 (the top pic is Happy, one of our girls). We thought there might be people around that could benefit from the milk and could use it to make milk-based products that they haven’t been able to enjoy either in a long time or ever. We have been milking our girls for 3 months now and already have 2 families that are enjoying milk that haven’t been able to in years. They were willing to give A2/A2 milk a try and found that their bodies tolerated the milk and they have none of the issues they normally have when consuming milk. I think the best study is published in the National Library of Medicine if you would like to research further, found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4586534/
Shelley's most recent YouTube Short shows us milking: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nRw_bgTRuu0
Local Farm Report for 25 March 2023:
Harvest:
38 Chicken eggs
14 Duck eggs
2 Goose eggs
5 1/2 Gallons of milk
Sales:
3 Gallons of A2/A2 milk
Cheers! Psycho & Shelley
I had never really heard of the differences in the proteins until reading one of your previous blogs. This is all really interesting and enjoyable to learn about. Thank you for sharing and passing on the educational knowledge.
Would you be willing to share how you found the Jersey cows you have and where you ended up getting them?