A number of uncooked milk and diverse dairy from the Milk Man.
Picture: Brian Finke
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One night in February, I acquired a textual content: “It’s the Milk Man.”
A second later, my telephone rang. The person on the road — whom I’d discovered on a sketchy web site really useful to me by an influencer in Tribeca — arrange a time to satisfy. Just a few days later, I watched from my stoop in Williamsburg as a inexperienced van pulled up in entrance of the church throughout the road. The Milk Man sported a skullcap and smelled faintly of cigarettes. He was not the frat boy I purchased weed from in faculty; no, he appeared like a vendor from the massive leagues. He yanked open the van’s door: The again seats had been gutted and changed with coolers of various sizes, some as massive as coffins.
He confirmed off his cell cornucopia. He had grass-fed floor beef, rooster, and lamb and vacuum-sealed packs of grey calamari. He had cartons of frozen yogurt and heavy cream, tubs of kefir, and jars of sea moss that his good friend had harvested in St. Lucia. He had eggs too with powdery blue shells. One other cooler held massive glass bottles of the clearest water I’d ever seen: alkaline water. “The type that’s free from all of the stuff the federal government places into it,” the Milk Man instructed me. He cradled a jar of liquid that appeared like pancake batter. “It’s colostrum,” he stated. “That is the great things.” I winced when he defined what colostrum was.
And in the midst of the van, within the largest cooler, had been gallons and gallons of unmarked milk bottles — all uncooked, unpasteurized, and straight from the cow’s udder. So many who it appeared like a kind of carnival video games the place you attempt to catch a hoop round a bottle’s neck. He handed me my contraband, and I observed a skinny layer of grime beneath his fingernails.
This was my entrance into the world of interstate raw-milk smuggling. Earlier than RFK Jr., earlier than Gwyneth Paltrow grew to become identified extra as a wellness influencer than an actress, there was the Milk Man, slipping into town quietly to ship his wares to fanatics who consider uncooked milk is an historical therapeutic elixir, wealthy with immune-boosting enzymes and uncorrupted by authorities intervention. To regulators, it poses a public-health threat as a supply mechanism for listeria, salmonella, and E. coli.
Owing to those doubtlessly lethal contaminants, federal regulation bans the interstate sale of uncooked milk. However inside state strains, it’s as much as native lawmakers to determine the way it’s offered and shared. In Arkansas, you may get your milk delivered, as long as it comes straight from the farm. In Minnesota, it’s authorized however provided that you make the journey to the farm your self and convey your individual container to place it in. In New Jersey, uncooked milk is off limits altogether, whereas in California you may waltz into Erewhon and decide up a gallon for $20.99.
In New York, uncooked milk can solely be offered on-site. A number of farms upstate are licensed to promote the stuff, however none of them seem to ship, even illegally. If you’d like uncooked milk from the New York farm closest to town, you must go to Freedom Hill Farm in Otisville, which is roughly 80 miles from Manhattan. One other approach to get it’s to hitch a shopping for membership: teams of raw-milk drinkers who take turns making the journey to the farm and bringing the milk again to a shared pickup spot. These golf equipment might be exhausting to return by — you form of need to know a man — as a result of it’s a authorized grey space whether or not somebody is allowed to buy uncooked milk on the farm for you.
Or you may name the Milk Man, who delivers it uncooked and to the doorstep.
The Milk Man isn’t Amish, even when his milk comes from Amish farms in Pennsylvania. He’s truly a chemist with a level who labored to develop new strains of the chickenpox vaccine. He’s soft-spoken, nearly bashful, with an ethereal voice and surprisingly deep reservoirs of endurance. He as soon as waited quarter-hour for me after I missed his name whereas I used to be within the bathe. “Not an issue, my good friend,” he replied with a smile after I apologized profusely.
He was keen to inform me tales of how uncooked milk has helped folks, together with curing irritable bowel syndrome, strengthening the weak, and even serving to to treatment breast most cancers. He drinks uncooked when he can, too.
I spent the day using round with the Milk Man to see him in motion. Along with his route preloaded onto Google Maps, he makes use of Siri continually to textual content prospects that he’s on the best way. He’s a cautious however fast driver, a terrific parallel parker. As we walked right into a riverfront constructing in Greenpoint, the place condos promote for $1.9 million, I requested the Milk Man if most of his prospects are wealthy. “Uhhh, yeah,” he stated. Clearly.
One of many Milk Man’s prospects.
Picture: Brian Finke
When he picked me up, the Milk Man had 38 stops left, all in North Brooklyn. A tanned 20-something in an identical exercise set purchased 4 gallons. A modelish girl in her 60s in chunky clogs met us outdoors her brownstone for 2 gallons and a jar of honey. A lady with eyelash extensions and a yappy little canine forked over $99 for just a few gallons of uncooked dairy, seafood, and a few alkaline water.
“Most of my prospects will not be vaccinated,” stated the Milk Man between stops, “they usually’re like homeschooling. .”
The Milk Man doubts uncooked milk will ever make its means into grocery shops in New York. “Large dairy, huge pharma, would by no means let it occur.”
The Milk Man isn’t the one one illegally transporting uncooked items throughout state strains. One other main participant is an Amish farm in Pennsylvania. As a substitute of counting on a intermediary, the Amish produce the dairy and drive it straight to New York. “I used to be attempting to get off oat milk desperately,” stated Madison, a Tribeca mother of three who recounted her expertise with this farm on TikTok. She was instructed to satisfy at a dentist’s workplace. “It felt like a really undercover-mission kind of factor,” she stated. “I used to be instructed to search for a white van, and I used to be like, Okay, that is loopy.” However when she discovered the van, a smiling Amish girl handed her the milk as if it had been no huge deal. This was Madison’s first and final raw-milk pickup, because it gave her a dreadful stomachache. She’s again to oat and attempting pistachio milk.
The Well being Dad has round 2,240 followers on TikTok, the place he posts about seed oils and low-sugar juice containers. For greater than a 12 months, he’s picked up uncooked milk weekly from the Pennsylvania farm, most not too long ago at a car parking zone on Lengthy Island. His youngest little one went straight from breastfeeding to uncooked milk. “I believed all of the formulation had been trash,” he stated. He even introduced his personal milk to day care however didn’t wish to specify that it was uncooked. “I don’t assume I’d get in bother, however I’m like, ‘Oh no, I admire that you’ve milk — however now we have our personal particular, good milk.’”
Katherine, the founding father of a downtown acupuncture clinic, is a Milk Man buyer. Eight years in the past, after struggling to get pregnant owing to low estrogen, she turned to jap drugs. “Estrogen in Chinese language drugs is equal to yin vitality, and milk and dairy are additionally yin,” she instructed me. If she might nourish her yin, she thought, her estrogen may comply with. Just a few months after ordering her first gallon from the Milk Man, Katherine obtained pregnant. “It wasn’t simply due to the milk,” she stated, “but it surely was positively a bit of the puzzle.” (There isn’t a identified connection between uncooked dairy and fertility.)
Within the early years of the enterprise, the Milk Man was the one driver, and his route spanned all of riverside Brooklyn. It generally took him 12 hours to finish, and he completed round three or 4 within the morning. Now the Milk Man is one in all three. My Milk Man covers Brooklyn and Staten Island. Milk Man No. 2 handles Manhattan, and the latest recruit, Milk Man No. 3, takes on Lengthy Island and Queens. The operation has been working for greater than 13 years, sustained by longtime raw-milk devotees and, extra not too long ago, an inflow of first-time prospects who’re curious to see what all of the unpasteurized fuss is about. Twice every week, somebody from the corporate picks up the orders on the farm and drives them to an undisclosed warehouse. That is the place the opposite Milk Guys meet him, switch the products right into a van, and get on the street to New York.
However even with the additional assist today, the route might be lengthy. Usually, the Milk Man doesn’t return residence to his spouse and children till after midnight. After which there are different occupational hazards.
The Milk Man is often a gentleman. “I assist the women,” he instructed me, explaining how he lugs their milk up three, 4 flights. However on this present day, with squad automobiles idling close by, he requested the client to satisfy him on the van. “Simply in case,” he stated, glancing over his shoulder. He popped the trunk, and a younger girl with an ideal haircut, wearing costly tailor-made denims, picked up her order with out ceremony, rapidly waved, and headed to the steps of her Williamsburg walk-up.
My half-gallon of uncooked milk from the Milk Man sat within the fridge for the following few days, congealing subsequent to a carton of vanilla Chobani espresso creamer. Lastly, one afternoon, I made a decision to threat my life and bask in a glass. It could be unsuitable, in spite of everything, to waste this unlawful, controversial, overpriced, politically charged, and probably bacteria-infested liquid gold.
And you already know what? It was fairly good.
It tasted like milk.
A raw-milk transaction.
Picture: Brian Finke
