Rainhaven
farmstead microdairy

naturally whole
Grade A Raw
Goat Milk

hand-milking a small herd of
purebred Swiss Toggenburg dairy goats
up in the hills above the Snoqualmie River valley
in Duvall, Washington

8' x 8' milking parlor; hand wash sink in alcove;
double purple doors open into 6' x 12' milk room / milk processing plant

6' x 12' milk room / milk processing plant
regular portable home automatic dishwasher takes place of 2 bowl sink (wash & rinse)
and is a sanitary cabinet between milkings for milk pail, strainers, etc.
Equipment is sanitized with bleach water just before milking.

Left: Straining milk & pre-chilling in ice water in sink

Right: Grade A Raw Microdairy "bulk tank":
Milk jugs are floated in ice water bath inside refrigerator;
with a standard regular stem thermometer for monitoring temperatue.

Milk Customer F.A.Q.s

Herd History & Management Style

Goats first came into my life in June 1998 when I brought home a yearling first freshener (first pregnancy/first coming into milk production) purebred Swiss Toggenburg dairy goat, Daizy, and her six week old twin doelings, Rosie and Jazmine, to be companions for my horse and pony and to keep the pasture clear of saplings and brambles. Milk has always been my favorite beverage, so I chose a dairy breed. After a few years, I realized that the arthritis in my neck and hands was to the point where riding wasn't a good idea any more, and found good homes for my horse and pony.... which left more room for more goats! Because my goats are all descended from Daizy and Odelia who were from farms that bottle-raised their goats on pasteurized milk, and my herd has always tested disease free and is "closed", I am able to safely allow my does to nurse and raise their own kids, which works out great for all concerned. Breeding does only every other year, then milking them through, gives me year-'round fresh milk, less health risk for my does, and time to see how their kids mature to evaluate the buck match.

I treat my baby goats the same as puppies or foals; they get their milk from mama but come running to me for cuddles and attention. Dam-raised kids are only wild if you ignore them and don't socialize with them.

Why goat milk?

Some people of course are allergic to cow milk; all goat milk is naturally much easier to digest than cow milk due to its molecular structure, and the beneficial living enzymes in raw unpasteurized milk also help increase digestability, much like yogurt with live enzyme cultures.

Dr George Haenlein article

Dr. William C. Douglass' "The Milk Book"

Dr Bernard Jensen's "Goat Milk Magic"

"Nature's Prescription Milk" Gloria Gilbere

article from the National Association for Child Development

Crohns.net article

What do you feed your goats?

My pasture has a variety of grasses, clovers, flowers and wild alpine strawberries, with large cedars scattered regally about. The greenbelt surrounding the pasture and within the gully offers a smorgasbord of huckleberry, salmonberry, vine maple, cottonwood leaves, alders, and salal. Orchardgrass and alfalfa hay are kept free choice in the barn mangers, and while being milked the does get rolled barley and black oil sunflower seeds to munch on, top-dressed with reconstituted beet pulp, kelp, and vitamin/mineral mix. I do not feed soy or cottonseed.

Is Rainhaven Grade A Raw goat milk certified organic?

Although my land has never been crop farmed and is free of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, my herd is not certified organic; if any of my goats were to need antibiotics to save their life, I would see that they are taken care of and not sacrificed for an easily curable problem. "Certified Organic" is not the same thing as "humane". I have not found an affordable locally available source of the types of grains and hay that I like to feed; the only certified organic goat grain locally available has soy and cottonseed and I prefer to avoid those feeds. No hormones are ever used.

Do Rainhaven goats have names?

99.999% of all goat owners do name their goats; it is extremely rare to find goat farms that only give the animals i.d. numbers. My goats have their fancy schmancy registered names (like "Rainhaven's Lily White Sox"), and they have their nicknames ("Lily"), and then they have the names I call them when they get loose into my rose garden..... My goats know their own names and each others' names; it's a lot like the Waltons around here, I can call out their names one by one and have them each answer.

What fresh raw milk unpasteurized Rainhaven dairy products are available?

Here in Washington, only raw milk and raw cream are allowed to be sold as raw farm fresh dairy products. I do not have cream for sale; goat milk butterfat globules stays suspended throughout the milk (naturally homogenized) and do not separate from the rest of the milk as easily and quickly as cow milk does - a cream separator (cost around $600) would be needed, and there isn't any marketability in fat-free skimmed goat milk. Federal regulations do not allow other fresh dairy products such as sour cream, yogurt, kefir and cheeses not aged over 60 days to be sold unless made from pasteurized milk made using commercially-approved equipment that costs several thousand dollars.

Many customers enjoy making fresh raw dairy products for themselves at home. For my milk customers who enjoy home yogurt and cheesemaking, I recommend starting with the book and cultures from New England Cheesemaking (www.cheesemaking.com); advanced artisan cheesemakers will enjoy the books by Kathy Biss of West Highland Dairy in Scotland, and Margaret Morris of Glengarry Cheesemaking in Ontario, Canada (www.glengarrycheesemaking.on.ca). The Dairy Connection (www.dairyconnection.com) is another excellent source for cultures, and Fromagex (www.fromagex.com) for plastic cheese molds.

Rainhaven Grade A Raw goat milk is available in gallon containers by special order.

I hope to eventually be licensed to sell raw milk cheeses that have been aged over 60 days, but right now I am still in the "research and development" stage.

Can I come to your farm instead of the retail grocery stores to buy your milk?

It is generally much more convenient for my customers to pick up their Rainhaven Grade A Raw Goat Milk where they shop for all of their groceries. Also, I like the fact that customers who are on hard times can use their Food Stamps card to buy my milk at the store, and I am able to get paid by the store, so we all win. I do offer a very limited number of CSA on-farm milk sales in the summer, primarily for home cheesemakers buying milk by the gallon; email me at rainhavengoatdairy@hotmail.com.

Is Rainhaven Grade A Raw goat milk available at farmers' markets?

I am looking into this possibility for one or two days of the week. Email me if you want to be kept up to date; rainhavengoatdairy@hotmail.com.

Is Grade A Raw the same as raw milk from typical Grade A dairies that are licensed only to produce pasteurized products from their milk?

No - my milk is licensed to be sold for human consumption as raw milk; my herd has been tested free of tuberculosis and brucellosis, and the milk is tested every month by the WSDA Food Safety lab in Olympia for salmonella, listeria, and e.col;, plus the total count of living bacteria per one milliliter (which must be < 20,000) and general coliform count (which must be < 10). Grade A dairies that are licensed only to produce raw milk intended to become pasteurized products do not have their animals tested for tuberculosis or brucellosis (although cows can be vaccinated for brucellosis aka Bang's Disease), and they are allowed to have a total bacteria count per ml of 80,000; nor are they tested for coliform count, listeria, salmonella or e.coli because pasteurization kills those organisms.

Yes,

licensed Grade A dairies in Washington state ARE allowed to:

hand milk; hand fill & hand cap containers;

have a single milk room that is also the Milk Processing Plant;

have painted wooden milk stands
(metal or stainless steel stands are NOT required);

sell raw (unpasteurized) milk for human and animal consumption

Seattle City Council ban on raw milk sales lifted in 2003
scroll down to "B. Rulemaking - Milk and Milk Products"

Acquiring my Grade A Raw dairy license

In the summer of 2002, I began working towards becoming a licensed Grade A goat dairy; on August 12, 2005 I acquired my Grade A Dairy permit and Milk Processing Plant license to produce Grade A Raw unpasteurized goat milk for human consumption.

Valley View article, November 21, 2005

Other than a brief time when the City of Seattle banned the sale of raw milk within Seattle city limits (lifted in 2003), Washington state laws have *always* allowed Grade A Raw milk for human consumption as a licensing option, but by 2002, there was only one last dairy with this license: Our Lady of the Rock Monastery on Shaw Island in the San Juan Islands, which received their Grade A Raw license in 1981.

So in November 2003, I visited Mother Therese's Grade A Raw microdairy of 1 - 3 Jersey cows, and learned that Washington regulations DO allow hand milking, and that a single room could be *both* a milk room (for santizing milking equipment and cooling the milk) *and* a milk processing room, because these two stages are separated by *space* or *time*.

Although regulations for several decades had required that a single piece of equipment that could both fill and cap milk containers was required, it had become increasingly difficult to find such equipment and a challenge to keep it working; hand filling and hand capping of milk containers was being allowed for a few already-licensed dairies, penalizing them at most by taking 5 points off of their Milk Processing Plant quarterly re-inspections - which as long as their final score was 90 or better, did not affect their licensing status.

In August 2004, the dairy licensing authority (Washington State Department of Agriculture, Food Safety) petitioned the state legislature to change the laws and allow hand filling and hand capping of both Grade A Pasteurized and Grade A Raw milk. The legislators approved the bill, which passed and became law on July 1, 2005.

That was the only law that needed changing to make it possible for many dairies of all sizes to step forward and acquire their Grade A Raw dairy permits.

But 'way back when I began, and throughout my endeavors, I was constantly told not to even try to get licensed, that it would cost at least $30,000 and that WSDA would still not allow any new Grade A Raw licenses to be issued.

Ha! Goat people are not easily cowed, nor are we sheepish about standing up for our right to be crazy old goat ladies!

And the truth is, keep it simple, and dairy construction regulations can be met for well under $3,000 and be finished in one week. And frankly, the simpler you keep the milking process, the easier it is to avoid contamination problems and to stay considerably within regulations for milk quality; hand milking has far fewer sanitation problems than machine milking and in particular pipeline milking. But it can all be done, if you are diligent enough.

Washington state regulations for
Grade A Raw milk quality microbiological standards
are the same as the Federal government regulations
for Grade A Pasteurized milk:

A total plate count of less than 20,000 per milliliter,
and of that, less than 10 coliform count.

My monthly milk samples tested by the WSDA Food Safety lab
during my first year as a licensed Grade A Raw dairy
were consistently free of even one coliform!
Total plate counts ranged from 290 to 1400.

Why did I want my Grade A Raw license,
instead of simply doing unlicensed "cow share" raw milk sales?

Because I DO believe that raw milk can be done to meet regulatory standards and is preferable to pasteurized milk, and since the federal government is constantly denouncing raw milk as being unsafe, I felt that it was essential to be creating data on raw milk in the government's approved state food safety lab so that they couldn't refute the results, and that this was the only way to safeguard our right to full-market access for raw milk. I call this "politically sustainable." It seemed clear to me that if the nuns had remained the only dairy licensed to sell raw milk for human consumption in Washington, that when they retired or died, the laws would have quickly and quietly been changed to disallow any further licensing for raw milk; and although many people and organizations promoted unlicensed cow share operations as being a legal way around dairy regulations, I knew they were skating on thin ice and that since these operations were clearly meant as a way around dairy regulations, sooner or later the legislation would clarify that this was indeed a form of raw milk sales and the "jig would be up." Any farmer that tells you they would consider it an insult for customers to expect them to have their milk tested.... obviously has no faith in their milk handling regimen.

The federal government continues to try and ban the right to do raw milk aged cheeses, and I figure that having licensed Grade A Raw milk dairies around the country, compiling state lab data on how safe the milk can be, will help support continued licensed raw aged milk cheesemaking. Great cheeses can only come from great milk!

And there's just something downright nifty about knowing that raw milk is a TRUE farmstead-only dairy product that federal and state laws do NOT allow for processing co-ops! In every state where raw milk for human consumption is allowed, it is mandatory that the milk be processed ONLY on the farm where the herd lives, and that milk from other herds may NOT be co-mingled. "Hometown Creamery Revival" is a phrase I first heard used by Vicki Dunaway on her wonderful website, www.SmallDairy.com. Instead of mega-dairies, to bring family farming back to every rural community.

Goat Milk for other animals - the Universal Foster Mother

From "Goat Husbandry" by David Mackenzie, Chapter 12 - The Universal Foster Mother:

Table 17: Comparative composition of the milk of various species

Table 18: Adjustment of goats' milk for the newly born of farm animals:

Notes on table:

(1) Colostrum from a newly kidded goat may be given to the new-born calf and the new-born lamb, but not to any other new-born. One feed is sufficient.

(2) All feeds must be fed at blood heat and at regular intervals. But the interval before the last feed at night may be longer than the others. Feeding bottles must be sterilized after each feed.

(3) Calves - Give 1 dessertspoon of olive oil in the first feed if the calf cannont receive colostrum. The goatkeeper may reasonably expect to rear a slightly better calf than anyone else for two good reasons; the high digestibility of goats' milk will minimize setbacks from digestive troubles, and will practically exclude the normal liability to white scour; the fact that goats and calves share but few internal parasites will afford both parties a measure of protection when sharing a pasture - the calf will eat the larvae of the worms that infest goats, and the goats will eat the larvae of the worms that infest calves, with no ill consequences to either. If you put a Friesian calf on a Jersey cow's milk, it will get the butterfat; but it will also get indigestion. Only the goat can do the job better than Nature. Calves may be suckled on a goat with adequate teats.

(4) Lambs - Give 1 teaspoon of olive oil in first feed if the lamb cannot obtain colostrum. Feed milk in a polythene baby's bottle fitted with lamb teat, or in a nylong "fre-flo" bottle. Orphan lambs should always be reared on the bottle, and never suckled on the goat. Ewes have smaller and tougher teats than goats, and a lamb is likely to break the skin of the goat's teat with its teeth, and give rise to black garget infection.

(5) Foals - Give a first feed of 1 dessertspoonful of oil in whole milk if the foal cannot receive colostrum. Feed from a wine bottle fitted with calf teat.

(6) Pups - Add 2 drops of cod-liver oil to the first two feeds. Feed with a disposable plastic hypodermic syringe with no needle. Add "Sister Laura's Food" for weaklings and miniatures.

(7) Kittens - Feed with a plastic syringe.

(8) Piglets - Add 1 teaspoon of cod-liver oil to first two feeds if the piglet has not had colostrum. Feed with a polythene baby's bottle and baby's or soft lamb teat.

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