Back to raising boys

I feel like my blog went from being all about my boys and our family to basically just being about our adoption journey. I have always been the kind of person that struggles with dwelling on the hard stuff and heartbreak and sometimes I just have to acknowledge that there is pain to be dealt with but that I need to focus on something else for a while. So, I am going to do a series of posts on what my journey of raising boys has been like in the past couple months, adoption drama aside.

One of my seemingly never ending quests is to be more conscientious of the foods my kids are eating and the products that are in our home. One of the things I am wanting to tackle now is the fact that there are always 3 kinds of milk in our refrigerator. I drink regular cows milk, Noah (who is allergic to soy and dairy) has almond milk and John (who does not digest the milk protein) and Caleb drink soy milk.  I am becoming more and more concerned about all the issues surrounding soy and would really like to get the soy milk out of the house. There's nothing wrong with the unsweetened almond milk Noah has, but it does not have a ton of nutritional value to it. So, I decided to research raw milk.

One of the many agricultural benefits to living in the central valley is that Organic Pastures, one of the premiere raw milk farms in the state is just outside of town. I did a lot of reading about raw milk and then also got a lot of information from one of my girlfriends sisters who works there. Initially, I was not even going to consider switching my immuno-suppressed child to unpasteurized dairy but began to change my mind when I dug deeper into the facts. There have been fewer cases of milk contamination from raw milk than pasteurized milk in the past few years, so there is really no safety net just because it's heated to a certain temperature before it's shipped. I also learned that it tends to be much easier to digest because it contains all of it's live, natural properties when it is NOT heated.

I got some good tips in my reading and from my contact at OP on how to introduce raw milk into our diets and make sure that everyone is actually tolerating it. The one major draw back is the price. It is a LOT more than regular milk, although there is not as shocking of a price difference between it and the almond and soy milk I'm already buying.  Nevertheless, I have started looking for ideas and ways to cut down on other household expenses to offset the cost difference. That leads me into the topic for my next post, the homemade laundry detergent and baby wipes I've started making.

So, if I haven't already bored you out of your minds, come on back a little later and I'll share some cool ideas! And yes, I do seem to becoming more "crunchy", "roots and berries" or just plain crazy the older I get in case you were wondering!