Now, seriously... who can resist saying that word? Mil-ka-pa-loo-za. It just rolls off the tongue. The only word, I believe, that's more fun to say than that would be 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'. As a matter of fact, my daughter ran around the house, saying "Milkapalooza!" over and over, this morning. We were both very excited.
We piled into a very full car, since it was a total of five of us: My husband and myself, my parents, and of course, my very happy daughter. I also loaded up my empty milk bottles, so that I could drop by the farm store to exchange them for some more non-homogenized milky goodness.
When we got there, we discovered the area was filled with enjoyable things to do.
Once we got to the main event, my daughter was given a small notebook. The key was to find the 4 learning areas that were scattered about, and get a stamp and a sticker placed on each page of the notebook from those areas. The learning areas were all marked with a printout that was framed by green cardboard. This scavenger hunt type of event was called the Cow Crawl.
There was a petting zoo set up with sheep, ducklings, and a calf.
There were also pony rides!
Children lined up to have their chance at riding one. My daughter was very excited! Until it was her turn, that is. Sitting on the back of a moving animal just wasn't her thing, she decided, and she clung to her father with a vengeance when he tried to place her on the back of one of the equines.
Oh, well. There's always the 2013 Milkapalooza, right?
There were also stands set up for local farmers so that people could sample their wares. Cheese, jams, honey, and much more awaited the eager participant.
Live music? Yep, that was at Milkapalooza, too!
We also took a brief hayride out to the pastures where John, the farm manager, told us all about the cows. They graze on the pasture until the winter, when the snow makes that impossible. At that point, they eat the hay bales that have been gathered all year for that specific purpose.
No grain at all goes into their diet. The result of this, as discovered by an independent study by The Milkweed in 2008, is that the CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) and Omega 3 content of Cedar Summit's milk far surpasses the content within other organic milks that were studied (such as Horizon and Stonyfield).
These cows were very obviously happy. The had a very large area to roam in that was filled with grasses. While I've always had a nice amount of respect for the cows that provide us with our yummy supply of dairy products, I had never seen any real beauty in regard to them.
These cows were beautiful.
Not only that, but every one of those cows in the field had a name!!!
Somewhere around the time that the cows hit the age of six months, the people on the dairy farm name each cow based off of its behavior. If I remember correctly, that's 140 names. Wow! How cool is that?
It was a great event, and we all had a great deal of fun. The best part? Aside from buying lunch, the entire thing was free!!!
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