Hooray for Raw Milk!
I’m in my garden, bending over my cabbage patch, fretting. The cabbage is growing just fine, but now is the time to deal with the inevitable arrival of cabbage moths and their worms that tunnel through cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and every other cruciferous plant in my plot.
The go-to remedy for an organic gardener is to secure wire hoops over the plants, then a white row cover. The row cover protects the plants from the moths ever reaching their leaves. This is an excellent device. Theoretically. If there is even a tiny hole in the row cover. If the row cover isn’t secured tightly. If there is even a tiny gap between the row cover and the ground, you’re in trouble. The moths will find a way to get in, and once they are in, they will then be trapped by the cover, feasting on your delicate seedlings.
And installing the row cover is not a one-person job, especially if that one person’s garden is on top of a hill with a steady breeze blowing on most days. After many Charlie Chaplin-like attempts at securing row covers, I looked for other remedies.
Next, I tried companion plantings, interplanting onions, marigolds, and nasturtiums with my cruciferous plants. I had a very pretty wide row, but the cabbage moths found the patch even prettier, their worms chopping through my broccoli leaves.
I read that bats eat cabbage moths and love to pick off the worms. Some bats, especially nursing females, eat their body weight in insects each night. Insect-eating bats may save farmers an estimated $23 billion in crop damage per year. So, I put up a bat house. It had to be facing south, protected from the wind, and elevated enough that predators didn’t get in. I made certain that my bubbling garden fountain was running. The bats moved right in, and seemed to make themselves at home. I sat on the back porch and sensed them at night, flitting and fluttering in the dark over my garden. I noticed fewer mosquitoes.
Wonderful, I thought, leaning back and relaxing into my porch chair.
The next morning, guess who was still hovering over my cabbage?
More research. Word-of-mouth, this time. Cut up old pantyhose and stretch them over your cabbage. An expert gardener told me. This remedy actually worked well, but I have long since given up wearing pantyhose. At least I don’t have enough old pairs to cover all my cabbages.
Another friend suggested Bt, a bacterium that is toxic to cabbage moths but not to human beings. This works if you remember to spray your plants early in the season. If you let it go, there’s nothing left to do but hand-pick the worms off your cabbage leaves—a tedious job.
Then an Amish neighbor told me that she had a good remedy. She made a solution of diluted raw milk and sprayed her cabbage every two weeks. I surveyed her garden. It looked pristine. Beautiful rows of heading cabbage without a blemish. Not a moth nor worm in sight. I was surrounded by farms milking both cows and goats. This should be easy, I thought. I just needed a tiny quantity.
But no! Until this spring, raw milk was illegal in Iowa.
“Can’t sell it to you. Don’t even ask,” my neighbor said.
Suddenly, I had visions of the sheriff pulling into my lane and handcuffing me in the middle of my cabbage patch.
I understand both sides of the argument. Raw milk can carry disease, so pasteurization guarantees a safer product. Yet the same pasteurization that kills diseases also kills the good bacteria and many of the vitamins that raw milk offers. Grass-fed cows raised in clean conditions tend to produce healthy raw milk.
Twenty-nine states in the U.S. allow raw milk sales, some in retail stores, others only from farms. Some require a license, others do not. Some allow raw goats’ milk, but not cow’s milk. Some allow both. You have to be aware and mindful of the state laws.
Most of the states surrounding Iowa allow some form of raw milk sales. But until this year, you couldn’t buy raw milk in Iowa to drink or spray on your cabbage. Then on the final day of this year’s state legislative session, our governor signed a bill allowing some raw milk sales. The Dairy Industry opposed the bill. Many of the Democrats and some medical professionals didn’t care for it, either.
But when I scroll down the list of bills passed by this year’s legislature, I say hooray for raw milk! The best new law on the books. The governor has now legalized a natural pesticide. This new organic gardening technique has to be better than dumping chemicals on my vegetables or watching those row covers float up, up, and away in a fierce wind. I can’t wait to buy some raw milk from a trusted farmer with a tested herd, mix up the solution, and stand proudly with my sprayer pump in my cabbage patch, waving to the sheriff passing down the road.
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Such excellent (and entertaining!) information. We just put up a bat house. I believe we can get raw milk out our local coop. Going to find out today. Thanks for the possible salvation of our cruciferous plants! (Especially as I have no pantyhose whatsoever!)
When my kids were little, the neighbor to our north used to sell raw milk. Everyone knew it. I was not a fan, but some neighbors were. In fact, one neighbor had a child who contracted tuberculosis, and had to have his chest opened up and carries a big old scar from it, his whole life. After seeing that and what he went through, I would never touch raw milk.