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Food

Sidemouth - Love, War, Soulfulness, and Big Balls

If you get busted for selling raw milk in Canada, penalties range from steep fines to time in prison. This farmer's standing up to the unjust powers that be.

If you get busted for selling raw milk in Canada, penalties range from steep fines to time in prison. Farmer Michael Schmidt has received both.

It started with a simple experiment: Take two calves; feed one raw milk from cows raised on a small biodynamic farm, and feed the other pasteurized milk from a commercial brand. Do so for four months, then compare.

While Schmidt’s methods were not exactly scientific, the results were shocking. Hands down, the raw milk-fed calf appeared healthier in all ways: in complexion, size, poo, everything. Internally its organs were more robust, deeper in color. Even its balls were noticeably larger (photos here, if you like proof). Who doesn’t appreciate that?

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The Raw Milk War has been central to Schmidt’s life since he arrived in Canada from Germany in 1983 to discover that Vorzugsmilch, as it’s called, was basically as illegal as crack. He’s been the target of extensive Health Unit surveillance since 2006, when his Glencolton farm was raided by 20 armed ministry of natural resources officers. He was charged with 16 offenses relating to the illegal distribution of raw milk, which sparked the first of his hunger strikes. Since then he’s been cleared and then re-charged with these allegations, and in the meantime accused of links to various other raw milk operations around Canada. Currently he’s awaiting trial on a charge of contempt of court relating to a Vancouver milk share operation.

His fight is not just for the plethora of health benefits offered by drinking unadulterated fresh milk from happy pasture-raised cows with big testicles on small farms, nor is it all for the culinary delights that raw milk can provide—beautiful, rich, yellow butters, lusciously heavy cream, nuanced cheeses. Most Europeans consider it sacrilege to make them any other way. For Schmidt, raw milk has become a symbol for awakening people to the dangers of losing their food freedom, calling it not a rebellion, but the beginnings of a powerful evolution of consciousness focusing on the realization that food actually matters in relation to our development as a species, physically and spiritually.

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It begins with his barn. When I visited him on Glencolton farm in Durham, Ontario, one of the first things he asked me was if I noticed anything different about it. Stepping into the huge monastic structure, the air is sweet with hay, the proportions wide, the floors nearly spotless. Above the stalls of each individual cow hangs a hand-painted board bearing her German name: Helga, Frida, Lavendal, Corinna. Yes, I noticed something. It felt damn good in there.

“It’s the soul quality.” Schmidt told me as he methodically swept between the stalls. “And right now, I am brushing the barn.”

I sat with him and we talked about cows and revolution.

VICE: I’ve heard you refer to the cow as being the most concise symbol of the art of agriculture because it encompasses this harmonizing of elements—soil, grass, cow, milk—and the relationship that is required to maintain that.
Michael Schmidt: People call it a romantic approach to farming. It is just a personal relationship. I feel incredible gratitude for these animals, and there is this sacred element with that for me. You can make lots of things from the milk, but it is besides the point. It is more a symbol of nourishment, of love. It seems to manifest itself in a beautiful way for me in the cow. Cows for us are not production units, whereas in most cases people are just pumping and sucking them out.

In previous interviews you have mentioned you believe we’re on the verge of a massive change in regards to our relationship to our food. You have also spoken about the “inner quality” of food. Can you elaborate?
I think of the term, “You are what you eat.” The way I see it, the nourishing quality of food is not just expressed by what’s in there—the protein content, for example, etc. It’s something that goes far beyond that. I would almost say you could call it, in a spiritual sense, that which maybe even shapes your ability to think properly. This “inner quality” has the potential to radiate out in a different way, providing you with not only nutrition for your body, but also nutrition for your mental and spiritual way of being. Transforming the art of food and raising a greater consciousness to what food is all about. If you look at this word “holistic,” you can also say “holy.” I think in a sense, cows for me are sacred and I think that’s good.

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I do feel like there is a lack of poetry to the way things are.
Yes. It is interesting. The food is not really the issue, the issue is what comes with the food. When you look at it across the board the lack of inner nourishment on all levels is what dissatisfies you. You know how many dissatisfied people there are around? It’s shocking. And then this hunting for entertainment in order not to face its own devil, or its own misery. It’s in the education system too. Do you honestly think that what they are teaching in the educational system is nourishment for our souls? The focus is all on intellectual strength. We are creating experts, not universal life artists. It’s all about functionality.

How did you feel when you were on your hunger strikes? One of ‘em lasted 40 days.
Symbolically I think that hunger strike is quite interesting. It brought me closer to food. I held this incredible lightness of not being dependent on food, which in a sense was an incredible journey that gave me a lot of understanding about how much fear is out there about losing food. It’s not food, it’s what food we lose. Can you actually describe the processed foods you find in supermarkets as food?

I recently gave a guest lecture in the law department at University of Toronto. The most striking focus of the discussion was what they termed my “holistic approach to law.” I have been involved in so much legal battle they wanted to know how I approach that. I said you could approach it from a specialized legal perspective and try and beat it. Or, as I did, approach it from a holistic point of view completely. Not that I ignored, but I brushed aside the aspects of strategy. Strategy was not in my mind when I was dealing with this. To me it was trying to bring to light a cultural issue, not a legal issue. To look deep into the souls of the people and ask what this longing is. Are we asking for protection from the state? Does the state have the right to interfere with something as intimate as food? For two and a half hours we talked about this. They wanted a description of what biodynamics is, and I explained about the chaos, the creating a vortex, the cows, the grass, the manure, the field, bringing things together. And then they asked what does cow manure have to do with law? And the answer is it has a lot to do with law. There is so much distance from where law is coming from, and if you separate it from real life, then law becomes its own thing.

So you blew their minds?
You need to shake up these young souls. In describing the struggle, I use the metaphor of there always being a lot of stones thrown in your way. Philosophically I never look at the stones as negative, I look at them as things that have taught me to jump higher. It’s a beautiful process to train you for what you are supposed to do in life.

How long will your struggle go on?
My journey is not a matter of a winning battle, I couldn’t survive if it was. I look at it as a process. It is a lot of education for people, waking people up. If it had been won a long time ago, a lot of people wouldn’t have understood the essence of what is at stake. And that is what I say to myself, it is a different way of revolution. I’ve always loved revolutions. People rebelling and having guts to stand up to unjust powers.

So it is your ongoing life project, which you once called your “life sculpture.”
I try to tell people you need to look beyond this rational element. You need to look at the cow with a sense of beauty, a sense of awe and suddenly how it can be an art object. And the cows are reacting to it.

Previously – Get in My Sidemouth