“‘That’s what we like to see: the mailman and the milkman,’” Flaum says with a laugh.
The milky way Before refrigeration, which wasn’t common until the ‘20s and ‘30s, the milkman was a major source of fresh dairy. “[My grandfather] grew up not just with a milkman but with an ice man.” Jonathon says. “He and I were super-close. He probably had the biggest influence on me of any other adult.” As technology improved, large, industrial dairies developed. According to the Associated Press, recipients of home milk delivery decreased from 29.7 percent of the milk market in 1963, to less than 1 percent in the 1990s. Tami remembers when her family made the switch from doorstep to grocery store. “We all got used to big stores and supermarkets; it was convenient, but we lost something,” she says. “[Milk delivery] was just a nice, personal kind of experience.” As it turns out, Jonathon has picked up on a national trend. He and his family are part of a contingent of milkmen and women that’s growing nationwide. In an Oct. 2009 article, the Wall Street Journal declared, “The old-fashioned milkman is making a comeback.” The authors tried out delivery services based in North Aurora, Ill., Seattle and Minneapolis. When they sampled the milk from Manhattan Milk in New York City, they proclaimed it “better than any we have ever tried.”
Weekly staples Milk enthusiasts attest: The freshness of bottled-on-site milk sets it above the conventional, grocery-store variety. “I will get the milk the same day as coming out of the cow,” Jonathon says. Farm to Home’s milk comes from Maple View Farms, a fifth-generation dairy in Hillsborough, near Durham. It’s free from hormones and antibiotics, and it’s flash-pasteurized and homogenized on-site. Farm to Home Milk will stock the farm’s cream and buttermilk and skim, low-fat, whole
Blast from the past: For almost a century, Biltmore Dairy Farms provided Asheville with milk. Here’s their squadron of milkmen ready to make the rounds. Photo courtesy of The Biltmore Company and chocolate milk. (Eve highly recommends the latter.) A half-gallon of low-fat milk costs $4.40 (check the website for prices on the other varieties, including cream), along with a refundable $2-perbottle deposit, a $2.99-per-week delivery charge, a $1.50 charge for ice (if requested), and a 2 percent food-sales tax. But the inventory doesn’t stop at milk. The Flaums hope to provide other staples. That’s particularly important to Tami, who does the shopping. She considers specialty grocery stores too expensive, but wants to buy healthy, humanely produced animal products. “I had certain pieces of our diet that I really wanted local and organic and as healthy as possible, and I was running all over town,” she says. The Farm to Home inventory brings those pieces together. It includes City Bakery bread, Hickory Nut Gap meat and sausage, Farside Farms freerange eggs, chicken and duck, Sunburst trout, Wild Salmon Co. fish, coffee and tea, and goat’s milk from Round Mountain Creamery in Black Mountain. It also offers package deals, such as the “Complete Weekly Staples” pack, which incorporates a variety of their products. Farm to Home Milk already has started taking orders on its website, and Jonathon will begin delivering milk and other products to area homes and offices on Jan. 8. His route of once-weekly deliveries will take him to nine zip codes that span Asheville and the surrounding area. All orders go through the website, so to see the full inventory and delivery area, and sign up for an account, visit farmtohomemilk.com. Not just a pretty Bottle: Maple View Farm milk is free from hormones and antibiotics. It’s flash pasteurized and homogenized on-site, so it gets to consumers sooner than heavily processed, ultra-pasteurized milk.
mountainx.com • DECEMBER 26, 2012 - JANUARY 1, 2013 39