Jess’s Ladies
‘Letting the natural flavours shine through is key to everything we produce from our onsite dairy and is achieved by treating our super fresh unhomogenised organic milk with as much love and care as the ladies and beautiful farmland who help us produce it.’
The modern consumer culture choices keep my mind curiously engaging with how to best keep my health and the health of the planet thriving. I have been a flexitarian, a vegetarian, a vegan. My latest evolution, is attempting to support local, organic where I can, with a new ethos of it’s not the cow it’s the how? How is the cow farmed? Can I look at the treatment of the animals, and soil and feel comfortable savoring the taste in my mouth.
Alternative milks are ever in abundance and like most people I have experimented with coconut and rice and decided that although they are intriguing they are not about to replace my go-to milk in my morning cuppa. But, what is my go-to milk? How do I choose from the plethora of options that are out there?
The line of questioning conceded with a healthy guttural new addiction to kefir. The more I consume, the more adamant I become that this fermented milk has kept my body fighting fit and healthy over winter. Wanting to support a local organic business to make this newfound fetish sustainable I stumbled across Jess’s Ladies Organic Milk at Gloucestershire Service Station. Wow!
The beauty of new waves of thinking is finding companies that have a similar ethos and vision, that you can learn from and support through consumption. Jess’s award-winning organic milk, cream, cultured buttermilk, kefir, and natural yogurt is a winner. Produced on her farm in Hardwicke just outside of Gloucester!
"Milk is incredibly fragile and needs treating with the same love and care as our ladies that produce it to maintain its flavour. We add nothing to any of our products. We rely totally on the natural flavours of the beautiful organic milk our ladies produce."
Jess’s Ladies (her cows) are the women of her business, treated as living beings, as colleagues, rather than milking machines. The ladies are treated as individuals with their own care package from birth to retirement, they even get a yearly two-month holiday! Her ladies are treated with love, and the joy can be tasted in the milky delights. Exactly like when you pop to your mums for a tender home-cooked meal that has been made with the essence of love and care, each bite consuming an ineffable extra sprinkling of magic
Jess’s ethos is to put back the priority into producing food that aids the consumers’ bodies. The milk is not homogenised, adding to the extra creamy, full-bodied flavour. Her milk is pasteurised on-site so that it can reach the shelf within four hours of being milked. If you want to learn more about the homogenising and pasteurising process she explains it fully on her website. Her website is well worth a read as it helps to dispel myths and educate customers to understand what they are placing into their sacred bodies.
Why Jess's Ladies?
Organic what does this mean in cow milk? Organic cows’ milk, is making sure what the cows are munching is carefully managed through crop rotations to avoid pests and disease rather than through pesticides. Helping to aid the soil health through gentle movement to avoid overgrazing and allowing a variety of species the time and conditions to thrive. The more abundant the biodiversity in a field, the broader the range of nutrients being consumed, the healthier the cow, and the tastier the milk.
One more reason to love her business model. At Foodloose we are a shop focusing on allowing people to live with less plastic in their lives. Jess’s Milk currently uses plastic, on her website she acknowledges the controversial plastic use, keeping her customer base informed as to why in the current climate she needs to use plastic packaging to operate her business commercially. We as a small business run into these ethical issues all the time, where we have an ideal but sometimes it’s better to start stepping in the direction of perfection than to not make the step at all. It is the beautiful dance of trying to be an ethical business.
Where to buy?
The Natural Grocery Store, 150-156 Bath Rd, Cheltenham. GL53 7NG
Portway Farmshop, Upton St.Leonards, Gloucester. GL4 8DP
The Green Shop, Frampton on Severn, Gloucester. GL2 7EP
Eastington Farmshop, Middlehall farm, Bath Road, Stonehouse. GL10 3AY
Gloucester Services and Farmshop, M5 North and South between junctions 11a and 12
