Milk fresh from a tap
It is the freshest milkshake in town and the drive-though menu couldn’t be simpler.
Okoia Valley Milk’s coinoperated vending machine, near Whanganui, attracts enough dairy lovers to sell out on most days.
So who is in the market for raw, unpasturised drive-through milk?
There are loyal locals, novelty experience enthusiasts, and health-conscious dairy drinkers who want milk as fresh and unaltered as they can get it, owners Edo and Anita Mooij said.
A typical day during calving sees the Mooijs milk 14 cows to produce 200 litres of milk, which they sell for $2.30 a litre.
‘‘We sell less than that but we we have also got 11 calves to feed at the moment, so we try to overproduce,’’ Edo Mooij said.
The excess goes to feeding the calves and pigs which, along with a productive vegetable garden, beef cattle and milk-bartering for eggs, keep the Mooijs’ pantry well stocked.
They have also installed solar panels on the milkshed roof to round out their sustainability endeavours.
Edo Mooij built his eight-cow milking shed five years ago with a friend. He got the idea while on holiday in Takaka where he saw Village Milk’s raw milk dispenser in action.
‘‘So I thought, aw, see if I can try that over here.
‘‘Maybe I can lease some land but I couldn’t lease any land. ‘‘So we had to buy in the end.’’ Edo Mooij has a background in dairy farming but gave it up to become a dog groomer for 12 years.
Dealing with increasingly fluffy designer dogs renewed his enthusiasm for cows, and he was working for another farmer when he decided build his drivethrough shed.
The Mooijs started out small with an aim to become selfemployed.
‘‘First, we started to rear more calves. We just milked cows to feed calves, rear them and sell them. Then we started to sell more milk so we didn’t even have to rear that many calves any more.’’
They soon found they were selling out and as the milk flowed, Edo Mooij was able to leave his job and his wife followed, stepping away from her role as a carer for the elderly not long after.
Happy cows are part of the plan for the Mooijs. They have 23 cows and want to maintain that number to keep up with demand.
‘‘What I wanted was a small herd. It is more labour intensive but it is a lot more rewarding.
‘‘I have a lot more time for the animals.’’
The Mooijs have four calvings per year so they can keep their cow numbers small and milk consistent amounts.
When the cows enter the shed, first they are cleaned with water from dropper hoses. They are then washed with a cloth using warm water and bleach.
Soap is used to wash their udders and another cloth is used to take the soap off. Then they are dried with paper towels.
‘‘So they are as clean as you are when you wash your hands,’’ Edo Mooij says.
He wears gloves and sleeves, ‘‘so that I don’t transfer my bugs to them’’ and milks through a tea sieve to check the milk initially.
Everyday, half the herd gets checked for somatic cell count, which is an indicator of mastitis, to monitor their udder health.
The milk then gets filtered and chilled ‘‘and you pump it straight from there into your bottle’’.
The milk for the calves they rear goes straight into a bucket instead of the system, so that it is kept warm for them.
The Mooijs say the raw milk is getting more popular with healthconscious customers.
‘‘People don’t want the processed food,’’ Edo Mooij said.
He said people particularly wanted to avoid homogenised milk. ‘‘They do start to wake up to the fact that all this processed stuff is not really the way food should be consumed.
‘‘Some people are concerned about raw milk but we have had test results back that we can’t improve on.’’
The Mooijs have no plans to expand, life looks good in Okoia Valley and there is enough complication as it is, Edo Mooij said.
‘‘I would have liked to keep it simple but it doesn’t seem to be possible in this life to keep things simple, there will always be something to complicate it.’’