Organic farms : buying direct from the farmer

I sometimes buy from Bidni Organic Farm, The Veg Box and from Vincent Eco Farm - mainly when an eco event takes place or whey it happens that I'm passing there.

Matm,

From Bidni, can you buy in small quantities?

We get ours delivered weekly from Sicily from Barbuto

Hi Volcane,
Thanks for the reply.

I`d read about Barbuto, and I like their website.
Any reason you prefer using them, rather than Malta grown organic produce?

I haven’t found consistent local growers with wide variety. And just generally worry of Malta farmers, conditions here aren’t conducive to growing without pesticides etc

Barbuto delivers to my door free of charge even milk (milk here is awful) so quite happy with it. It’s organic so sometimes quality can be better but on the whole we are satisfied

I have never found the milk here to be awful.

GozoMo wrote:

I have never found the milk here to be awful.

It’s watered down meh, speak to your local restaurant worker and ask how much they hate frothing cappuccino with it

Science behind how mill steaming works quickly tells you if milk has been messed with or is low quality. Milk from elsewhere just don’t compare

These small local shops are also to blame. They do t put out their freshest stock they keep he oldest in the fridge so you get a few days only. Not all mind you but many do

When bena brought out the new branding recently all shops stocked fresh milk day 1 and on those days the quality of bena was noticibly different.

We get milk from Barbuto once a week and it lasts all week. Impossible with what most shops sell.

If your shop sells actual fresh bena it’s probably allright.

volcane wrote:

I haven’t found consistent local growers with wide variety. And just generally worry of Malta farmers, conditions here aren’t conducive to growing without pesticides etc

Barbuto delivers to my door free of charge even milk (milk here is awful) so quite happy with it. It’s organic so sometimes quality can be better but on the whole we are satisfied

The milk is perfectly OK, the milk I would not want to drink is so called organic milk which certainly would not be safe to drink a week later!

Ray

F0xgl0ve wrote:

The milk is perfectly OK, the milk I would not want to drink is so called organic milk which certainly would not be safe to drink a week later!

Ray

Yes obviously the Barbuto milk as treated and proper as per laws require.

Thank you all for the responses.

Re: milk. I live in Tokyo, and buy from 2 organic shops.
They both have several organic milk brands. The best milk we`ve found is from grass-fed cows.
It is treated (as all organic milk is, I think), and has a 1 week expiry date. Some organic milk
I`ve tried tastes like bog-standard supermarket milk; other organic milk is `rich`, almost as
though it were a different product.

The reason I`m getting granular on milk is that, as I get old, I want to maintain decent calcium levels to  help my bones and joints. I hike a lot. I also think the information may help other posters on this site (I`ve had a lot of help myself on this forum, without being able to give back much).

Also, organic is a question of degree. Vegetables here in Japan have information stickers with degrees of chemical reduction: broccoli 50% cut; okra 70% cut etc. Kale 100% cut is yellow in 3 days. It may be worth checking chemical cut levels on organic company websites, if they supply it. Or on Malta, asking the farmer directly, if he/she is honest enough to tell you.

Re milk: I personally don't like milk that much (only in my cereals, and even there mostly mixed with yoghurt), so I'm no expert on that. I actually even prefer the UHT milk they sell in Italy or Spain (the one that has an expiry date of a month or so) to fresh milk...

BUT my wife and children drink a lot of milk, I think about 2 litres a day in total - and they all confirmed that the milk in Malta (Halib Frisk, I think from Benna) tastes as good as the fresh milk (i.e. packed and from the supermarket) we buy in Austria (and Austria is a huge milk producer, so I guess it's good milk...)

In Austria my wife also sometimes buys milk directly from the farmer - but that is something I would never drink...

As for why fruit and veg might be better from Sicily rather than from Malta, I agree with volcane: The dry and hot summers make it hard for farmers to grow anything without a bit of chemical help...

Thanks for the useful comments, Bernie.

regarding milk or other dairy products, can be also a matter of taste, which can differ from one person to another.
In my opinion, a good milk = cow + fresh grass ( or hay ) . Have you seen fresh grass ( hay ) around Malta, which could be enough to sustain all the milk demand ? 
Overall, it's pretty expensive to have good quality  food here.

nicknamero wrote:

regarding milk or other dairy products, can be also a matter of taste, which can differ from one person to another.
In my opinion, a good milk = cow + fresh grass ( or hay ) . Have you seen fresh grass ( hay ) around Malta, which could be enough to sustain all the milk demand ? 
Overall, it's pretty expensive to have good quality  food here.

indeed, exactly this. 14 000 cows in malta producing milk, all stuck indoors.

volcane wrote:

indeed, exactly this. 14 000 cows in malta producing milk, all stuck indoors.

This is the reason, why there are so many cars on the streets 
Many garages are used for breeding and growing animals ... passing by some of them smells like farm holidays 

I doubt that there is something like "real organic farming" in Malta since you need to keep a certain distance to "regular" agriculture, and this cannot be provided here. I know from Austria the frustration of many organic farmers having fields with regular plants next to them, distributing their seeds everywhere. Same arguments always come up between farmers growing regular plants and the ones testing genetically manipulated sorts.

Dont know why people drink cows milk,  cows milk is for baby cows.

Freedomwanter wrote:

Dont know why people drink cows milk,  cows milk is for baby cows.

I agree! Cows' milk is only for "silly cows"... People should actually drink sheep's milk - as most of them are sheep