Jorasz Family Ranch

Michigan regulation stops a dairy farmer selling raw milk straight to a neighbour, so the Joraszes run the farm as a private membership association instead. Members buy a share of the Brown Swiss dairy herd, pay board towards their cow's feed, milking and care, and collect their own fresh whole raw milk at the farm on their set day each week. The cattle are registered Brown Swiss, tested to confirm they carry the A2 protein. The farm is listed with the Raw Milk Institute, which it earned by passing an audit of its milk collection and bottling, and it says it is the only listed raw milk dairy in the Upper Peninsula.

Andy is a fourth generation dairy farmer, forty years in, and still works full time at the original family dairy his family started down the road in Wilson, Michigan in 1915. Alongside the milking herd the family pasture raise 100% grass fed Angus beef cattle, American bison and laying hens. From late spring to early autumn the animals are rotationally grazed across more than 35 acres of regeneratively managed pasture that is not sprayed or treated with anything beyond the herd's own manure, and through the Michigan winter they are fed unsprayed hay Andy bales himself. Their four children help with the animals, and the two youngest milk the cows together several nights a week.