Amish Butter from Missoula,MT

Anyone know anything about this product?    I can't find fresh butter anywhere local but just discovered this at Food Lion.  2 lbs for $9.99.  A little pricey but worth it as I do get local raw milk and have made butter myself but it's a big tedious mess for a single person to make just 1/4 lb at a time.  There's not much description on the package other than "kosher" and pasteurized cream.  I'm hoping one of you Missoula people knows whether they are using organic pastured, humanely raised cows and non-chemical processing?  

found this: not sure if its true or not though

as to "Amish butter" - you'll like never get butter made by an Amish farm anymore. the requirements for pasteurization, etc., pretty much preclude open commerce. I can get raw cream to make my own butter, but I have to park the car on the road and walk down to the barn.....
the term is now loosely applied to batch processed (ie in a mechanical churn) versus continuous processing, plus hand working the butter after it comes out of the churn, and of course, the "log roll" style packaging

amish country roll butter website in MT

That sounds about right, bernetta. Our Hutterites (Amish-like people) can't legally sell a lot of their value-added products in several stores for the reasons in that quote; health guidelines, machine requirements, legalities, etc.

There is likely someone around you that makes butter/cheese on a small scale as well as the Amish do. I'd ask around and see if you can find a local producer who fits those requirements - they'll likely sell to you without the huge markup that FoodLion does also.

if anyones interested in what makes food kosher or not: found this link very informative.
(kosher is jewish not amish)
kosher food

Yep, y'all are confirming my suspicion that this is just gimmicky labeling by a mass producer.   The combination of sales in a major mid-price chainstore, green paper label, "Amish", "Kosher",   all buzzwords that marketers are exploiting.   There's also Kerry Gold from Ireland that's supposedly a quality product but I've come to the cynical conclusion that anything sold in a major chain store is going to be dead food or heavily processed.    And then there's the glyphosphate found in cows milk in Ben&Jerry's ice cream.....

NC is a "pets only" state for raw milk and no cow sharing.  So it's hard to find around my city.   My farmer sells yogurt and panier (both pasteurized), but not raw butter because he has large demand for just cream.  I'm following Weston Price Real Milk activities but I figure as long as I have access to the milk at least, they need to focus their resources on states that don't allow any sales.   When the political challenges in my state calm down a bit (ha ha)  I'll try to reactivate our local chapter to lobby for sales for human consumption.

I looove me some butter, so I guess it's back to shakin' my cream jar, lol!

Most commercial herds are Holstein cows. Jersey cow milk has more cream than Holstein milk. We sell cow shares of our Jersey cows. A cow share costs $30 a month. Folks don't buy the milk, they own the cow for one month. ...So, that means they pay for the upkeep and feed for the cow for the month. The cow produces (about) four gallons a share, so "theoretically" it could be kinda thought of as "costing" a cow owner $7.50 for a gallon of milk. From a gallon of Jersey milk, we can get roughly a half pound of butter. So our four gallons of jersey milk would produce about 2 lbs. of butter a month. That is more than you would get from a Holstein.

If you let un-homogenized milk sit for a bit, the cream will rise to the top of a wide mouth container. Carefully skim the cream off and put it in a churn or even just a canning jar with lid. Churn or shake the cream till it clumps. Remove the clumps and "work" it with a flat spoon or spatula while rinsing it with cold water, to remove any remaining butter milk. Once all butter milk and water are pressed out, butter is shelf stabile at cool room temperature for six months. Add salt and/or herbs or honey to taste, if desired. One added bonus of using raw milk for butter making is that you have the ability to 'culture' the cream by letting it sit at room temperature for 12+ hours, which allows the beneficial bacteria to grow, producing a vastly nutritionally superior product- with more absorbable calcium, vitamin A, E and D. Definitely worth a try.

SO, according to the costs of our cow shares and the ability to make about 2 lbs. of butter from a persons share of the cow, your ability to buy 2 lbs. of "natural" butter for $9.99 sounds like an incredible deal. --That alone makes it sound slightly suspicious to me. But since prices are set according to the economy of scale, it's possible. Although very likely you are getting butter from a large commercial plant, with milk coming from large commercial herds. Our advice to you is now and again buy more milk at a time and use all of it to make butter. And use the "left over" skim milk to make cheese. Then you'll have more to show for your efforts on your butter making days.

P.S. Our family was Amish until G. Granddad got shunned for marrying a Hutterite. Of all the Amish families we know, and we know many, none of them make butter. We have two of the largest Amish communities in the U.S. within an hour (by car). There are cheese factories where Amish and Mennonites work, but the factories themselves are owned by "english".

---We welcome wwoofer's and folks looking to join an I.C.  www.stonegardenfarm.com www.ohiofarmmuseum.com