We need our own cow(s)

It amazes me how much children like milk.  Wait, not like milk, love milk.  Especially my kids.  They really just need one of those water bottles that you put on the side of hamster cages just full of milk, so in essence like a never-ending supply.  I can't feel bad though because above all else it's healthy for you and has vitamins and minerals.   

When you deliver a baby they really should tell you that in a few short years it will be more financially beneficial to you if you just buy a cow for all of the milk and cheese that your children are going to consume.  For just adding two small children to our family, it seems like we buy at least twice the amount of milk and cheese that we did before we had kids.   

On a normal week where the kids will be at home the majority of the time, we will need 3 gallons of milk.  Now granted during the week days we are supplying three children two and under with milk, but that still is a lot of milk.  And Isabella could eat cheese morning, noon and night so we always have a drawer full of cheese in our fridge.  I swear that we are single-handedly keeping the dairy industry alive right now with all of the milk that we drink. 

Corry and I have never really been into milk as adults.  Every so often one of us will get a craving for milk but rarely.  We would be good to drink a half gallon before it would go bad.  We really only bought milk if we had a recipe that required milk.  I knew once we had children that we would consume more milk as a family but I never anticipated that we would drink this much.  We really only ate milk with cereal and things like this.  I used to LOVE milk growing up and I don't care what anyone says - there was nothing that beat a cold glass of chocolate milk.  But as an adult, I just found milk to have this odd taste and left this weird film feeling in my mouth - blech. 

We have been having conversations recently about looking into local or raw milk since there are currently attempts to add aspartame to milk products without notifying the consumers.  We are vehemently opposed to this because we are trying to keep out kids away from aspartame as much as possible.  Unfortunately, with milk that is local or raw milk comes a rather large price tag and we would be looking at spending almost $100 a month if not more just on milk.  I would love to be able to do it and we would do it if we had to but it would be a stretch. 

If you have cows for sale, let me know!