We have been talking about delivering unpasteurised milk though the food hub for some time, and it now looks as though there is a possibility we may be able to do it, but before we start detailed discussions with the producer and environmental health we need to know that there is sufficient interest from our shoppers, and that there might be some of you who are interested in doing an occasional drive to collect it.

We have found a farmer near Ledbury who is selling unpasteurised milk from his jersey herd. A number of us have tried the milk and it is delicious, with a nice layer of cream on the top, like milk used to be before they started treating it so heavily before bottling. We have found the milk keeps perfectly well in a fridge for up to a week so there is no reason why you could not order a full week,s supply for your household, and we understand that it can also be frozen. For more information about the farm look on his website: johnsjerseys.co.uk. He is happy to supply us with milk though may not be able to handle a really big new order until the autumn as he has a lot of cows in calf at the moment.

The problem is that we will need someone to go and collect the milk each week on a Friday morning, it is about a 70 mile round trip as the farm is located between Ledbury and Malvern. Are you willing to become part of a rota of volunteers who would be willing to do this journey every couple of months or so? ( Expenses would be paid). Or do you know anyone who is driving regularly from Malvern to the Forest who might be willing to collect the milk for us? To make it work with volunteers we probably need about 8 people to volunteer to do a trip every couple of months.

But this will cost the hub over £30 a week so it would only work if we have  sufficient orders to cover the cost of the journey, and we really need people to make regular orders.  So we need to know, would you be interested in putting in a regular order for milk and if so how many litres would you order each week?

Please contact Judith on Judith_williams-1@tiscali.co.uk with your responses to the questions above  within the next couple of weeks and if there is sufficient interest she will then do some detailed costings, talk to our local environmental health officer, and hopefully get this new product onto the food hub.