The Tragedy of Milk Rationing

by Ruby Bashant
September 22

Dear Reader,

Picture this: After a long day of class, with the sun getting lower in the sky, your stomach starts to grumble with hunger.  A bell rings out across camp, signifying dinner is ready, and as you and your fellow Arcadians pile onto the kitchen porch to wash hands, a delicious aroma wafts out of the open doors.  As everyone finds a seat, your nose hairs start to tingle with anticipation for the meal.  The cooks present a savory display of pasta with homemade, cheesy tomato sauce.  Plates get passed around and people reach over and under each other to fill them with food.  As you dig in, a voice chimes in from across the table.  “This is for sure a milk meal”, says Arcadian Meg.  Others nod in agreement and you get up from the table to fetch the magnificent bottle from the fridge.  As you walk through the kitchen, you feel a quench of thirst only one beverage can satisfy, milk.  You throw open the fridge door to find… no dairy milk.  The whole meal is ruined in an instant, your thirst remains, and the table will spend the rest of the night unsatisfied. 

Milk, like most food at Arcadia, is a bit challenging to obtain.  With our yurt village off-the-grid in the woods, and the nearest town (Tupper Lake) a 20 minute drive away, getting groceries is hard work.  Most of the food consumed at Arcadia is from local businesses.  We get our vegetables fresh weekly from Dan Kent at Kent Family Growers.  We get our meat from North Country Creamery.  Other odds and ends, like milk, however, are purchased at grocery stores in the surrounding area.  It would be impractical to leave to do a grocery run any day of the week.  Instead we do a town run every other week, and in the meantime as the directors come in from their days off they bring a few necessities if they are able.  As Jake (the director of the Adirondack Semester) says, the point of this experience is to get away from a culture of convenience and move towards one of simplicity.  This deliberate simplification teaches us to cook with what we have rather than rushing to the store to get particular items for meals.  At times however, this lesson still gets lost on us. 

Milk demand at Arcadia started to get out of control on week 2.  What started as our group of 12 consuming 3 gallons a week turned into us blowing through more than 2 gallons a day!  I have been an avid mild drinker since childhood, so drinking mild here only seemed natural.  Others quickly joined the fad.  Meg noticed the milk on the table and decided it would be more fun to drink than water.  Considering that mild is the only cold beverage here it has some serious pull.  This might have been the draw for Cooper as well who says he never drank milk outside Arcadia.  When asked why he started, Cooper simply stated, “I don’t know… it’s nice.”  Amelia’s answer was similar, while others say that milk holds nostalgia.  Sam was forced to drink milk when he grew up, so when he saw everyone drinking it here he felt the urge to drink milk again.  Callie put it the simplest: “Some people say mild drinking is choice.  It was never a choice for me.  I popped out of the womb like this.”

Not all Arcadians are dairy consumption, Darlenne clearly and passionately stated, “Not a big milk drinker.” No other comment was given.  Abhainn says that they really want to like milk but they just cannot get behind it.  Even some of the non-dairy folks tried to join the milk craze.  Berit was intrigued by the happiness that milk drinkers would share over a full glass.  She was sold, drinking four consecutive glasses during one meal.  Berit spent the rest of that night, as she put it, “pregnant with twins.”  Another non-dairy mild drinker, Arianna, tells me that she grew up with non-dairy mild.  She tried to jump on the bandwagon as well, but fell to similar fate as Berit.  These attempts to join the fad show that the joy that dairy milk brings is crucial to our community.  Non-milk drinker Campbell put it best: “If you take away mild, what else do we have to live for…nothing.”

I am writing today, however, to tell of the doom and dread that has fallen over Arcadia.  Due to overdemand, me and my fellow milk consumers have been put on a milk ration.  Gone are the times when I could drink five glasses of milk at dinner.  Now we are limited to only one gallon a day.  Only one person can pull us out of these hard times and lift the milk ration.  We must band together, Arcadians and readers alike, to fight this cruelty.

So let me end by painting you a happier picture.  A deliciously beautiful meal is placed before you.  Your throat feels dry and you know what it wants.  You walk over to the fridge, thrust open the door…and there it is, in all its glory, milk.  The table is instantly happy and everyone goes to sleep satisfied.

Sincerely,

Ruby Bashant
(milk enthusiast)

*disclaimer from the writer: this work of art is a gag.  I fully understand the one gallon of milk per day is more than enough.