Where the milk comes from

The milk we deliver comes from animals on this farm. We are not buying it in from a collection centre and putting our name on it, which is the ordinary arrangement for a dairy this size and the thing that most changes what ends up in the bottle.

We keep both buffaloes and cows, because the two milks do different jobs in a kitchen and most households here want some of each. Buffalo milk is thicker and is what the chai and the kheer want; cow milk is lighter and is more often the one drunk plain.

Whatever is not delivered as milk is made into something else here, on the same day, from the same milk. Dahi is set, chach is churned from that dahi, and ghee is made in small batches.

Nothing is held back overnight for the next day's round. That is not a policy so much as a constraint - fresh milk with nothing added to it does not keep well enough to allow anything else, which is the same reason it tastes the way it does.

Everything goes out on one round across Jalore City, to the door, every morning. We serve one city rather than stretching a van across the district, and that is the reason the milk reaches you the morning it was collected rather than the morning after.

It also means that when you ask whether we reach your street, you get a real answer from someone who drives the round rather than a guess.