I’m feeling pretty old-school these days.  We bought a house that’s 150 years old.  I don’t have a microwave anymore.  My grandmother wants to give me a butter churn.  And we have a milkman.

Yes, that’s right.  We have a milkman.  His name is Stan.  Stan the milkman.  I’ve never met Stan but I heart him oh so much.  Not just because I enjoy saying that I have a milkman, not just because our weekly dairy delivery is always on time and neatly done, but also because thanks to Stan, I don’t worry nearly so much about running out of butter (a constant trouble previously, what with all the baking I do) and I spend less time battling crowds at the store.  Yay!

How did I arrange this magnificent thing, you ask?  Well actually, Josh arranged it.  Through Calder Dairy.

If you don’t know about Calder Dairy, now is a great time to get educated, especially if you live in Michigan.  Calder is a local, family-owned dairy farm and around here you can often find their glass-bottled (!!!!!!!) milk and delicious stacks of butter in various stores, like the Ypsi Co-op or Whole Foods or Busch’s.  Their milk is delicious, as is their butter.  But they also have home delivery, which means that if you live near a route, you can arrange to have milk, cream, buttermilk, eggnog, butter, yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs, bread, even ice cream…and lots more….delivered straight to your house.

This is how our delivery works:

• Josh called and set up an account and an initial order with Calder.  You can decide what products you want, how much and how often.  Right now, weekly we get 2% milk, a pint of chocolate milk (Josh’s fave), buttermilk, cream and eggs.  Biweekly, we get a pound and a half of butter.
• You can easily adjust your order—just call by at least the day before, or leave a note for your delivery guy for the following week.  I realized after a few weeks that I actually really need a pound and a half of butter every week.  I know that sounds like a lot, but you know, that’s only three batches of cookies.  But I need cream less because I just don’t use it enough.  So we make adjustments as we go along.
• A couple days before our first delivery, Stan called and introduced him to Josh, which was nice.  They worked out the details of where we wanted the delivery placed and anything else he’d need to know.  The delivery guys are basically contractors who sign up for routes.  There just might be one near you too!
• Our delivery comes every Friday, during the day.  Since we’re usually at work, we arranged to have him drop off the delivery in a cooler.  You can leave your cooler on your front porch, back porch, anywhere you want.  Ours is hidden a bit for safety and shelter.  Friday morning, we fill it with some ice packs and put it in its usual location—if we have empty glass bottles from the previous week, we add those in, too, to be returned.  Friday afternoon, we come home and there’s our milk!  Woohoo.
• We get billed once a month; he leaves it in the cooler with our delivery.  We put a check back in there the next week, although there are other ways to pay as well.  There’s a $2 a week delivery fee, which is fine for me because we noticed the prices on each item are a bit less than they are in the stores around us.

it's so cute and little!

So that’s my milk delivery.  I love it.  I should also mention that Calder did not give me anything to write this review, I just adore the dairy delivery thing so much I had to share it.  I love it because:

1. I love Calder’s milk.  It’s good quality milk, and I like supporting local food producers.  Plus you can even visit the Calder farm and see the operation for yourself.
2. It’s retro.  Sure, newspaper delivery has gone, well, off the curb.  But you can still get your milk!
3. It’s convenient.  I like grocery shopping but I hate grocery shoppers.  I try not to do it whenever possible.  I use Alice for household supplies.  I have a Needle Lane farm share that I pick up at the Depot Town Farmer’s Market, which is mere blocks from my house.  I go to the Depot Town, Ypsi, Ann Arbor and Detroit farmer’s markets.  I use Etsy for gifts, personal items and decorations.  And now I have a Calder dairy delivery.

It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Did I mention they also deliver bread?