Above: The De Smet family an a happy cow. Photographs by Ungelbah Dávila Shivers.
If you’ve ever wanted to taste milk like it was when your grandparents were children, now you can. De Smet Dairy, established in 1949 by Landon De Smet, is the only dairy in New Mexico serving up Grade A raw milk from grass-fed, free-range cows. You know those commercials with happy mama cows and their big-eared babies, lulling in sun-filled fields of grass up to their knees? Well, those do exist, on a 126-acre dairy in Bosque Farms.
New Mexico is one of a handful of states that allow the sale of raw milk. What this means for the De Smet family is the opportunity to sell unpasteurized and unhomogenized milk in its most natural form. Every bottle has a delicious cream top, full of essential active enzymes and beneficial bacteria, created from a nutrient-rich diet of grass and wild vegetation, making De Smet milk a natural, ethical option for the health-conscious dairy queen and king.
The dairy, which is now owned and operated by third-generation farmer Michael De Smet, his wife, Erica, and their sons, Landon and Logan, is also unique in that it allows the mother cows to feed their babies as nature intended. They also let the fields experience a more natural life by not tilling or otherwise disturbing the land. Rather, the cows graze and fertilize, boosting soil nutrients and promoting soil carbon sequestration, a process in which CO2 remains stored in the soil and not in the atmosphere.
De Smet Dairy
2405 McNew Road, Bosque Farms
505-350-9075