You know, I think I know a bit about milk. I've drunk quite a bit of it, growing up on a dairy farm and all, and I buy quite a lot of it, my two smallies being a little addicted (we've cut back from 15+ litres a week now, it got a bit out of control.)

So it's weird, for me, being so confused by the milk aisle at Woolies. 

I called Dad, fourth generation dairy farmer, and asked him why all the full cream milk, which looks pretty much the same, comes at such varying cost. The home brand stuff is at one end and Dairy Farmers is at the other.

Dad was no help at all.

He agreed: full cream milk (i.e. not organic, which has a different process, and not a low fat or high protein or anything special) is full cream milk. It's not something that gets messed around with. It comes out of cows, goes into a vat, gets pumped into a tanker then goes to a factory for bottling. 

He suggested looking at the labels to see the makeup, the fat content etc. Maybe it was different.

Nup. It's all pretty much identical.

Now, I'm the first to profess some serious brand loyalty. We supplied our milk to Dairy Farmers all those years (Dad's retired now and has sold the herd.) And my cousin, a dairy farmer, was once in the Dairy Farmers TV ads. AND the lovely Farmer currently on the Dairy Farmers label is Martin, brother in law to a friend of ours from Camden. So he's virtually family. So do we buy the milk 'coz we like pulling Martin out of the fridge first thing in the morning? The home brand stuff is significantly cheaper.

Curious.

And this leads me to my old-lady hot drink of choice at this time of night: hot milk with cinnamon, a teaspoon of sugar and a few drops of vanilla. I'm such a nanna, I love it. Going to get Martin out of the fridge now. (Because it used to be our milk. And I like his hat.)

xxx