Smooth as butter....

A curious thing I discovered about food this week is about butter. Specifically, who makes butter.
I had understood that all butter available was pretty much only from large multinationals, such as Parmalat and Nestle, and finding local conventional butter would be next to impossible. Organic butter, of course, is always easy to find, and is definitely local.
However, a farmer had pointed out to me that Gay Lea/Nordica is actually a farmers' co-operative, that is so say, the farmers own the company, and they pool their resources together to produce and market their own goods. This is great! That means buying Gay Lea brand butter is actually helping farmers directly, and one by-passes the multinationals entirely.
Of course, this also implies one should eschew margarine entirely. Margarine is a pointless, ugly, non-food product.
What I don't understand is why they haven't marketed that more clearly; in this day and age of wanting more local, closer-to-the-ground food, you'd figure they would be all over that market. At any rate, that knowledge has changed my butter-buying habits from here on in.
Well, it would have, had not I mentioned my desire to find some real, home-churned butter up here. When I mentioned that, one person up here brought me a large tub of home-churned butter. A very large tub. However, she warned me it wouldn't really taste like butter, and likely would taste more like cheese. She said likely it would evoke more of a Heidi-and-her-grandfather-on-the-mountain-eating-bread-and-butter-slathered-all-over-it kind of experience. I haven't had the opportunity to try it yet, but am bringing it home and looking forward to it.