Traders Point Creamery rates a perfect FIVE COWS!

Study finds organic milk contains better nutrients
By Shari Rudavsky shari.rudavsky@indystar.com
A recent study bolsters the argument that the text beneath the white mustache on the well-known ads should be amended to read, "Got organic milk?"
Natural-food aficionados, organic dairy farmers and some nutritionists have long argued that organic milk is healthier than its conventional counterpart because it does not contain substances such as antibiotics.
Now, there's an increasing body of evidence to show that organic milk contains some beneficial substances that other milk lacks.
A recent study by a researcher at Newcastle University (United Kingdom) sheds light on what's so special about organic milk. Cows that graze on real grass and clover produce milk that contains more antioxidants, vitamins and the good-for-you fatty acids.
The study found that the milk of these cows was particularly nutrient-rich in the summer, when they had the greatest access to fresh grass. During this season, the milk contained 60 percent more of the fatty acid CLA.
This finding did not surprise Mark Kastel, co-director of the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based watchdog for the organic industry.
Such thinking has helped draw more consumers to organic milk and through this to more organic products in general, he says.
"The first part is about protecting your health and your family's health by avoiding chemicals that are known to be deleterious," Kastel says.
"There's also a growing body of scientific literature that indicates organic food is healthier for you."
Research shows that organic milk has lower levels of pesticides and fungicides, many of which can be considered to be carcinogens.
Other chemicals found in conventional milk are suspected of triggering developmental problems by mimicking hormones, Kastel says.
So, many households are turning to organic milk.
From 2004 to 2005, sales of organic milk increased by 25 percent, surpassing $1 billion, according to a May 2007 report from the USDA's economic research service. Overall sales of milk remained constant.
But not all organic milk is created equal, the Cornucopia Institute has found. The institute has produced an organic dairy scorecard (using cow icons) to rate organic brands on just how organic they truly are.
Zionsville's Traders Point Creamery, the only Indiana-based one on the list, rates a perfect five cows.
The institute plans to update the scorecard, available at www .cornucopia.org, in the coming month.

A stone quarry in Traders Point

Elvin Wickline was a West Virginian transplanted to Indiana. At the time I met him in 1984 he was in his 70s. He was practicing real estate as a way to make a little money. He had a sign on a piece of property in Traders Point. It was a parcel that my wife and my brother and I would eventually purchase and subdivide for our two homes. An acre for us, an acre for my brother and 3 acres in the floodway of Eagle Creek that was 20 feet lower than the buildable lots that would become our private park. "There's a swamp on the property," Wickline reported when I called the number on the rusty for sale sign situated in the high weeds at the corner of Moore and Lafayette Roads. "And there are plans for a gravel mining operation east of the property," he warned, "so you may have lakefront property in 20 or 30 years." Elvin encouraged us to walk the property on our own and to to be careful of the briars and poison ivy. What we found was a neglected and overgrown parcel that held enormous potential. He showed us a newspaper article that quoted Phillip H. Minton, the attorney for Allied Aggregates, claiming the mineral rights to a 200 acre area east of the parcel of interest extending to Eagle Creek. We bought it anyway. As fate would have it, the mineral rights were terminated after the city persuaded the Baltimore Colts to move in March 1984. In a complicated transaction that transferred park-owned land on West 56th to the Colts for a training facility, the city's Department of Public Works gave their aggregate-laden parcel between West 79th Street and Lafayette Road to Indy Parks for a nature preserve 1986. After negotiating with Wickline and his client, Bob and Patty Barth, for a contract sale, and years before our homes were built, we would spend our weekends at the pond. We ordered a dumpster and filled it with old bikes, broken bottles and rusty cans; junk that dated to a time when neighbors knew they could place trash there without penalty. We fought back the jungle with bow saws, weed whips and axes, and ended long days with weekend bon fires. We camped there and dreamed of one day living permanently nearby. We fished Doug Clark's stocked lake (now Mill Pond), where you had to drive thru a red barn to get to the water, and we relocated a few bass and blue gill. Fast forward to 1990 or 91. The phone rang in our new home on the property. "I'm one of your neighbors on Moore Road. My name is Glidewell. I have lots of memories about that pit in your backyard. Mind if I share them with you?" Within minutes we were in Boz Glidewell's driveway. Boz had lost most of his hearing, due in part to weekends spent wearing a yellow shirt at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, directing traffic and just hanging out. He was nearly blind. Within a few short years he would be gone. But his mind was sharp the day we met. We piled into the car and drove down to the pond, accessing its lane from 79th Street. "Every old road in Pike Township has gravel from this pit. The horses were hitched to wagons and they would back down this ramp," he said, pointing to a gradual incline that led into the water. "There was always a steam shovel over there," he said, motioning toward the southeastern corner of the pond." Another neighbor, Kathy Burden Bewsey, grew up in the 1960's in a house across the street, (at the northeast corner of West 79th and Moore). "One day Jack Myers put a motor boat in the pit and raced it across." Kathy remembered her dad fishing there and bringing home dinner. She recalled riding her bike down a much steeper and gravel-covered 79th street toward the creek before it was raised like a levee and paved with asphalt. Aerial photography from the 1930s shows an active quarry The quarry expands in subsequent aerial photos taken in the '40s, '50s and '60s. At some point in the '60s or early '70s the pond was exhausted and abandoned. It was allowed to fill with water. We swam in its water but don't recommend it. A few years ago we built a dock. Adirondack chairs are nailed to the wood because we tired of fishing them out of the water after a storm. The pond is narrowly visible to West 79th Street. Most motorists drive too fast to know it's there. That's probably just as well.

J. K. Lilly, Jr. and Traders Point area

Josiah Kirby Lilly, Jr. (1893-1966) was the youngest son of J.K. Lilly Sr. He earned a pharmacy degree from the University of Michigan and entered the family business in 1914. He focused on personnel and marketing. Largely through his efforts, Eli Lilly and Company became known for its "personnel-friendly" policies, such as fair wages, benefits for employees, etc. In 1944, J.K., Jr. left the vice-presidency to head the Eli Lilly International Corporation. He became president of Eli Lilly and Company four years later.

He held a great interest in rare books and manuscripts, amassing a large collection of items. His collection was donated to Indiana University in 1956-1957 and became the core of the Lilly Library, the rare book and manuscript repository on the IU-Bloomington campus. Material was also donated to the Indiana Historical Society. Josiah Kirby Lilly, Jr., born in 1893, collected things from the time he was a child, beginning with his movie theater ticket stubs. After finishing college in 1914, he joined the family firm of Eli Lilly and Co. He served in France in WWI where he continued to collect things. After the war he returned to work in the family business and succeeded his brother as president in 1948. Later he became chairman of the board; a position he held until he died.
He continued to work on his collections, amassing 20,000 books and 17,000 manuscripts which he gave to Indiana University. His gold coin collection, 6113 pieces, went to the Smithsonian. The J. K. Lilly, Jr. family residence, the National Historic Landmark Oldfields–Lilly House & Gardens, is on the grounds of the world-renowned Indianapolis Museum of Art. The Lilly House features eight furnished historic rooms on the main level. The majority of these rooms reflect the 1930s period of the Lilly family's occupancy and almost 90 percent of the furnishings and decorative arts objects featured belonged to the Lillys and were used in the home. IMA's gardens and grounds are renowned for their beauty, elegance and history. The 152-acre complex includes: Oldfields, the 26-acre American Country Place estate that once belonged to J.K. Lilly Jr.

In the Traders Point area, Mr. Lilly built rural recreational buildings and amassed large parcels that later became part of the 4,900 acre, municipally owned Eagle Creek reservoir and park. The Lilly family and others who created or modified the Traders Point area’s built environment during the 1930s to 1950s had accumulated wealth before the Great Depression, and their industries and investments were relatively unaffected by its financial disruption. The map above shows the land accumulation that Mr. Lilly and other successful people from Indianapolis had achieved by about 1935 near Traders Point, including the Eagle Creek Park area. Mr. Lilly put some of his land into farming and planted trees on the rest. However, he built only weekend or vacation lodges and outbuildings on the Traders Point area land, (including a now-demolished stable at the northwest corner of West 65th and Dandy Trail) , and retained his primary residence of Oldfields nearer to Indianapolis.

During Mr. Lilly's ownership of land in the area, , Eagle Creek was inaccessible for public recreation, except by permission, for the simple reason that land was privately owned. No parks existed along Eagle Creek until the reservoir and Eagle Creek Park were created in 1968. The original settlement of Traders Point, which had flooded almost annually, was razed to create a spillway for Eagle Creek reservoir. In this map, circa 1935-1940, (above), the name of J. K. Lilly, Jr., as owner is attached to some 1,400 acres south of Traders Point. By 1941, when the land was sold or donated to Purdue University, Eagle Crest Estate (as Lilly called the landholding) included 3,600 acres. It was initially run as a farm, raising grain, soybeans, hay, and hogs, then registered beef and dairy cattle. Lilly made some of the parcels into a nature preserve that he planted with hardwood saplings and stocked with pheasants for hunting. Two rustic lodges with Tudor Revival details are located on 172 acres that Lilly purchased from a C. E. Parker in 1935; and a third, more substantial residence of similar style stands west of Eagle Creek. In spite of the buildings’ potentially early date circa 1910, they are included within the Traders Point's estate-era period of significance 1925-1956. The building pictured above, the park's Nature Center, was the 1930s storage space or library for collections owned by J. K. Lilly, Jr. This is believed to be the true birthplace of the esteemed Lilly Library on the IU campus in Bloomington. If J. K. Lilly, Jr., did not construct this building, he had it remodeled to safeguard his manuscript, coin, and other collections. There is a room-sized safe within the building’s interior, and all windows are fitted with pocket-type sheet-iron shutters that can be slid closed and locked. The center unit of the building has a recently remodeled room with large windows providing a view of the reservoir. (source: Eliza Steelwater, Author of United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form: Rural Historical and Architectural Resources of Eagle Township (Boone County) and Pike Township (Marion County), Indiana, 1820-1956, c. 2006.

Pike Team Named Brain Game Champions!

Competition Results were as follows: First Round - Pike 29, Bloomington North 16; Pike 35, Guerin 8; Second Round - Pike 51, Zionsville 36;Third Round - Pike 48, Lawrence Central 42;Semifinals - Pike 44, defending champion Park Tudor 40;Championship Match - Pike 45, Franklin Central 38 .

Traders Point neighbor and school volunteer extraordinaire, Ann Edwards, has reminded me of a recent acheivement by some of our own.

Congratulations to our outstanding scholars on an exceptional season!!! Pike's Championship winning team was comprised of Andy Johns, Sara Takacs, Barry Weinberg (captain), Sam Weinberg, and alternates Caitlin Barringer and Josh Lee.Brain Game is sponsored by Westfield Insurance and WTHR and is one of the longest-running academic competitions in the United States. Four-person teams compete to answer questions from all subject ares and current events in a single-elimination format. The matches are taped at the Fairbanks Center for Telecommunications at Butler University and are aired on WTHR on Saturday evenings at 7 p.m.

Traders Point's Covered Bridge

Recent flooding destroyed the Moscow Covered Bridge in Rush County. Margaret Weir Smith, President of the Indiana Covered Bridge Society, writes in today's Indianapolis Star about our covered bridges and reminds Traders Point residents of how rare and signficant it is to have a covered bridge. (Traders Point's covered bridge once spanned Fishback Creek on West 86th Street. Safely relocated by preservationists in the early 1960s during the construction of Interstate 65, the bridge is now barely visible to passing motorists. It is located within the southwest quadrant of West 86th Street and Interstate 65 on private property, down a steep gravel drive that plunges nearly 100 feet below the grade of West 86th Street. A Howe truss bridge, it was originally constructed in 1876 and is 88 feet in length. It is registered in the world guide of covered bridges as 14-49-01. It is the only surviving covered bridge in Marion County. )

Reprinted below is an excerpt from Ms. Smith's MY VIEW article: "More than 600 covered bridges were built in Indiana between 1820 and 1922, with the 1880s being the heydey of covered bridge building. Why were these wooden bridges covered? Mainly to protect the flooring and interior from the elements. After the 1880s, more bridges were constructed of iron then later of concrete, materials that were both cheaper and stronger than wood. Time then took its toll on the stately covered bridges of wood. Only 89 remain in Indiana. However, only two states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, have more extant covered bridges. Much information about the bridges is available by going to the website of the Indiana Covered Bridge Society www.countyhistory.com/icbs.