STATE CURDLES MILK SALES.(Local)

Byline: Fred LeBrun

Personally, I've always been suspicious of milk. For one thing, it mixs very poorly with dry vermouth. But I will concede there still are those who prefer moo juice to CranAppleCabbage and the myriad strange combos on Price Chopper shelves.

However, according to Gary Lamb of Hawthorne Farms in Ghent, there is roughly a third less milk consumed these days than a decade ago. That ought to alarm somebody. Dairy farmers certainly, and also our difficult-to- fathom state Department of Agriculture and Markets.

Lamb, who naturally enough runs a dairy farm, doesn't have much use for the Ag Department. If the truth be told, neither do most …