Making Friends and Cheese!

The other day I had the opportunity to meet several American woman who had married Dutch men and had moved here to Holland and are part of an American Expat Online group. They get together sometimes from all over the country and Terri and I went as well. We went to a nearby dairy farm where we made cheese by hand. First we got to watch a video about how they make cheese and then they gave us little shoe covers, aprons and hair nets to wear while we made the cheese. Yes - it was not my best look but we had fun! We stood over buckets of milk, which turned into curds and whey as we went through the steps in making cheese. Mostly we just stirred, and stirred and stirred. But we chatted and got to know each other during the process and it was a good time. Then we went out for a tour of the farm and to see the cows. (It smelled like Laveen!) Anyway, afterwards while our cheese was being pressed, (the process of squeezing out all the liquid and making it into a wheel shape), we sat and had tea together. We are thinking about getting together for a holiday thing, and we talked a bit about the International Christmas Service that our church puts on every year. When we left we each had a small wheel of cheese that we have to salt twice and flip over every day for the next 2 weeks and then it apparently is supposed to be edible - I suppose we'll see :)Terri looks so fashionable in our cheese making gear!This is what it looked like before we started
Some of the ladies stirring and draining out the whey
This was a baby cow that had just been born that morning, the farmer told us that it was too bad it was a boy cow - I didn't want to ask what that means at a dairy farm!
Leaving with cheese in hand, Kimmie, Bobbie Jo, Terri, Laura and Suzzie

So now I have a wheel of hand-made, herb cheese sitting on my bookshelf.