Today, we had more of a packed day, with activities from 9-5, but luckily we were able to wake up a little bit later than yesterday. We started out by taking a charter bus to visit the Albert Willig Cheese Manufacturer within a quaint little village. There, we learned about the cheesemaking process and how the company got to its 50th anniversary. The cheese starts out as fresh cow, goat, or sheep’s milk, which is then put in a big vat and heated for half an hour. They add a microbial to thicken the milk as well as culture to make it taste good, which is then stirred with a cutting attachment that splits the milk up into curds. Once they separate the curds from the whey, they are compacted to form the cheese wheel by using a mold. The cheese is removed from the mold and placed in a salt bath for 24 hours, before sitting out to dry on a wooden tray. The last step is to put a thin layer of wax to protect the cheese texture and taste as it ripens. This process is more sustainable than most other instances as there is more consideration put into the ingredients, like free range animals, as well as preserving all of the byproducts, like when they use the whey generated to make beer. We also saw many windmills and wind turbines in the village, which generate electricity from the power of the wind.

Our next activity was to visit the Zuiderzee museum, which consisted of a recreation of an old seaside village and an indoor exhibit. Here, we learned about the life of people living in this village on the shores of Zuiderzee, before a dam was built that dried up all of the canals and stripped them of many materials. They were able to be self-sufficient, as many were during the time, and created their own ingredients and products from what was available. They had plans to combat sickness, especially tuberculosis, where they would put the patient in quarantine in an open outdoor hut that rotated with the sun. They dried fish with salt or smoked it in order to preserve it for longer periods of time. In the indoor portion, we learned a lot more specifically about the culture, like the clothing, and also about the sailboats.