Katwoude holds, without a doubt, my favorite memories from this trip. We elected to stay in a guest house on a cheese farm and had the quintessential rural Dutch experience.
Katwoude has considerably more cows than human inhabitants. It is amazing to see them line up twice a day for milking, as if they can tell time?
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This cow must be used to having her picture taken,
obviously shooting for the cover of a cheese magazine!
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The cheese farm was actually next door to our wonderful guest house. It is a family farm and worked very hard by the entire family. While the Dad was in the process of the afternoon milking and we were being nosey, the Mom graciously offered to show us the process and give us a great tour of the entire operation.
These cows are a mixture of three lines bread specifically for their milking characteristics and demeanor.
The cows are fed during milking. This is a family farm. So it is small, I imagine, but they are able to milk about 16 or so at the same time. The milk is sampled several times per year to regulate quality. I assumed that the eventual product was Edam cheese, since the town is only 4.5 miles away. However, this girl's milk goes into another type of local cheese which we sampled but I cannot remember the name.
There were plenty of babies to see on our tour as well. This little guy was born while we were there and is only one day old in this picture! 
This is the sweet little guest house attached to our host, Fre's home in back. Fre and her family made the visit special as well. Fre has twin 5 year old boys and since they were leaving in their caravan for a two week vacation, they let Chase and Carly borrow their bicycles. This was awesome because Carly actually learned to ride without training wheels while we were there!
Proud Carly and Stuntman Chase!
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| Carly and the twins |
The guest house was literally attached with a door. It seemed that the boys normally have the run of both homes and were a little confused when we wanted them to all play outside rather than in our rental. They only spoke Dutch, but that didn't stop all four of them from having a great time!
Playing on the Polder
