Homeschooling field trip- How Cheese is Made

We went on a cool field trip on Friday, June 6th to see how cheese is made! We went to the Winchester Cheese Company and Dairy. All the cheese is Gouda cheese and was very yummy!

It was not close, took over 2 hours each way but we did have fun. We spent about 4 hours there so that with driving home took up almost the whole day.

We had a video to watch of the cheese being made. A tour of the building that makes the cheese (they were not making cheese that day), a tour of where the cheese is left to age, we visited all the cows and the place they are taken to be milked. AND we even got to see a barn owl very high up on the top of the hay building. I took some photos but it owl was so far away and in a dark spot so it was hard to see.

The kids loved the cheese tasting the best. They got to try 4 different kinds with some cinnamon pretzel sticks and apple slices.

Little D did not like the fact that all the cows had their horns surgecially removed. According to our tour guide 'they had a little surgery when they were very young'. Little D thought that the bulls shouldn't have to go through pain like that. I explained the pros and cons to it and he thinks the people should have had to watch being gourged rather then the cattle suffer from the surgery.

Another down side is the price of $6 per person. Seeing how much money they made in sales when the tour was done (guessing about $1000 or more) I think the tours should have been free or cheaper or credited back when someone made a min. purchase. BUT I bought 4 different types of cheese, garden, mild, sharp aged and smoked. I also bought a cheese making kit to make ricotta or mozzarella cheese. The kit was $22 but it makes 30 batches of cheese and looks easy and like lots of fun.

http://www.winchestercheese.com/index.html


I had other things that I had wanted to do this day. There was a storage unit auction in Simi that I wanted to go to to see if there was any good things for eBay but I decided that sometimes I have to skip the things I need to do and let the kids have a day too!