September 12, 2021

Amsterdam with a stop in Kinderdijk 

This is the final leg of our cruising journey - Budapest to Amsterdam.  As we head to Amsterdam, the boat will drop us off at Kinderdijk, a small village in the province of Holland in the Netherlands (Nederlands = low lands in German).  It is located about 9 miles east of Rotterdam.

Kinderdijk is situated in the Alblasserwaard polder at the confluence of the Lek and Noord rivers. To drain the polder, a system of 19 windmills was built around 1740. This group of mills is the largest concentration of old windmills in the Netherlands. The windmills of Kinderdijk are one of the best-known Dutch tourist sites.

Our windmill tour guide kept using the word polder and I had not heard this word before.  She kept referring to the area that gets waterlogged and needs to be drained as polder so I kept substituting in my head her word with "swamp".   So I looked it up and I wasn't too far off:

"Polder is a Dutch word originally meaning silted-up land or earthen wall, and generally used to designate a piece of land reclaimed from the sea or from inland water. It is used for a drained marsh, a reclaimed coastal zone, or a lake dried out by pumping.

The Dutch have a long history of reclamation of marshes and fenland, resulting in some 3,000 polders nationwide. By 1961 6,800 square miles (18,000 km²), about half of the country's land, was reclaimed from the sea. About half the total surface area of polders in north-west Europe is in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands is frequently associated with polders, as its engineers became noted for developing techniques to drain wetlands and make them usable for agriculture and other development. This is illustrated by the saying "God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands"."

It helped me to understand the land situation in Kinderdijk by looking at it's location on a map:

And on this map you can see that it is located not only as a lowland, but between two rivers - the Lek and Noord rivers (whoa, what happened to the Rhine...I am now realizing that we have taken a detour to get here).  It becomes obvious why this area (polder) fills with water - low lands + 2 rivers + ground water + rain (average rainfall is 33 inches).  Pretty soggy area.

And an actual satellite map of Kinderdijk....the blue markers show the location of the windmills and the canals where water is put after draining from the polders.

The Dutch are threatened by flooding from both the sea and from rivers.  To keep low-lying land free of water, they use dikes, which are walls that are built to keep water out.  Along with the dikes, they use continuously operating pumps.  If the pumps stopped, water would eventually seep back into low-lying land.  You can see that the windmills are located along the dykes, feeding water from the lowlands into the dykes.

This whole flood water management system (old and modern) are complicated and interesting but beyond the scope of my blog!  I'd rather just share pictures with you....it was such a beautiful day and showed off the windmills and canals.  Plus we have a cheese factory to go to.

We actually got to visit a working windmill and go inside...the millers (person who controls the windmills) actually reside in the bottom of the windmills.  These are actually functioning mills. It is interesting that the tops of the windmills can be rotated to catch the most wind for efficiency.  The mill that we visited had a garden as well as pets.  Nearly all the mills of Kinderdijk are inhabited by at least one person in possession of a miller’s degree. They are authorized to use these impressive machines for actual milling. Making ends meet, however, still requires a ‘regular’ job. Some are carpenters, some bank employees, and others are teachers.

This might be the original tiny home.  

Steps up to the rotating top of the windmill.  The miller can roll down the canvas on each windmill sails if it is necessary to catch more energy from a mild wind.  Obviously, it the winds are high the canvas needs to be rolled back up.

Thatched garden house.  Thatching used to be the poor mans roofing as it was inexpensive and actually quite insular.  Now a days thatching is expensive and only the wealthy families can afford to have it on their house.

Functioning garden with fruit trees, a flower garden and veggies

Such a brief overview of windmills and life as a miller but we need to move on to our cheese making adventure.  Back to the motor coach and a short travel following on top of a dyke to the farm producing cheese wheels for sale.  Along the way we do see some houses today with thatched roofs.  (these roofs do need to be redone every 10 years or so)

It is a modest farm and actually the milking cows live down the street a short ways.  The milk is delivered directly to the cheese farmer and put into production right away.  (no pasteurization needed if this is the case)

Making cheese is both an art and a science. Cheesemakers rely as much on measurements of pH levels and inoculations of specific molds as they do their own senses of sight, touch, and smell.

There are six important steps in cheesemaking: acidification, coagulation, separating curds and whey, salting, shaping, and ripening.

he first step to making cheese is acidification. During this stage, a starter culture is added to milk that will change lactose (milk sugar) into lactic acid. This changes the acidity level of the milk and begins the process of turning milk from a liquid into a solid

Coagulation is the process of transforming the liquid into a semisolid. When making cheese, an enzyme called rennet is added either as a liquid or paste to further encourage the milk to solidify.

As the milk solidifies, it forms curd and whey. The curds are the solid part and whey is the liquid. In this step, the curds are cut using a knife or a tool that resembles a rake.

Cutting the curds further encourages them to expel whey. Generally, the smaller the curds are cut, the harder the resulting cheese will be. Soft cheeses like Camembert or Brie are hardly cut at all. Harder cheeses like cheddar and Gruyere are cut into a very fine texture. For these harder cheeses, the curds are further manipulated by cheddaring and/or cooking. Cooking the curd changes its texture, making it tender rather than crumbly.  When this process is complete, the whey is drained away, leaving the curd alone to become cheese.  The whey can then be dehydrated = many sports enthusiasts love whey powder for building muscle.

Salt is added for flavor. It also acts as a preservative so the cheese does not spoil during the long months or years it spends aging and it helps to form a natural rind on the cheese.  Here the farmer is lowering a batch her salt baths.  Each batch usually sits in the bath for 2-3 days.  You can see that she has 4 batches "curing" at this time.

In this particular farm the next step is to paint a "rind" on each wheel, a process that takes several coats over several days.  She is holding the blue bucket that contains the commercial goo that she paints onto the wheels.

The coated wheels are then moved to a aging room to age for 6 weeks to 3 years.  The wheels need to be turned every few days and is done by hand.  This is very labor intensive.  Look at all these wheels that have to be wiped down and turned.  The shelves beneath them need to be wiped down as well since the wheels continue to loose moisture and mold is a potential problem.  The temperature and humidity of the cave or room where the cheese ages needs to be closely monitored.

We were then treated to young cheese (6 weeks old), goat cheese, and aged cheese (3 years old).  I am not a fan of goat cheese but really liked the young and old cheeses.  The young was very soft and moist and the aged cheese was hard and crumbly and had a very strong flavor.  She suggested the aged cheese for salads and pasta (using it like parmesan cheese) but I think it would go super well with a nice glass of red wine.

We are done with our tour and will head back to meet up with the Skirnir one more time as it cruises on into Amsterdam.