The Fascinating Life and Times of Me

I spent Easter Weekend in the Central California town of Hilmar. Hilmar is all about the dairy industry. You can tell by the inescapable scent of cow that permeates the air. The landscape was very flat and green and pastoral, and there were fields and cows and goats everywhere. The population was somewhere in the 3,000s. I liked Hilmar right away.


On Saturday Erin's grandpa suggested that we go check out a local dairy. His selling point was that they have a sixty cow automated milking carousel. This sounded intriguing enough to Derrick, Erin, and myself, so we headed down the road a mile or two and pulled up at the Ahlem Farms dairy.

Sure enough, there was a huge, round and slowly rotating platform filled with lactating cows. Here is the view we enjoyed as we walked into the milking barn:

And a side view of the carousel. The automatic milking machines are attached by people to the cows udders, and they milk away as the platform slowly rotates. The milk goes down in to what I can only imagine is a gigantic vat of milk.

I would guess it take about ten minutes to rotate around. By the time the platform has completed one circuit, the cows have been milked and are ready to back off the machine.

After we had wandered around the carousel a while someone in the office spotted us and came out to chat. He was the herd vet, and he talked to us for a while about his job and how they treated the cows very nice, in spite of what the environmentalist might think. It was his opinion that environmental restrictions would lead to food shortages and the eventual decline of the US as an international superpower.

The herd vet took us down some stairs into the middle of the carousel. The cows were all very curious to see us down there. They are all Jersey cows, in case you don't know your cow breeds.

There were over 3,000 cows at the dairy, and they were each milked at least twice a day. I should have taken a picture of one of the massive herds, but I didn't. Here is a picture of some cows chowing down instead.


Ahlem Farms supplies their milk to the Hilmar Cheese factory. It seemed only natural that after seeing the milk production we see how the cheese was made, so after a quick lunch we drove a few miles to the Cheese Factory.

The cheese factory is the closest thing Hilmar has to a tourist trap. They have Hilmar Cheese t-shirt, postcards, magnets, etc.


There was a nicely maintained park-like area outside the factory. I was very excited to get the opportunity to visit the back of this (man-made) waterfall.

When you walk in to the factory's visitor's center you are greeted with this beautiful chandelier. This is a view from the balcony toward the main entrance.

The factory had a self guided tour of various displays about the cheesemaking process, from cow to sandwich. Incidentally, while at the factory I learned that I really enjoy the words cheesemaker and cheesemaking. I don't know why.

Derrick is a Cheesemaker and Erin is a Maintenance Worker. They got to keep the hairnets. I think I know what I want to be for Halloween this year. A Cheesemaker!

At the end of the tour there was a window that looked down on the cheese factory. They appeared to be making some type of cheddar. The machines were huge and dumped large amounts of crumbling cheese into big crates which the cheesemakers pushed around on tracks.

Here is a cheesemaker in action!

There was a very large gift shop in the visitor's center, and a few free cheese samples. You could buy all sorts of crazy cheeses and various sauces, dips, packaged soups and breads, and so on. Here is a sample of a finished cheese product, a cheese wheel. This seems to be some sort of foreign cheese, but pretend it is from Hilmar. Their cheese was just in normal plastic wrapping like grocery store cheese.

What a day of exciting yet educational day tripping!

Easter was also an exciting time. I got to meet quite a lot of Erin's extended family, and of course we played a traditional game of Easter Pool. Erin was on my team. We almost won three times!

Then we sat down to Easter dinner. Notice the adorable bunny salad to the left.

After dinner we played a rousing game of stuffed bunny toss and then I lost a game of War to a nine year old. All in all it was a wonderful weekend. I recommend Hilmar to any Dairy or Cheese aficionado. The cow smell isn't that great but at least they are not a pig town. It was a good time with good company and I look forward to visiting again some day.