De Vor Dairy Farm & Creamery in Kalkaska

Cow cuddling is exactly what it sounds like! Spend time in the pasture getting up close with friendly, curious cows (Jackie says they’re really just giant farm puppies.)

You can pet them, feed them, even bottle-feed a calf, and yes, they might nuzzle up or follow you around while you hang out.

Appointments run about 50 minutes and are geared toward ages 15+. Book online.

Every wheel starts right at De Vor Dairy Farm, using milk from their own grass-fed Jersey cows.

Here’s the backstory: Henk learned to make Gouda in the Netherlands over 30 years ago. Life and dairy farming kept him busy for a long time, but the idea stuck. Eventually he and Jackie sold everything downstate, bought a small farm in Kalkaska, imported their cheesemaking equipment straight from Holland, and had a Dutch couple fly over to walk them through it. Dang!

They still make every wheel by hand.

The milk goes into curds, gets pressed into wheels, then takes a long salt bath in brine. That step does more than you might think. It’s what builds the flavor, forms that smooth rind, and dials in the texture. Too little time in the brine and the cheese comes out bland. Too long and it gets tough.

From there, the wheels are aged on European wooden boards. No artificial anything. And here’s the fun part: they recently cracked open a 4-year aged Platinum Gouda from their very first batches.

Want to know how they milk their cows? The answer? Robots.

It’s a pretty cool system – the cows get to decide when they’d like to be milked, even in the middle of the nigh.

It works like this: every cow wears a collar that talks to a robot, which recognizes her and even remembers the map of her udder.
The cows walk in when they feel like it, as often as they like and are milked. (Some go twice a day. Some pop in a lot more.)