A few humans monitored the equipment and tested things periodically but all we saw was gleaming metal and steam. This part of the cheese making process is pretty much all automated. There are lots of closed vats with hoses and dials and we assume milk or cheese curds were in them but all we saw were the vats. OK – Back to the tour. The first part was not really exciting the day we were there. Not many ice cream shops have that… I mean cheese factories. After all, they have room to park our motorhome.
![tillamook cheese factory tillamook cheese factory](https://live.staticflickr.com/7759/27018209814_3d3cbe4acf_b.jpg)
We may have to stop again on the way out of town. I should have skipped lunch and pigged out on really creamy, really chocolatey ice cream in the crispy waffle cone… mmmm. The upstairs ice cream counter was closed when we were there so we bought our ice cream downstairs after we ate lunch. I tell you to buy it here because it would have been nice to munch while we watched the cheese being processed. I had the Tillamook Mudslide: “rich chocolate ice cream with chocolate fudge chunks and decadent fudge ripple”… oh yeah. It is also very good ice cream and the waffle cone was so light and crispy, I was in ice cream heaven. They hand make their waffle cones right there (you can watch them do it downstairs). Here’s the order we should have seen it in:įirst you encounter an ice cream counter. We, of course, turned right and got confused. If you turn left at the top of the stairs, you see the first part of the process. We watched and read everything they had then headed up to the observation areas. They also have a few looping videos with benches to plop on to watch. First up are lots of signs downstairs explaining the farmer-owned status of the company, what it means to be a dairy farmer, how much milk a cow gives, etc.
![tillamook cheese factory tillamook cheese factory](https://townsquare.media/site/133/files/2018/05/Tillamook-Visit.jpg)
We started with the free, self guided tour. The factory has the upstairs viewing areas, a cheese sample counter, little deli shop, large gift shop, restaurant type counter, dining area and a huge ice cream counter… because it isn’t just cheese that is made out of milk. It was pretty empty when we were there and that’s good because we got to spend our time and read everything and watch massive amounts of cheddar cheese being made and packaged. They have a huge parking lot with space for RVs and buses. Since we were in town, we decided to roll up Hwy 101 and check out the Cheese Factory. It’s a big country and I’m sure we can find somewhere with a few thousand fewer cows. I explained this to John but he was hearing none of it. I rented a place on a cow and pig farm way back when I was in the army so I know that you eventually get used to it and do not even notice the smell. Hard enough that John blurted out “we are NOT going to live here”! We don’t know if they had just spread a few tons of manure on the nearby fields or if Tillamook always smells this way but it is definitely off our list of places to live. It wasn’t until we opened the car doors at the post office that it really hit us though.
#Tillamook cheese factory windows
It was a cool day so our car windows were up but we noticed it was getting more and more stinky as we neared the town. There are tens of thousands of cows in Tillamook County munching away on all that lush grass and generally doing what cows do. They employ over 25% of the people in the county. The number one employer in the county is the Tillamook Cheese group. Mountains flank the area on three sides and the ocean and bay lie to the west. Tillamook is located on a lush plain that gets over 90 inches of rain each year (that’s ninety inches – NOT a typo). It was a nice drive along bays and forests, across a few rivers and past quite a few dairy farms. We know you’ll enjoy them as much as we do.We needed to pick up some packages from the post office so we headed into Tillamook. Dairy farming is what we love to do, and we’re proud of our products. We treat every day as an opportunity to follow our founders’ example, by working hard to make the highest quality, best-tasting dairy products. And we’re still true to the values that brought us together in the first place. We still use the same cheddar cheese recipe, now over 100 years old.
![tillamook cheese factory tillamook cheese factory](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2VbObypMxTM/maxresdefault.jpg)
Today, we’re made up of over 100 dairy farm families who own TCCA (many of whom are kin to the early pioneers), and the Tillamook brand can be found in stores from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine.As much as we’ve grown, we haven’t lost sight of our past. Maybe even make a better life for themselves. The creameries that created TCCA knew that together, working cooperatively toward that goal, they could make even better products. Just over a hundred years ago, several small creameries teamed up to form the Tillamook County Creamery Association (TCCA) to ensure the quality and reputation of cheese made in the Tillamook Valley. Learn a lesson or two about the history of cheese-making in this Oregonian town and watch it being produced and packaged.
![tillamook cheese factory tillamook cheese factory](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wv_6Akx-hXA/VOTp5de753I/AAAAAAAAErg/azhks72hi0A/s1600/shop-tillamook-cheese-factory.jpg)
Take a walk through this factory on a self-guided tour.