Senior Conference - Cheese Factory Tour

The Senior Missionary conferences come in the fall and spring. This time, it was held in Switzerland. Our main conference was held in Zollikofen (near Bern) where the temple is. On the way, we were able to have a tour of a cheese factory in Emmental. Swiss cheese here is called Emmentaler cheese and originates from this area.

Along the way to the the village of Affoltern im Emmental, where the cheese factory was located, we passed through these beautiful hills, with the alps in the distance.

This is an old storage building there.

One of the buildings was decorated with these carvings.

This is part of the modern facility. They use copper basins for the cheese production.

The cows graze in the hills and mountains - all free-range. They wear bells like these so the farmers know how to find them.

This is the master of the old-fashioned cheese making process. He also uses a large copper cauldron. We watched the whole process from the original raw milk and added bacteria to the placing of the curd in molds.

Here are President and Sister Miles as they watched.

The curds are forming. It was regularly stirred as the curds formed.

Here they are extracting the cheese curd from the whey in the cauldron using mesh fabric.

One of our sister missionaries helped push it into a form.

On our way out towards Bern, we went on some small and quaint country roads.