Finding a good cheese farm Netherlands experience during tulip season is not difficult. Finding one that still feels personal once the buses and tourists start showing up is a little harder. Clara Maria Cheese Farm was my favorite activity from the Netherlands because it felt informative, interactive, and genuine instead of overly staged.
You can visit just to shop for cheese, souvenirs, and clogs, but I highly recommend doing the free cheese and clog demonstration while you’re there. We stayed for several hours without even trying to. Between the tastings, demonstrations, cows, photos, and souvenir shopping, there was a lot more to do than I expected going in.
If you’re planning a larger tulip season trip, this also paired really well with our Best Tulip Field Driving Route in the Netherlands and 5 Day Netherlands Tulip Itinerary: Keukenhof, Windmills & Tulip Fields.
Clara Maria Cheese Farm is located outside Amsterdam in the Dutch countryside near Amstelveen. We had a car during our Netherlands trip, so driving there was easy.
The farm has parking on-site, which made the logistics very simple compared to dealing with parking in larger Dutch cities during tulip season. You can check their demonstration times online ahead of your visit, which I would recommend doing so you can time your arrival around the tours.
This worked especially well as a stop during a larger Netherlands road trip because it was easy to pair with nearby tulip fields, windmills, or smaller Dutch towns. If you’re planning to drive around the country, my guide to Driving in the Netherlands (What It’s Really Like for Tourists) helps explain what parking, roads, and driving conditions were like during our trip.
Yes — the cheese and clog demonstration is completely free.
You can walk into the shop without doing the demonstration if you only want to buy cheese or souvenirs, but the tour was one of the best parts of the experience. Once you start trying the cheese though, things escalate quickly in the best way.
The souvenir prices were also much more reasonable than I expected for a tourist stop. They had a huge variety of Dutch gifts, kitchen items, cheese accessories, mini clogs, and the absolute cutest clog birdhouses I saw anywhere during the trip.
We ended up getting a custom engraved clog birdhouse, and they engraved it for free while we were there.
This was the part that surprised me most.
Even though Clara Maria Cheese Farm is obviously popular with tourists, it never felt overly rehearsed or impersonal. The people there made a huge difference.
Kees-Jan and Katrina were incredibly welcoming and clearly passionate about preserving the farm and the traditions behind it. The farm itself is more than 160 years old, and Kees-Jan grew up helping on the property before he and Katrina officially took over the business in 2003.
It felt much more like being invited into someone’s long-running family business than sitting through a generic attraction presentation.
Our tour guide, Delo, completely carried the energy of the tour too. He was hilarious and he shared a ton of genuinely interesting information throughout the demonstrations.
Before visiting Clara Maria Cheese Farm, I did not realize how much work goes into making one wheel of Dutch cheese.
One detail I found especially interesting was how much of the process is still done by hand. The cheeses are hand-pressed, flipped, soaked in salt water, and hand-waxed multiple times before aging even begins. The entire process takes almost two weeks before the cheese is ready to age.
They also explained why Dutch cheese naturally has that rich yellow color. Cow’s milk contains beta carotene, which gives the cheese its golden tone, while goat and sheep cheeses stay much whiter naturally.
And yes, they also confirmed Americans pronounce Gouda completely wrong. It sounds much closer to “HOW-da” in Dutch. I understand the Dutch pronunciation now and will probably still panic and say “Gouda” wrong anyway.
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The cheese tasting portion alone made this worth visiting.
We tried at least ten different cheeses, and they explained each one along with the aging process and flavor differences. Some cheeses were paired with spreads or toppings that changed the flavor completely depending on what you combined together.
My favorite by far was the Bärlauch cheese along with the 1.5-year aged cheese.
Bärlauch, also called wild garlic or ramsons, tastes somewhere between garlic, onion, and chives. It’s commonly used in parts of Europe during spring in things like soups, pesto, pasta, butter spreads, breads, and cheeses. The flavor worked really well in cheese without overpowering everything else.
I also became extremely committed to trying increasingly older cheeses during this experience.
We tried cheeses aged 1 year, 1.5 years, 2 years, and eventually a 20-year-aged cheese, slightly like eating concentrated smelly feet.
The 20-year cheese was way too pungent for me and almost tasted closer to blue cheese, but the 1.5-year aged cheese was perfect. It still had that sharp aged flavor.
The clog demonstration was so cool, as were our “saftey glasses”.
They explained how traditional Dutch clogs were originally created during the 1200s and 1300s as durable work shoes. Even now, people still use them for gardening, outdoor work, camping, and quick trips outside.
One thing I didn’t know was that clogs are intentionally designed with extra room inside for thick socks and easy slip-on wear. Even though they’re made from hard poplar wood and don’t stretch, they apparently become more comfortable over time.
After trying on a pair, I still cannot confidently say my feet would thrive inside wooden shoes long-term, but I respected the tradition.
After the demonstrations, they even brought us out to meet the cows.
Meeting the cows made the whole experience feel a lot more personal instead of just walking through a tourist attraction. Between the animals, demonstrations, cheese tasting, and talking with the staff, there was a lot more interaction than I expected before visiting.
We also spent a while outside taking photos with the props around the farm because the entire property is very photogenic in that classic Dutch countryside.
If you’re looking for a cheese farm Netherlands experience that feels educational, interactive, and still genuinely personal, I would absolutely recommend Clara Maria Cheese Farm.
The free demonstrations were far more interesting than I expected, the cheese tasting was excellent, and the people running the farm were a huge part of what made the experience memorable.
I expected to buy a few small souvenirs and leave after an hour.
Instead, we stayed for several hours, learned far more about Dutch cheese than anticipated, met cows, bought entirely too much cheese, and left with an engraved clog birdhouse that became a great gift for my dad and one of my favorite Netherlands souvenirs.
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Booked this Bryson City yurt for the ‘ber months and it’s already my top fall pick this year. 🍂
The Junaluska Yurt sleeps six but feels more like a stylish cabin than a yurt, two real queen bedrooms with actual doors, a full kitchen, and a private bathroom with a walk-in shower. Check-in is just a door code texted to your phone, no lobby, no waiting.
The real win is outside: wraparound porch, private fire pit, free firewood, a gas grill, and Smoky Mountain sunsets that stop you mid-sentence, picture all of that with October color on the ridgeline. Heads up, the last stretch in is a gravel road, so skip the low-profile rental, and there’s no restaurant onsite, you’re minutes from Bryson City, Dillsboro, and Sylva for dinner.
Two to three nights is the sweet spot. (We actually stayed in the dead of winter and it was still stunning, fall just takes it up a notch.) Full review linked in bio.
Italian food felt like the last thing I expected to find in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains... until I sat down at Ilda in Sylva.🍝
They call it Italian-Appalachian, and that’s not just a tagline. Homemade pasta, craft cocktails, local ingredients pulled straight from the mountains around it, this is the kind of meal that makes you forget you’re two hours from the nearest city. It’s cozy, it’s a little upscale, and it is not a walk-in kind of place, call ahead, because tables go fast on weekends.
It’s not cheap, and it’s not trying to be. But if you’re already making the trip out to Sylva, this is the one reservation worth planning your day around.
Full write-up, including what to order, link in bio.
Booked my fall cabin before September even started, and I’m not sorry about it. 🍂
These are the stays that make you actually want the cold to hurry up fireplaces, mountain views, the kind of porch you don’t leave. Not every one of these is going to fit every trip, but if a cozy fall getaway is on your radar, this is the roundup to start with.
One of my favorite travel seasons is almost here, and I have zero chill about it. 🍁✈️
There’s just something about fall trips cooler air, apple orchards, that first flannel of the season, food that actually makes sense with the weather again. I’m already mentally packing for it before September even starts.
If fall is your favorite time to travel too, tell me where you’re headed... I’m taking notes for the list.
Pack your bags... ✈️🧳My hiking and road trip gear shop just got a refresh, and this is everything that actually earns a spot in my bag. The dry bag pulls double duty for beach days and trail days, the Osprey backpack is the one I grab for anything motorcycle or day-hike related, and the GoPro comes with me literally everywhere at this point.
Nothing on this list is filler it’s all stuff I’ve used, packed, and repacked more times than I can count. Full shop linked in my bio if you want to build out your own kit before your next trip.
Follow @travelwithwendyplummer for Beautiful Beach Destinations, City Guides, Foodie Spots, and Luxury Hotel Recommendations.
