On our recent vacation, one of the highlights of the trip was visiting the Tillamook Cheese factory. I love How It's Made (seriously, I could watch it nonstop), so I was VERY EXCITED to visit the Tillamook factory. In fact, it's the entire reason we made it up to that corner of the state.
So it is with great excitement that I share with you... MY VIDEOS FROM THE TILLAMOOK FACTORY!
HERE'S HOW IT'S MADE
First, the cheese curds (not pictured) are pressed into huge blocks, which are spit out by those huge round machines and then put into bags. These bags are then vacuum sealed and sent off to the curing area (I presume... there was no actual cheese curing viewing area, much to my disappointment).
Next, once the cheese has been cured for some amount of time (again, they wouldn't let me literally stand around watch cheese cure for some ridiculous reason), they bring pallets of cured cheese blocks into an unseen room (argh! unseen process!) where people unwrap them and put them on conveyor belts.
And then, in probably the most MIND-BLOWINGLY AWESOME PART OF THE WHOLE FACTORY (I will later contradict this statement), these magicians put the blocks of cheese through a two-way wire cutting process (OH MY GOOOOOOOOOSSSSHHHHH IT'S SOOOOO COOOOOLLLLL).
Which is part of... THIS HUGELY AMAZING PROCESS. LOOK AT ALL THAT! I'm just gonna let this all sink in for a while. 43 seconds to be exact.
Here's another view of the amazingness:
Ok, you know how I said the other thing was THE MOST AMAZING THING I'VE EVER SEEN? I TOTALLY LIED BECAUSE THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING I HAVE EVER SEEN!!!!!!!!! The guy on the right adjusts every loaf in the package and makes sure every open end is correctly positioned on what we identified as the heating/sealing rods.
Then, the loaf goes into the FACTORY OCTOPUS where it is vacuum-sucked to remove the air and sealed-off.
And then that SPINNING METAL ARM (holy heck how metal!) pushes the loaves onto the conveyor belt where it goes on to a shrink machine (not pictured due to my total failure as a videographer) and to a cooling machine (also not pictured because I suck).
And then those blocks woosh off into another room where they are boxed to be distributed around the world, because Tillamook Cheese is THE BEST.
This concludes my Labor Day Factory Appreciation Fiesta. Please enjoy the remainder of whatever you're doing and keep in mind that people work hard in factories doing repetitive work for hours on end. It's awesome work (and I mean that in the actual sense of awe-inspiring), but to the people on that factory floor, they're in a fish tank for fangirls like me to watch eight hours per day, five days every week (heck, probably more, since there are weekend tours).
This Labor Day, take a moment to think about the factory where every thing you touch was made. Ok, maybe a couple seconds... because almost everything we touch was made in a factory, and that would be a heck of a lot of moments.
