{"id":65172,"date":"2026-08-20T17:14:05","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T16:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/restaurant-cafe-bar.nl\/en\/wat-te-eten-in\/polder-en-zuivel\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T17:14:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T16:14:05","slug":"polder-en-zuivel","status":"publish","type":"eatin","link":"https:\/\/restaurant-cafe-bar.nl\/en\/wat-te-eten-in\/polder-en-zuivel\/","title":{"rendered":"Polders, cows and cheese"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why a small country became one of the world&#8217;s largest dairy exporters, and what the soil has to do with it.<\/p>\n<h2>You cannot plough peat<\/h2>\n<p>The west of the Netherlands sits on peat. Arable farming does badly there, grass grows excellently, so livestock it became. The soil chose the farming, not the other way round.<\/p>\n<h2>Subsidence<\/h2>\n<p>Drained peat compacts and sinks. That is why parts of Holland now lie metres below sea level, and why the mills and pumping stations became necessary.<\/p>\n<h2>Cheese as shelf life<\/h2>\n<p>Milk spoils, cheese does not. Before refrigeration, cheese was the only way to carry summer surplus into winter and abroad.<\/p>\n<h2>The market towns<\/h2>\n<p>Gouda, Alkmaar, Edam, Woerden, Hoorn and Purmerend held market rights and became trading places. The cheese names refer to those markets rather than to the makers.<\/p>\n<h2>Where to look<\/h2>\n<p>Cheese markets in Alkmaar and Gouda, and farms with their own dairies in the Green Heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false},"dish-region":[18902],"class_list":["post-65172","eatin","type-eatin","status-publish","hentry","dish-region-noord-holland"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restaurant-cafe-bar.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/eatin\/65172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restaurant-cafe-bar.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/eatin"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restaurant-cafe-bar.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/eatin"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restaurant-cafe-bar.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"dish-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restaurant-cafe-bar.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dish-region?post=65172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}