Barton County democrat., 1911-08-25
cHEEsEs AND BULBsEs.
Edioral Correspondence

Is the biggest cheese market in HOl-
land. Every Friday the cheesemakers
of the district bring their product to
the public market and buyers, local
and foreign, bargain for and purchase
the cheeses. That is why we came to
Alkmaar on Friday The chees mar
ket is certainly an interesting and
novel sight. ALI over the big public
square are piled little mounds of
cheeSes, shaped like large grape fruit
and colored in various shades of red
and yellow. Each wholesaler has his
carriers in uniform of white and a
straw hat and ribbons colOred as a
livery. When sale is made two
carriers take a barrow which they
carry suspended from their shoulders
and with sort of two-step and many
cries to get out of the way they bring
their load to the public weigh house
where it is officially weighed. Then
off the cheeses go to the store rooms
or to the canal boats which line one
side of the square waiting to take
their freight to the cities or to the
sea. The farmers look over each
Others cheeSes like they do hogs at
The Kansas State Fair, with COM
ments of praise or criticism. There
Is much chatting and chaffering be-
tween them and the buyers. In about
TWO hours the cheese are gone, the
square is empty and the beer houses
are full. The women folks do not
take an active part in the market but
they are present and looking things
over, and suspect they had been per
mitted to milk the COWS and make
the cheese.
About $3,0OO,OOO worth of cheese is
sold annually in the Alkmaar market.
The. country round about, North Hol-
land, is all small farms with gardens
and pastures and little herds of the
black and white cattle. The cheese
WHOLESALERS at about so cents a cheese
and in American we pay about twice
That much for the same or for the
Edam which is like it. The farmers
look prosperous, drive good horses
and very substantial gaily painted
wagons.
Alkmaar has $4,000 population and
Is therefore about the size of Hutch
lnson. But it is a good deal older
Back in 1913 it successfully defended
itself against the Spaniards. The
name means "all sea- because the
country was originally covered with
water. The land is kept above the
water now by pumping and pouring
into canals which are higher than the
farms through which they flow. This
is done very Systematically and by
wtndmills. A district thus maintained
Is called a "polder,' something like
our irrigation district and on one of
them near Alkmaar about the size of
a Kansas township, six miles square.
there are 81 windmills working all the
time, pumping the water. These are
not little windmills like those in a
Kansas pasture, but great fellows with
arms fifty feet long, and they stand
out over the polder like so many
giants The picture of these mills in
most fertile garden spot, with canal
streaks here and there and boats on
the canals looming up above the land,
is certainly striking one. 1t shows
clearly what energy can do when prop
erly applied.
The soil is as sandy as in South
Hutchinson. But dirt and fertilizer
are brought from the back country
and the soil kept constantly renewed.
Il seems to me that with cOmpara-
lively little work the sandy soil of
the Arkansas valley can be made into
a market garden, producing many
times its present value whenever our
people take it into their heads to
manufacture their own soil and ap-
ply water when needed and not just
when it rains. That time will come
but probably not until dense popula.
tion forces a great increase in produc
ton.
have another idea. Along the
coast of Holland are the sand dunes
which are exactly like our sand hills
What We should do is to change the
names from sand hills to dunes,
brag about them and charge people
for visiting them. The city of AmSter
dam gets its supply of drinking water
from the dunes. This was important
news for me for it confirmed my
theory as to the similarity of the
dunes and the sand hills, and also
suggested that somebody in Amster-
dam used water for drinking pur-
poses, a fact had not noticed while
there.
We spent part of a day in Haarlem,
where the tulips come from. The soil
conditions are like those at Aikmaar
but the country is mass of nurser
les, flower gardens and beautiful grow
ing plants. We are out of season for
tulips but this is the time when the
bulbs are being collected and dried
to be shipped in all directions. Not
only tulips, but crocuses, hyaGinths,
lilies, anemOnes, ETC., are raised for
the market, cut flowers to the cities,
bulbs to all parts of the world. Just
now the gardens are filled with phlox
.dahias, larkspurs, naSturtiums-by
the acre. The flowers are about the
same as at home. Out of this thin,
scraggE sandy soil the gardeners of
North Holland are taking money for
flowers and bulbs faster than miners
in gold fields. With flowers and
cheeses these Dutch catch about all
kinds of people.
Haarlem is the capital of the pro-
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