First Weekend, Full of Dutch Festivities

My Dutch roommate, Ineke, invited me to go to a festival in southern Netherlands on Friday night so 2 other UWP girls and I hopped in her little Euro car and we took off!

Two hours later we arrived in Baarlo for the annual festival that resembled one from back home...beer tent, live band, and good company. But instead of Bud or Miller Lite, Amstel Light was the beer of choice and instead of pickup trucks filling the parking lot, there were rows of bikes, which quickly reminded us that we were over 4,000 miles away from home. We had a blast and danced the night away through the band's encore. Mark insisted that we try frikandels, which are sausage-like brats, before we took the shortcut through the orchard and walked back to the "Frans Hotel" to sleep for the night.

We stayed the night at Frans’ place, in his garage. I know it sounds weird, but this was not your typical garage, the brick garage was very clean, heated, had a bathroom connected AND was equipped with mattresses for each of us to sleep on (thank goodness). Frans' family owns a huge orchard of apples, cherries, and pears and produce about 30% of the total cherry production in the Netherlands. We woke up Saturday morning to the noise of machinery and apple pickers starting their work day, ate a quick breakfast provided by Frans' mom, and were off to tour Mark's farm.

Mark's family farm is not considered "traditional" for the Netherlands. As we've learned in class, the typical Dutch farmer milks about 45 cows. Their operation in the Netherlands consists of a 300 cow dairy, a huge hog farrowing operation, and an anaerobic digester. All of the cows are milked by one of their 7 robotic milkers that they have been using now for 12 years. Even the calves are fed by automatic feeders! The swine facility was quite impressive and is Mark's pride and joy. We were hoping to see some piglets but had no idea how many we would actually see...the barn was lined with farrowing crates resulting in 2,500-3,000 piglets born each week! We watched as the pigs continued to pop out on both sides of the aisle as we walked further. A really cool and very practical feature they had in the farrowing crates was that when the sows stand up, the floor sinks so the piglets don’t get stepped on by their mother. Our final stop brought us to the anaerobic digester, which was really interesting after I had researched and created a business plan for one to be placed on the University farm for class last spring. Currently, only the smaller engine is running, the farm is waiting for subsidies from the government to run the much larger engine... the largest in Holland! The energy produced is used throughout the operation, as well as Mark's house, and to heat the swine facilities.

It could not be an official visit until we had coffee with Mark in the break room. The Dutch culture seems to revolve around coffee breaks! His mom also prepared us a Dutch lunch of frikandels and frites (french fries) before we headed back to Dronten. I survived my first weekend in the Netherlands!

All of my roommates are here now; I have 2 Turkish, 2 Vietnamese, and 1 Dutch! It should be an interesting blend of cultures and personalities, I'm excited!

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