October 9 Offenburg

Today we stayed close to Offenburg.  In the Morning we visited a medium sized commercial slaughter plant.  They process about 70,000 hogs and 4000 bulls each year.  We spent nearly an hour visiting with the manager about the regulations they have, and the inspection process they have to go through.  Paul is especially interested in how the smaller scale processors are regulated and if there are any differences or exemptions based on size.  It didn't sound as though there are.  German slaughter houses are highly regulated just as American plants are.  A couple of differences I noticed were the tracing of the meat to an individual animal and ultimately the farm.  Each animal is tagged and traced by the government from birth to processing and the packages are each labeled with the animal ID, something we are very much opposed to in the US but it seems to work well for them and they just accept the program.  They also seem to be more restricted by animal welfare laws.  Each of the holding pens for the hogs had to be equipped with a ball, hanging from a long chain for the pigs to play with.  No effect on quality, just public demand.

We next visited Thomas' farm.  He and his parents raise 130 bulls (they don't usually castrate bulls, they prefer the bull meat to steer meat, lower fat), they also farm about 80 hectares (wheat, corn, and rape seed), do custom bailing, and have a small hofladen (farm stare) that opens on Fridays.  The store sales homemade breads, beef, and local produce.  We had a great home made lunch prepared by Thomas' mother, home made noodles and chopped steak with grave.  Once again we stuffed ourselves, very good.  Thomas and his family are very good people.  Their farm was started in 1952, the area they live in is very wet, traditionally swamp land.  However, Hitler had large drainage canals dug through the area as a way to great jobs for the unemployed.  So after the war, in the 50's, food in Germany was in short supply so the government began giving away this wet land to people who were willing to farm it.  Thomas grandfather was able to get some of the land (14 hectares) and the farm was born.

We next traved through Offenburg to a new farm market, Markt Scheuue.  Ten years in the planning, privately owned, they sale nearly 600 products, from 40 different farms.  All their products are locally produced in the Black Forest region.  They work with the local community to promote tourism in the area, and try to capitalize on the tourists driving through the area.  They not only operate the store, but also cafe and cake shop which looked to be very popular, the cake was very good.

We also visited a large (for Germany) vineyard, managed by Thomas' cousin, Mattias.  Like most of the vinyards I have seen here it is built on a hill, some of the grapes can be harvested with the help of tractors, but much of it has to be done by hand because of the steep terrain.  Once the grapes are ready it is critical to harvest in a timely maner, so it is a hectic time once harvest starts.  They are in the middle of harvest now, but were not harvesting while we were there because it was raining.  We saw the wine making process and tanks, they make both red and white wines.  After touring we were allowed to samle some of the different wines that they produce, I had a fruit juice while everyone else had the wine.  Mattias had spent several months in New Zealand so he spoke very good English.

Paul and I walked from the vineyard to a local restaurant; we both had been sitting for far too long and needed some fresh air.  We were joined for dinner by Mattias, his girl friend, and Uba (a member of the local young farmers).  Once again we stuffed ourselves on fine German food, before we retired to the hotel for bed.