Straight to the Customer

What is tall, gorgeous, and very loud throughout the night? Church bells!! Our stay in Bonn wasn't quite as restful as we had hoped as church bells rang every hour, on the hour, with a beautiful melodious five minute song (thought that was up for debate at the time) at 7am. I guess it was time for everyone in a ten mile radius to start their day. So we did as well.

We first made our way to the Pfeifer & Langen sugar plant. While we had already seen one on the east side of Germany, this one had its own uniqueness to it. The first thing that struck me is that when they measure the tear of dirt from the beats, it is all done by "eyeing" it. Guess you better be friends with that guy! After this, the unloading of the beets was not in a pile like we saw at the first, but instead wagons side dumped into a conveyor pit while massive jets of water washed the beets out of the wagon. Very interesting concept.

We progressed through the plant seeing the process again, which for the most part, was very similar to the other plant that we had seen, One big difference between the two was this plant actually sold some sugar in a liquid form, kind of like syrup, of which, HARIBO gummy bears is their biggest customer. This plant runs around the clock so it takes a truck every three minutes to supply the 11,000 tons to needed to operate. This campaign as they call it usually lasts from September to January, but because of an amazing amount of rain, the crops are phenominal and they expect to be goingn well past January.

After we wrapped up the sugar plant tour and were hauling our newly aquired 10lbs of sugar with us, it was off to lunch with a farmer and his brother who has taken advantage of the phrase: Location, location, location. He was doing direct marketing to the consumer and this included the restaurant we were eating at for lunch.

Christian Dunn (I need the u with the dots over it on my keyboard) ran a diversified, direct market farm while his brother ran the two stores that they operated out of. And it is diverse with a mini golf course, a six hole golf course, store front, onions, white asparagus, self pick strawberries, potatoes, sugar beets and laying hens. I think that I got it all.

The operation had a little of everything from the commercial side of onions, wheat, barley, and sugar beets, to more things specialized for the direct market like strawberries, white asparagus, eggs from 10,000 hens outside of a cage, and potatoes. With everything going on, it didn't look like he had much downtime, ever.

Our day of seeing German ag was over as our host, Brigitte, dropped us off at our hotel, which while it was a little on the smaller size, may have been one of my favorites to date. The owner also reminded me of "The Dude" from the Big Leboweski. So after we checking and settled, we trecked 200 meters or so and took in the cathedral of Cologne. It was absolutely magnificent. Pictures will never do it justice. We were all in pure awe at its beauty.

After we wrapped up the cathedral, Kristi and I walked down the shopping strip, funny how it was next to such a beautiful cathedral, We were looking for a bite to eat and a traditional beer from the area called a Kolsch. While we were walking, everything shutdown! At eight at night the stores all close and we were surprised how quickly the area evacuated. Well, after losing sight of the cathedral spires (our only guide back to a known location) we found our way to familiar territory, food and a Kolsch.

Tomorrow we are headed to Brussels, Belgium to learn about the European Union and its relation to German ag. I am extremely excited about this, and Belgium beer, but the girls keep getting distracted by chocolate. Anywho's, our epic adventure continues in another country tomorrow!

Cheers,

Nick