must go back and clean it up. Corn is being planted
in smaller and smaller quantities because the people
of Germany do not like the way it looks and feel that
it mars the landscape. In all of Germany, only 20% of
cropland is planted in corn. And then there’s the open
land law – where anyone can walk across your land at
will, regardless of whether it’s your best field of alfalfa
or a woody lot. If a member of the public wants to take a
hike across your land, they can.
One of my biggest challenges while in Germany
was knowing what to eat. The Germans like their pork,
but not pork chops or roast like I am used to – they
like sausages. Lots of sausages. And sometimes they
eat pork that isn’t exactly cooked. We were invited to
lunch with a very nice farmer who runs his own meat
processing facility where he treated us to a nice spread of
cooked sausages similar to
American hotdogs, smoked
liverwurst, smoked sausage,
and mettwurst. Mettwurst, as
we found out, is completely
raw - as in uncooked and
unsmoked. We were assured
that only extremely healthy,
sanitary hogs are butchered
for mettwurst and that very
stringent sanitary conditions
must be met to produce this
meat, but all of us left feeling
pretty unsettled.
As a beef farmer, I am used to eating a lot of
hamburger and steak, but those items were not on
many restaurant menus. On the two occasions I did
order some beef, I wasn’t overly impressed. I found
out why during a particularly mind-boggling visit to a
beef cattle farm. We stepped out of our van and into a
large barn of feeder cattle, which I assumed would be
steers. However, upon inspection I realized that every
animal in the building was a bull. There were dozens
and dozens of bulls in two or three large pens. Then
the farmer proceeded to tell us that these bulls would be
slaughtered in just a few months.
Because of animal welfare issues, the Germans do
not castrate animals. In fact, by the year 2018, no swine
will be castrated at all. When questioned about why
they would want to eat bull meat, we were emphatically
told that steer meat is too fatty. There is no market for
steer meat in Germany. Instead, bulls are raised to 17-24
months and slaughtered around 2500 pounds. Naturally,
that would explain why the roast I had at dinner was
pretty flavorless and a bit tough and hard to chew.
I saw my favorite part of Germany on one of our
last days in the country. We visited the mountainous
southern region known as the Black Forest. After
traveling a steep, winding one-lane road through the
woods, we arrived on a beautiful mountaintop timber
farm. The area reminded me of the Spruce Knob and
Sinks of Gandy area. When I emailed home that I had
found West Virginia in Germany, my mom replied
that the Black Forest was the region of Germany that
my original Wilfong ancestors had come from many
hundreds of years ago. No wonder I loved the area so
much!
After twenty four days,
thirteen hotels, thirteen
trains, six planes, and four
countries, I finally arrived
back in my mountains of
West Virginia on October
21st. I came home with an
increased awareness of the
connectedness