Although we live only about 20 km outside of Frankfurt city (12 km from the city limits), we are generally in the middle of farming country. Our back-door neighbors are potato farmers along with many others in our town and there are also quite a few of them that farm grains as well. This past week has been a week of harvesting for them and we have seen almost every farmer in all the neighboring cities pass by our house at least once since the harvest began. The huge tractors are rather hard to miss as they rumble down the street, hauling one or two large trailers full of grain behind them. From sun-up until about midnight we’ve heard them coming through. And because it got so warm all the sudden, the farmers really wanted to get their crop in since the grain shrinks and lightens when it gets warm…which means a lot less money for the farmers.
But where are they going? Well, there are quite a few grain mills around here. We have one in our town and there is also once in the next town over and we know for certain that many of them have ended up at the mill in the neighboring town. When you drive by there, you can usually see a line of 4 or 5 tractors waiting their turn to dump and weigh their grain. It’s very convenient for these mills to be so close by and I guess I never realized that is why they are there. One of them has been in in operation since 1351 and has a nice little timberframe house built right next to it which is also owned by the milling family…along with a rather substantial bakery firm. Makes sense.
It’s amazing how you can go from feeling like you’re so close to the city at one second and then feel completely in the country the next. Since we have this through street in front of our house, we get to see and hear a lot of things. There are a lot of things like huge transport trucks going by or kids racing down the street that aren’t so nice…but every time a tractor comes rambling by, it brings a smile to our faces.
