Friday,
Raining again, and we spent the morning sitting about drinking coffee, chatting, making phone calls, reading and writing. A slow day and it was lunchtime before we realsied. We headed out later in the afternoon to visit Anita and the boys and Wendy did some email. Back to Grijpskerk and did some shopping in the C1000 supermarket (noticed that soft cheese like camembert and brie is only about $5 a kilo!). Then out again and visited the Verhildersum house/estate at Leens which we could get into with our museum cards. An impressive home that’s been set up in period style but it seems that not much of it is original anymore. i suppose that a few hundred years will see the fortunes of such a house come and go and change hands a few times. We could see a dining room, kitchen, bedroom, drawing and the cellar and it all adds to the picture that we’ve developed over the last week. As part of the estate they have also have a farm museum and as a replica of the farms we’ve been visiting is was great to see some of the older equipment that was used. There was both hand and machine tools and it was amazing to see potato sowers that used to be dragged behind a horse and did one row at a time. Now the tractor can pull one that can do four rows, more accurately and much quicker. Some of the hand tools looked like too much hard work to me, long handles and lots of tines for hay and grass and other bits and pieces used for repetitive tasks.
Found our way back via the back roads and bumped into the small church at Saaksum. There were a couple of draft horses in the field next door and they came over when we walked up to the fence. We enjoyed a close up view of these traditional Groningen horses, they have a stout body that would be most suitable for dragging stuff around. Even though the weather has been terrible with lots of rain and wind to blow it around (and make it cold outside) we enjoyed the drive home along the roads lined with trees and the small villages one of which, Koomerzijl, is celebrating 400 years of existence. Back home and some tidying up as we head off to the southern region of Holland tomorrow. A couple of boys are reading books, I’m editing some photos, not sure what Wendy’s doing and Reub’s is ringing Connie at home. We’ll have a couple of relatives coming round tonight to say goodbye and hopefully we don’t get to bed too late.
Raining again, and we spent the morning sitting about drinking coffee, chatting, making phone calls, reading and writing. A slow day and it was lunchtime before we realsied. We headed out later in the afternoon to visit Anita and the boys and Wendy did some email. Back to Grijpskerk and did some shopping in the C1000 supermarket (noticed that soft cheese like camembert and brie is only about $5 a kilo!). Then out again and visited the Verhildersum house/estate at Leens which we could get into with our museum cards. An impressive home that’s been set up in period style but it seems that not much of it is original anymore. i suppose that a few hundred years will see the fortunes of such a house come and go and change hands a few times. We could see a dining room, kitchen, bedroom, drawing and the cellar and it all adds to the picture that we’ve developed over the last week. As part of the estate they have also have a farm museum and as a replica of the farms we’ve been visiting is was great to see some of the older equipment that was used. There was both hand and machine tools and it was amazing to see potato sowers that used to be dragged behind a horse and did one row at a time. Now the tractor can pull one that can do four rows, more accurately and much quicker. Some of the hand tools looked like too much hard work to me, long handles and lots of tines for hay and grass and other bits and pieces used for repetitive tasks.
Found our way back via the back roads and bumped into the small church at Saaksum. There were a couple of draft horses in the field next door and they came over when we walked up to the fence. We enjoyed a close up view of these traditional Groningen horses, they have a stout body that would be most suitable for dragging stuff around. Even though the weather has been terrible with lots of rain and wind to blow it around (and make it cold outside) we enjoyed the drive home along the roads lined with trees and the small villages one of which, Koomerzijl, is celebrating 400 years of existence. Back home and some tidying up as we head off to the southern region of Holland tomorrow. A couple of boys are reading books, I’m editing some photos, not sure what Wendy’s doing and Reub’s is ringing Connie at home. We’ll have a couple of relatives coming round tonight to say goodbye and hopefully we don’t get to bed too late.
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