Opa's Farm

[Jeff Higgins]

I just found this old photo of my Opa's farm in Germany. It lies between Warburg and Volksmarsen. Lots of fond memories of staying there over the summer when I was a kid. He sold it in the mid '70's, having gotten too old to work it, and with none of my uncles or my aunt still in Germany wanting it. Cool place. I wonder if it's still standing.

[masraum]

Beautiful!

[93nav]

as Tcar said, Google Earth is your friend. Give me a hint, and I can try and find it. I really like looking around on Google Earth.

[HardDrive]

Do you have an address?

[Jeff Higgins]

I can get very close, but I've never been able to find it. I suspect because it is long gone.

Opa discovered a natural mineral water spring on the farm sometime after the war. He decided to start bottling and selling it, which he did rather successfully through the 1970's. Then, unfortunately, through a good deal of political shenanigans, strong-arming, and outright thievery, he lost his "rights" to that water. It was declared some kind of a public resource or something which, apparently, just because it bubbled up on his land, didn't necessarily give him the "rights" to it. It was one hell of a sordid tale, one that broke his heart. He died a very wealth man, but was unable to pass the business down to any of his sons.

On a kind of a side note, he managed to live long enough to where I brought my wife to meet him when she was pregnant with our first child, and his only great-grandchild. She doesn't speak German and he never spoke English, but he had no trouble communicating to her his profound joy. He passed about a week after we got home. 97 years old, WWI vet - a bicycle messenger in the trenches, and then later a mule packer in the Balkans.

Anyway, the business survives today. Funny, it never went "public", and some big German conglomerate took it over. So I can find that, it was on one corner of the farm. I just can't remember where the farm house was from there, which direction and how far. I just remember it seemed a huge farm to a kid.

Here is the bottling business, Volkmarser Mineralbrunnen' website:

Volkmarser - Waldecker

Here it is on Google Maps:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Volkmarser+Mineralbrunnen+Waldhoff+GmbH+%26+Co.+KG/@51.4066523,9.1338052,3725m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x47bb0dd366010d27:0x86d04 916effeb892!8m2!3d51.4066823!4d9.137461

So, yeah, I can get close, but just can't nail it down.

[svandamme]

Originally Posted by tcar

If you know where it is, do a google maps and see.... I just did that for an old farm in Iowa and grandparent's house in southern Colorado.... both still there.

not google street view anywhere in Germany.. privacy laws don't allow it

[petrolhead611]

Germans were well used to stealing businesses and other property from the rightful owners. They had been doing it since about 1933

[svandamme]

well I'm sure none of the other ambitious white people in the world have ever stolen any land or natural resources from anybody rightful and native owner anywhere else in the world..













If you read up on the Nazi's and Hitler... You'de know he was looking at the others and decided he wanted the same...
He was jealous of all the other nations with colonies... He really was

Recommended reading
https://www.amazon.com/Nazis-Warning-History-Laurence-Rees/dp/056349333X

Not about the battles or strategies, but a lot about their reasoning...however morally corrupt they were, the rest weren't saints either.

[petrolhead611]

Yes the Belgians had one of the worst records as colonialists, but even their misdeeds don't compare in any way with the Germans who stole from their own citizenry on a huge scale and then murdered them a while afterwards

[fastfredracing]

What a beautiful place . Can only imagine how serene it was living, and farming there .

[Rikao4]

farmer Heil's Bauernhof and me in Lederhosen...
Erfenbach ,outside of what some know as K-town..
his son still farming,
my toy horses still nailed to the wall...

Rika

[Jeff Higgins]

Hah - love that photo, Rika. I went to my first day of kindergarten in lederhosen. Here in the U.S., unfortunately. Kids can be really cruel... I never wore the to school again.

Of course now, as an adult with no shame whatsoever, I've been looking for an authentic pair with which to embarrass my wife. They are pretty damned expensive...

[Seahawk]

Great stuff.

Those barns are indicative of what type of farming?

Dairy, other livestock? That much under roof is a signal of something cool...I'd love to know more.

Thanks for sharing

[Chocaholic]

Agreed. Those are some huge barns. Beautiful setting too.

[Jeff Higgins]

Opa was primarily a pig farmer, but had dairy cows as well. Boy, this is all really fuzzy some 45 years after my last stay on the farm, but I think the low fencing in the foreground and back between two of the buildings might be pig pens? Then again, I know some (if not all) of the pens must have had wire fencing between the rails, or maybe all of them. I just can't remember...

What I do remember, very clearly, were his admonitions to stay out of those pens. I remember one day I was sitting on that top rail with my brothers, sister, and some cousins, and one of us pushed someone in, off the rail. Opa saw it, and came running on over in a full-on rage and panic. We all paid the price for that one. Never did it again, though. Probably because it was a little while before we could stand to sit on that rail again...

Here is Opa with my mom, in the early 1950's, before she emigrated:



Here he is with my Oma, on the back deck of the farm house. I believe this was between the wars:

[herr_oberst]

Cool car! A DKW or something like that?

[Jeff Higgins]

Not sure, but I do remember he drove a Citroen DS all through the '60's and '70's. Us kids were enamored with the steering headlights, and the way it lowered down to let you in.

[Eric Coffey]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

So, yeah, I can get close, but just can't nail it down.

Your OP pic shows 3 buildings in close proximity, with the one on the far right slightly forward of the other two.

This looks like a possibility, which is located just to the east of the bottling co.

[Jeff Higgins]

That one caught my eye as well, Eric. I think all three are too "parallel", though. Two in the photo are, but the third is at an angle. That, and they are way too close from what I remember. It was a long ride around the farm in the back of the Unimog to go back and forth. Oh, yeah, and imagine all of us kids on the flatbed of that thing, with the two low sideboards that they liked to run. Probably 20 of us sometimes. And yes, every now and then a big bump would launch one or two of us. I think he did it on purpose sometimes... We would just splat in the mud, no worse for wear...

[tcar]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

Cool car! A DKW or something like that?

Looks like a Panhard....