Otto Jan, organic farmer
Thursday was another of Joppe’s “beautiful” days so we put on the rain coats and pedaled into Friesland again. After 10 or so miles, we came to our first stop of the day, an organic cheese and dairy farm near Workum. Otto Jan and his brother operate 4 farms consisting of 400 Jersey cows, all raised and fed organically. As with so many businesses we visited in northern Netherlands, it was
It’s a family business so Otto’s sister-in-law handles the cheese counter
family owned and operated, and management and labor were barely distinguishable. Otto gave us a tour and spoke with us for an hour.
We returned to our bikes and the light rain and headed a couple miles south to Hinderloopen. There we found the Ice Skate Museum in an inauspicious old house filled with antiques. Equally important, the owner is a decorative painter who has made a living for 50 years painting unique
The owner paints a distinctive Hindeloopen decorative pattern on a wooden tray.
Hindeloopen motifs on chairs, pottery, special boxes and just about anything else you can think of. It turns out that, historically, each town had it’s unique decorative floral designs and artists; now he and his son are the only ones left in Hindeloopen, and there are few left in Friesland.
Each local town has it’s own historic dress pattern as well….
….as this ensemble shows
Several rooms of the same house are dedicated to an Ice Skate Museum
Our little group then repaired to the seashore to sample smoked eel. We found a little over-the-counter fish house, waited our turn, ordered our eel, and struck up a conversation with a man busying himself with sundry things outside. He, it turned out, is also the last of a kind in Hindeloopen. He and his wife own the restaurant and fishing
Hindeloopen’s last fisherman demonstrates how an eel trap works.
boat, and he catches eel via 1,500 eel traps and smokes them in a box outside his restaurant. In earlier days, 30 fisherman operated out of Hindeloopen he said. Only he remains.
We pedaled back to our Makkum hotel reflecting on new prospering family businesses and older family trades that are thriving and dying at the same time.
The freshest, tastiest smoked eel and cheese we ever hope to find!