A window on the Eifel

Neither of my two roommates in the hospital barracks knew anything about farming. But we had an ever-changing view of one little plot of Eifel agriculture right outside the window of our barracks. Across the street in front of the barracks was the Bitburg Air Base hospital and the front gate to the base. Right behind the barracks was a working German farm.

I sent this picture home to my mom, who spent her early years on a Virginia farm. I was hoping that she would be able to identify the crop that was just emerging in the spring of 1967. She said it was too early, but she suspected it could be either soybeans or some sort of grain. If I'm remembering correctly, it turned out to be soybeans.

Living in Bitburg was my first experience with living in a truly rural area. The Eifel Mountains are much like the Blue Ridge Mountains -- old, worn and gentle for the most part. There was no autobahn nearby. The roads were narrow and winding and took advantage of the slopes and valleys rather than trying to conquer them.

Unlike here in the States, farmers didn't live on their farms. In the Eifel and other rural parts of Germany, they lived in small villages and farmed on the outskirts . Mötsch, not more than a mile from the front gate of the base, was about as small as a village could be. There was one restaurant, a gas station and a cluster of small homes. Beside each simple home, inevitably, an aged farm tractor was parked next to a compost pit. It was not at all uncommon to see an entire family piled on board a tractor headed off for church on a Sunday morning. The kids would be perched on the fenders.

The GIs called those tractors "Eifel Cadillacs."