IT IS 45 years since I made my first visit to Germany. In those days it was all cold and snowy in that very cold winter of 1962.
Hence my surprise this year that I was to visit very much the same district this summer as I had spent a short time all those years ago.
The main difference was that my visit this year was in the former area of East Germany, whereas previously I had visited only the border area of West Germany.
At that time I was still at school, and had all the imaginations of the Cold War and how awful life was under the communists.
It was quite a shock to realise that Germany was a much older country than that period of the GDR (German Democratic Republic), and that buildings and customs and the people on the other side were not all that different at all.
Unfortunately, due to a combination of indifferent computer connectivity and the teutonic efficiency of our guide who never gave us any time off, I was unable to file a report from the country, and had to wait until I returned home to Wales.
On the farm which we visited, close to the town of Eshwege where I previously stayed, an enterprising West German entrepreneur had acquired a sizeable part of a former collective farm, which also now included a formidable grain store which I suspect had previously been used as a store for military equipment.
However, it was the other part of his farm where he had a large asparaus growing enterprise which attracted most interest, particularly at lunchtime when we able to sample the produce, together with strawberries also produced on the farm.
It was at this farm that we saw the most activity: contract workers from Poland where on the final days harvesting this year's crop of asparagus.
With such a high rate of unemployment in the former GDR, you might question why it was not possible to find German workers to do this job.
The German workers were not afraid to come in their posh cars and pick their own strawberries, but it was a gang of Poles who were harvesting the asparagus.
Besides them, there was also a whole community of people working on the farm, from milking cows totally enclosed in substantial stables to a full range of house servants working in the schloss (large farm house).
Example of a German schloss
During my winter visit in 1962 I seem to remember that many of these workers would work in a pack in the local village, processing the very substantial crops of fruit and vegetables which had been harvested during the fine summer months.
Like many British farmers there now seems to be an absence of people working in the countryside in Germany.
Arable farming is now the main enterprise in the countryside. Opportunities for people to work there are more or less non-existent as the arable farms all employ a fabulous array of large and modern machinery.
During a visit of about 10 days we were to see more Claas Lexion combine harvesters than I shall ever to see again: we just referred them as “boys toys”.
