Farewell Belgium: a day of fruit, beer and milk

Greetings from the chocolate group!

Today is our last day in Belgium, so we knew we had to go out in style. We woke up to another delicious Irish College breakfast, and headed out early (8:00am) for the Leuven Farmers’ Market. It was located in a square near the city library, and for a relatively small city there were a huge number of vendors. The produce that these venders offered was extremely fresh, and looked great. A lot of our class bought various fruits and desserts including strawberries, cherries, cheesecake, and our own Hilary was unfortunate enough to get the only box of raspberries with some mold. Better luck next time.

After the farmers’ market we headed back to the college to pack our sack lunches to take on a picnic a little later on. Then we boarded the bus for Viezenbeek where Lindemans’ brewery is. We met one of the co-owners, Geert Lindemans, and the president of the company, Jan Delcour. They took us on a tour of the facilities where the brew and bottle their fruit flavored beers. After the tour, they were very generous and offered us all samples of the huge variety of delicious beers including: cherry, raspberry, peach, apple, and black currant. We strongly recommend trying some of these beers which you can find in the states; tell them IBIP sent you!

After the brewery, we headed out for Gaasbeek where the Waterhof Dairy Farm is located. We met Koen and Els Van der Meulen who are the owners. We enjoyed our picnic lunch and then took a tour of their farm. It is a relatively standard dairy farm, except that they differentiate themselves by using their milk to make various dairy products such as cheese, ice cream, butter, and yogurt which they sell in a small store on site. They also had a completely automated milking system which we witnessed working. It was interesting to see because all the cows were free to move in and out of the pasture at any time, and when they were ready to be milked, they would come to the milk machine by themselves. After seeing all this, Koen’s daughters served us all ice cream, we relaxed a little in the beautiful weather, and then headed off for the vegetable auction.

We had a great opportunity to learn about and tour Mechelse Veilingen, the largest vegetable auction in Belgium. We met with Luc Peeters who gave a great overview of the company, and then toured the grounds, which covered some 50 hectares (not really sure what that means for Americans). It was interesting to see how automated the entire system was.

All-in-all, a great day. We are all going to pack up for the travel tomorrow, take a short nap, and then head out to Leuven for one last night of dinner and a final hoorah.

Talk to you tomorrow!

Posted by Nick Fogle, Hilary Labrash, Sara Petranek, Austin Verbeck