108. Europe Bicycle Trip--Ton and Lisbeth

My destination for today was the home of Ton and Liesbeth van Rijn. Ton is a brother of Wil Maaijen and Wim van Rijn  and Corrie van der Zon ,all of whom I have visited already. .What a loving receptive family. I had one problem today and that is that I didn't have time last night to put the address in the GPS and also I didn't have time to check the location on Google Map. So when I wrote out the points, I made them all the way to Bathmen. As I got closer to the town, I decided to stop on the dirt path that I had been on and put the address in the GPS which indicated that their place was in the country and I was probably 4 km. past it. What a bummer as my philosophy is onward and forward and not backwards. I made a phone call to double check if they lived in the country and their son told me yes and that his parents were away at a birthday celebration and he was leaving shortly also. Well, You've never seen anyone ride faster and with great determination as Mary Ann and Silver . We made it already and met Tim. He showed me the rooms and served me a cold drink and was off. I unpacked Soilver and took photos of the house and yard.

All the sheds are empty now unless people want to store trailers.Their home is over 100 years old and they have done extensive renovations on it. The part that you see in this photo used to be for animals and is now a kitchen, office and bathroom.

They just finished this separated garden area.

The reed roof was partly redone last year.

This sheltered area and greenhouse are also new and we enjoyed sitting there in the evening.

Farther back on the left is a beautiful lawn.

In the back on the left is a pen with some chickens and evergreen trees which they sell.

Ton and Liesbeth came home from their party and made me a nice meal  and in the evening we sat outside and talked about their jobs and their house and their 2 sons. Ton originally had a goat business but the economy wasn't good and he gave that up  but still works for the goat i8ndustry . His company now produces food for cows, pigs and chickens. He is the goat expert and visits goat farms to give advice. He is also a member of a group that defends the rights of workers-like a union representative.
Liesbeth works for the town of Lochem. She is the contact person for the one big city made up of 11 smaller villages.She has been doing this for 6 months. Before that she was a tourism promoter for Lochem for 5 years. They have 2 sons, Tim who is 21 and Maik who is 17. Maik was upstairs sleeping when I came as he worked late in a bakery.

A photo of the house many years ago

A needlework of the old house

A goat farm in the past!

The living room area

The dining area

A nice big kitchen

In the evening we looked at scrapbooks. Ton is very musical and has played trombone , bugle and tuba in high school , in a local orchestra band he has been in several bands and music groups and they have even made a CD. He got first prize many times in music competitions.  I also found out during our conversation that all the van Rijn children were born at Boerderij Geertje ( run now by Wim and Ada) that I visited weeks ago

One of many news articles from the past

What a nice birth announcement for Liesbeth's birth back in 1965.