Overview:
Silvio’s Farm – Honoring Your Source – Spanjaards Racing Pigeons – Gerrit Spanjaards was a consummate master. For thirty-seven years Gerrit Spanjaards was a Janssen specialist, a combine champion, and a national winner. Spanjaards was one of those masters whose records attest impressively to his success! Only a handful of fanciers within Canada, the USA, Australia, etc., would ever have heard his name. His name and the quality of his pigeons were well-kept secrets in North America.
How often have you heard journalists around the world say that at all costs their sources must be protected? Most would risk hardship and prison rather than betraying the source. Well, as odd as it may seem, many pigeon fanciers are much the same. When they find that proverbial source loft, they go out of their way to keep it a secret!
What do we as pigeon fanciers mean by the term source? The dictionary defines source as being from the Latin surgere, which means to rise. Source is the place from which a river or stream issues; it is the point of origin or issue. For fanciers, it is best defined as the beginning, the origins, the start, the root, the base, the fountainhead, and the foundation.
Across North America, a great number of pigeon fanciers owe their success to the Janssen family of pigeons developed by Mr. Gerrit Spanjaards