‘Efficient living is almost automatic here’

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Roil: “During my agricultural training in Dronten, it was mainly about scaling up and robotization, while I prefer to work on a small scale. Back to the past, but with modern means. We now have fifty Jersey cows for the milk and the meat. We drive a mobile chicken trailer through the country and have a farm shop. Very different from how my grandfather did it, he was a pretty conservative dairy farmer.”

Femke: „I am from Delft. Before I met Roel, I knew nothing about farm life. I worked in youth care for a long time, but when we had children [Boaz (3) en Levi (5)], it turned out to be difficult to combine everything. Last year I finally started here on the farm. It’s fun, and feels much more like our company.”

Roel: “We have many plans, but we regularly encounter restrictive regulations. For example, we spent four and a half years arranging the phosphate rights: from 2015 to 2019. We then lived on Femke’s income. It feels like we only really started two years ago.”

Femke: “Last season we started working with a horticulturist who started a vegetable garden in our yard, with about ninety ‘harvest mates’. Very nice! A community was formed. We sold the vegetables that were left over in the store. Unfortunately, it had to stop because it was not allowed with this zoning plan.”

Roel: “You can plant corn or grass, but you can’t grow vegetables – as it turned out. Probably it would be allowed in another place in our yard, a hundred meters away. Pretty frustrating yes, but you get used to it. Although I sometimes think: abroad this would be a lot easier.”

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Femke: “We have quite a fluctuating income and expenditure pattern. Sometimes we have to make major investments – a new barn, the furnishing of the shop, a new tractor – and then you have to recoup it all. That sometimes makes me restless.”

Roel: “We live quite frugally, although that happens almost automatically here. We already have to make an effort to plan a holiday with the four of us once a year. We are also cutting back on groceries, because we are quite self-sufficient with meat, milk and cheese from our own cows and vegetables from the garden.”

Femke: “I can’t really think of anything that we spend a lot of money on. We don’t have expensive hobbies. I buy clothes for the children partly second-hand: they run around outside all day.”

Roel: „We also do not buy the largest or most beautiful tractor. The only thing we might spend a little more money on is eating out at a restaurant with good, organic products, up close. We are used to the meat from here. Then I don’t need imported steak from Argentina.”