♪ Spring ♫

The first signs of spring are slowly getting visible now the huge amounts of snow have melted. The first storks had already arrived from the warm south when we had a new period full of freezing cold and loads of snow. I hope they haven’t suffered to much…

The crocuses and snowdrops are blooming and it won’t be long until we’ll get to enjoy the tulips. I love it that nature is pretty predictable. In a few weeks everything will be fresh and green, just as last year or one hundred years ago.

 

With the upcoming spring the quiet period of winter will come to an end. The corn seed has been ordered and the preparations of the first activities for us as farmers in spring have started. Now the days are getting longer, it automatically means our workdays are getting longer too, almost unnoticed. The relative predictability of the work that needs to be done every year. A hundred years ago it was mostly done by hand, but nowadays with more horsepower than farmers back then could have ever imagined.

 

About cows and calves (literally translated from Dutch but it means as much as “small talk”)

At the farm it’s business as usual. We try to plan what we’re going to do with our livestock. Every year all cows get a calf and that means we have about 30 calves every year. Half of them are bull calves and those are for sale. We keep two of them for ourselves to slaughter with Easter and Christmas. We divide the meat between our employees and put some kilo’s in our own freezer. The heifer calves are to replace our dairy cows, but with fifteen calves a year this means we can replace our complete livestock every two years. That is not what we want, because we prefer to keep the cows on our farm a little longer. That means we have to think about which cows and calves we want to keep en which ones are going to be sold. I don’t like that. I’d love to keep them all. When you see your livestock growing up and the moms, grandma’s and even some great grandmothers it feels like an impossible task. But it has to be done, otherwise our stable will become way to little. So we have to decide not to think with our hearts, but with our minds. In one of the following blogs I’d like to tell more about our cows and the choice of the breed.

 

Freya

From the end of February we had Freya as a guest in our house for a few weeks. We know her through a friend of us and she started to translate our blogs from Dutch to English (together with two other great translators!) and she wanted to come visit us to get to know us and our farm. The three weeks of her visit passed by really fast and we regret that she left again. She took on the feeding of the  and the horses so I could use my time for housekeeping and administration. I was delighted to find out Freya also loves horses a lot, so we’ve been busy with the horses almost every day. I loved doing that together! The kids will miss her too! She read them books, played games with them, baked cookies, made some creative things with them, played in the hay. Nothing was too crazy for her. Freya, thank you so much for all the help and the fun times we had together!

If you’d like to live with us at our farm for a little while, please feel free to contact us so we can see if there are any possibilities!

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Well begun is half done

To have a good start of 2018, our first blog. About ambitious plans, about things we have accomplished and mostly about gratitude.

To look back every now and then is a good thing. Where did I come from, what has happened, how did I change. Sometimes the small things are a major step forward when you look through the glasses of a couple years back. It helps to put things in perspective, to improve and to be grateful.

Dinner guests in the pasture
At the end of summer, when the village meadows where everyone lets their cows pasture are barer then bare, people try to let their cows pasture their own pieces of hay land. Or on the pieces of common ground closer to home. Our 18 acres in the valley are very wanted in that time. Sometimes people take the effort to ask if they are allowed, but mostly that’s already to much to ask. We usually tried to comment on it, but rarely with the intended effects. This year wasn’t any different…. We thought. We had told people they could use our ground the entire meadow season for 50 RON (about €10), but we didn’t have much faith. Until one morning a club of our neighbors came to us. With some money for the cow. They had informed each other about the contribution we asked and so they stood at our doorstep that morning. They told us that not everyone was willing to pay, but they, as neighbors, wanted to keep us as a friend. That’s why they came to bring their contribution. For us this gesture was so meaningful. After almost ten years we are seen as a good neighbor. We belong there, we are part of the community. For us, this was a highlight of 2017!

Potato project
For a couple of years we donate the clothes that are left over from our shop to Liviu Sofronie. Next to his work as a pastor in the community in Suceava, he visits poor Romanian families and tries to help them with housing, clothing and food. Last spring we had a lot of seed potatoes left and we decided to set op a little project for a couple of gypsy families. We had the potatoes planted and pastor Sofronie came with a group of young gypsies to pull weeds and to kill Colorado beetles. At the end of October they came again, this time to grub the potatoes. They brought home 32 bags with each containing 40 kilograms. Hopefully next year they will find a piece of ground closer to home and take initiative to grow potatoes themselves.

Harvesting the potatoes. On the front our children harvesting our own winter stock.

Crowdfunding project
It was a major threat to our farm when the 17 acres that we have been renting for years, came for sale. Luckily the sale didn’t go very quick so we had time to overthink how we could turn this threat into an opportunity. We wrote a projectplan (sorry, not yet translated in English. As soon as we finish translation we will publish it on the site!)and started a crowdfunding project. Borrowing money brings a financial obligation, because you have to pay it back. To be able to live up to that, we want to make our own cheese to get more yields from the farm and create financial space to take the loan. In total we want to borrow €120.000 to buy the ground and to build the cheese factory. On the moment of writing we have received €6020 as gifts and €83.300 as a loan. We are at a total of €89.320 which is 74% of what we need. We are super grateful for this!
We would have never started this project if we had no faith that we would actually make it. And yet we feel so overwhelmed by all the positive reactions and so many people that support us and are willing to help. Our kindest thanks for that!

We want to take until the end of February to get the whole amount together. We can use your help very well for that. Would you consider who in your personal network might be interested in our project? You can download our projectplan from the website or send us an e-mail. Or share the link to our website or promotion video via mail, facebook or app. We would be helped enormously.

Grateful
Last year a lot has happened on our farm. Of course the fixed labor, you can not get out of that as a cattle farmer. But we are pointing at all the things next to that. They add the best bits. The crowdfunding that has been a lot of work, all the people that visited us this year, the Dutch teacher for our kids last summer, de potatoes, the visit to Holland with Lica and Rodica, the rugby games that our kids got to play, our holiday in Brasov in the fall, all the transports of clothing that we received for the shop and there is so much more. We are grateful that we are healthy and that we are able to ‘just’ do these things.
We jokingly talk about the last years at the farm as the “seven skinny years”. It wasn’t always easy, it often felt as if everything was slipping through our hands. Now we can invest in the cheese factory, the relation with our neighbors is pleasant, the kids feel at their place in Romania, the puzzle pieces seem to fall in to place more and more. Now the “seven fat years” are coming. At least, that’s how it feels to us. We are looking forward and hope that we will, together with you all, be amazed and grateful!

Logo

Because we are so exited about it, we hereby proudly present the logo for “Boeren op Gods akker”. For “Vacuta Verde”, our farm, we have the same logo to use on our cheese and other dairy products in the future. We found it very suitable for both our project and the farm.

We are very curious about what you think of it. Which meaning do you see? Leave a message here on the blog or on our page on facebook .

The logo was created by Sterre Hendriks of Studio Brun, we can definitely recommend her work!

The development of Fantanele # 3

In our last blog in this series, I wrote about which group we want to aim at and why. This time I will write about the part our farm plays in the community and why we want to establish an expensive dairy farm. Shouldn’t we establish another agricultural activity that is less capital intensive? We asked ourselves that question more than once last year. A question that is very hard to answer because there is no wrong or right answer, probably. Additionally, when we look back it has been due to coincidental circumstances that we are where we are.

We believe things happen with a reason. Choosing for an agricultural education as son of a policeman and daughter of a fireman wasn’t directly logical. We both have a predilection for dairy cattle and that is how we rolled into it. When we started here in Romania as company directors 9 years ago, we came to this pre-existing dairy farm. If it would have been an arable farm, we probably would not have ended up here.

 

When we think very reasoning, it was a precarious project. Starting up a farm with very few financial means is hard. However we always had the strength and motivation to keep going. The fellow villagers have seen it through the years and we have won their respect and admiration.

We might still be the “crazy Dutch people”, we are seen as people with knowledge and experience and we notice that our fellow villagers more easily come to us for advice.

Seeing is believing, a  common saying and in practice it works that way as well. Also, or maybe certainly for Romania’s rural areas. When we want to stimulate people and help them start their own business, we have to be active in business as well. When we want to convince people that fertilizer and pesticides aren’t necessary, then we have to show in our practice that it works and there is still enough to yield. People can see the possibilities because you can put our knowledge in practice. And maybe, at least as important as a foreigner, we aren’t gone next year and have left the people behind with a starting business or for them new farming methods.

With our farm we beautifully fit into the rural community. Even though we relatively speaking, have a very big farm, our work is noticeable and we are easy to get in touch with. A lot of metaphors that Jezus uses in the Bible are agricultural related and are much closer here.

 

We think that a person is at its best in a job he (or she) does with passion. That is when the work gives you satisfaction and there is that willingness to give just a little bit extra to make things succeed. Certainly when it is your own business. The work with cattle, the growing of fodder crops, we do it with a smile. That is where our passion lies. It is a challenge to deal with nature and its whimsicalness. The changing from season to season with each its depths and heights makes the work varied.

Through the years we got attached to this village, this place, this cattle. If we would have to give up our dairy cattle to do something else, it would take away a lot of our work pleasure. Yes, it is very capital intensive, we could have made another decision if we had known all this beforehand. Despite all possibilities and setbacks that we have overcome in the years we know that above all, in the work we do, we are in the right place. Intellectually we can’t always explain. Financially it isn’t always easy. But it is our place and we think it is the place where God wants us. And you will never get that in writing and might be hard to reason intellectually. It is de place where you know you have to be. And for us, it is here on our farm with our cattle.

Summertime

Again I’m writing a blog with updates while my intention was to continue with the series about the development work in Fantanele. I am struggling a little with the part that I’m currently writing, and I’m not yet sure whether it’s good enough for publication. In the meantime, so many things have happened that I thought let’s write a “normal” blog first. We have had three months of holidays: it seemed like seas of time, but time has flown by so quickly! We are already going into the children’s last weeks of summer holidays.

Rugby

Hans has done part of his studies in Angers, France. While he was there, he had joined the student rugby team and was training fanatically.. The only thing that I can remember from that time was a competition that he played during the weekend. I came to watch the game and it was so cold I was trembling on the sideline during the one and a half hours the game lasted. They did not even win the game. In the Netherlands, rugby is not really popular, which is why Hans’ rugby experience was limited to his time studying in France.

The interest in the sport has nevertheless never really left him and that is why he sometimes watches some rugby competitions on youtube. With the idea of ‘soccer is for pussies, rugby is for the tough’, the kids regularly join him in watching the games. They love it and it’s not uncommon to find the kids playing games of rough-and-tumble after watching the videos.

To their great joy the kids got to play rugby during sports lessons at school. In spring, they played a few games which continued into the holiday period. In the beginning of the holidays, the kids and I went to a rugby competition in Constanta. It’s about an 8 hours drive from here and we were camping on the beach. The group with whom we were consisted of 18 kids, the sports trainer, a journalist from the Suceava newspaper and four parents to accompany the whole undertaking. For many of the children this was their first time at sea and so it was a great experience for them. There were two competitions played in the morning, after which there was time for games and swimming in the sea. It’s nice to see that a country like Romania also provides some money to allow these children to get to know sports. This in combination with a fantastic sports trainer who, besides the sport itself, also teaches the kids about general norms, values, and respect.

School during the school holidays

Having three months of summer holidays is probably the dream of every child. And then you’ve got parents who ruin the whole thing… Namely, we had managed to get Viorel’s wife (Viorel does the milking on the farm) who was prepared to, during the first three weeks of the holidays, three times a week, give our kids Romanian lessons. Because we speak Dutch at home, especially Judith’s and Rowan’s Romanian is a little less good. Their vocabulary is smaller than that of their Romanian colleagues. They manage alright at school but we decided that some extra practise wouldn’t do any harm.

On top of that, we had succeeded in finding a Dutch summer teacher. Five weeks on end Dutch lessons, Mondays till Fridays. Reading, spelling, grammar, writing, hooray! Luckily we have kids who are compliant and sweet, and it turned out they actually quite liked it.

Dutch teacher Sandra had come together with her husband and kids to Romania. I had put a message on a horse forum (because a teacher who would also be a horse-lover had my preference) and Sandra had answered. After some emailing back and forth we decided to go ahead and so Sandra and her family came to stay with us on the farm for five weeks. The kids got along very well and they had a great time together. Judith and Sandra’s daughter Rebekka became good friends, so when the goodbye’s came last week there were some big tears shed between the two of them.

It still amazes us every time how wonderful it is to live with other people so intensely for a longer period of time. The joy of spending time together but also the deep conversations about faith, family and life in general. Quite a different thing to the average conversations you have over a cup of tea.

Well and then there is even more to tell you. We have celebrated Judith’s ninth birthday, there have been a couple more rugby matches, and we have added a lost kitten and a puppy to our collection of animals. Other than teacher Sandra and her family, we have also had Martin and Linda with their four boys over for a visit, and Daan and Laura with their family of seven heads. Both of the families have met Sandra as well. During the height of the holidays, we were sitting around the table with 11 kids and 6 adults (thank you for the big table Dick and Sjaan!).

Lastly, we are busy buying the property of 18 hectares in the valley behind the farm. Something that we’ve had to keep silent for a long time on the internet. Not because you were not to know, but because of another potential buyer. It all sounds very mysterious for the moment but I promise to come back to this in a separate blog!

For now, this blog has been more than long enough. We hope that you all have had a wonderful summer. We in any case did!

In the event you are interested after reading the stories and blogs about Fantanele, you are welcome to join our farm for a (working) holiday. Please contact us or write a reaction beneath the blog and we will get back to you!

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Real farmers

I think the right word to describe the last few weeks would be: hectic. Hans and I have never been away from the farm so often as these past few months. It started with a training in France about cover crops for Hans at the end of January. After that I went to the Netherlands with Lica and Rodica in February. At the beginning of March Hans travelled to the Netherlands to buy a wooden building. And where I joined a wedding in Holland at the end of March, Hans returned there at the beginning of April to break down the building and pack it up and after that I went for another wedding at the end of April. For as far as we know we now will stay at the farm until the end of august.

In the upcoming time I also would like to work on the blogs about “our” development work in Fantanele. Unfortunately there’s wasn’t any time left for that in the last few months. But I didn’t forget about it, it just takes a little longer then I thought.

 

Good news!!!

We have very good news to tell you! With the financial help of a few lovely people we could buy our farm from the foundation Romadopt! So now we are officially farmers on our own farm! We are very glad! We can continue with the development work we are doing. In the last few years we couldn’t save money for our pension, but now the farm can be our piggy bank for later. This means we will stay in Romania for the time being. Something that makes us happy and sad at the same time, because it also means we will live far away from family and friends in the Netherlands.

 

Hans’ stay in the Netherlands

As I told you earlier, Hans has been to the Netherlands twice to break down a wooden building and make it ready for transport. With the help of friends we were able to buy this building and with the abundant help of family and friends it has been broken down and packed up. We want to use part of the material to build a nice reception space for our cheese factory-to-be. We would like to use the other part to build our own house somewhere in the future. Both projects are our dreams for the future, but we love making plans for the future and build up our life’s here that way.

Discovering Holland

I had the intention to write a short blog before I would go to the Netherlands and then place some updates during the week I would stay there. But because of all the things that had to be arranged I couldn’t make time for it so it just stayed an intention.

But let me start at the beginning as I can imagine that most people have no idea what I’m talking about. In the middle of February I went to the Netherlands for a short visit, together with Lica and Rodica. Lica is de saleswoman in our second hand clothing store and Rodica helps me twice a week with cleaning our house.

De reason for our visit was to bring Lica in touch with the volunteers in Driel who so faithfully collect clothing, sort them out, pack them up and put them on transport. Without them we wouldn’t be able to run a shop. I also wanted to visit another second hand clothing store with Lica and a thrift shop.

Rodica is doing the last year of her master on the university of Suceava. She studies something about rural decor, but I don’t know all the details about it. Rodica loves the Romanian countryside and would love to stay in Fantanele. After her study she would like to do something agricultural. I’m helping her to find out what that “something agricultural” could be. In the end she has to earn an income with it and it won’t work when she would decide to grow white cabbage and tomatoes, just like all the other Romanian people do. Our stay in Holland was meant to be for some inspiration to her. In Holland there’s a lot of development going on in the field of biological agriculture, product processing, direct sales to the consumer or extra activities along with the agricultural work. Those are things that are far from common in Romania. At least not where we live.

We had a very diverse schedule and travelled a lot of kilometers through the country. First of all we visited Driel, where we had lunch with the volunteers and could exchange questions and experiences. As a surprise they took us to Burgers Zoo in Arnhem in the afternoon. The following days we visited the ecological farm ‘De Eerste’ in Marknesse (where I learnt how to make cheese), care farm ‘De Maargieshoeve’ in Kallenkote, the apple- and pearfarm ‘Van Zessen’ in Lexmond, a dairy farm who also had a campsite and which is called ‘t Oortjeshek’ and is located in Kamerik, strawberry-farm ‘Van der Vinne’ in Alteveer and fruit farm ‘Vink’ in Kraggenburg. We also visited second hand clothing store ‘Roleto’ in Zeewolde, thrift shop ‘De Basisz’ and a shop called ‘De oude bieb’.

Of course the ladies couldn’t leave Holland without seeing typical Dutch thing. We visited

the old port town Blokzijl, took a look at the windmills in Kinderdijk and caught a boat in Giethoorn.

We can look back at a great, inspiring and very pleasant time in the Netherlands. I would like to thank all farmers, volunteers, packers and other lovely people for their hospitality, stories and time. I really hope that it will help Lica and Rodica to develop their entrepreneurship so they can be an inspiration for the people in their environment.

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School in Romania

It’s already the end of January and our holiday in the Netherlands is three weeks ago. After a vacation it always takes time to get back in our daily routine but it looks like we managed to get there.
We had a lovely time in the Netherlands. We enjoyed the company of friends and family. Very special to have visited both Hans’ grandfathers that passed away soon after our visit. My grandmother passed away in the beginning of last year. When we went to pick up our Volvo I managed to pay her a visit, we knew by then that it wouldn’t be long anymore.
Hans’ grandfathers were the last of a generation to us. It makes you stop and think about ‘life’ for a moment. Generations come, generations go. Someday it is our turn. It can make life seem so useless. Luckily we know that death is just the crossing to eternal life. And that our life is useful. For us it is the motivation to live consciously. Think about the things we do and why we do them. Life in Romania, on a farm, amongst Romanians, is a deliberate choice. One we stand 100% behind.

The children and their school
People regularly ask us how we see the future of our children’s education now that we will stay in Romania for the time being. A very just question whereas we always said we’d go back to the Netherlands for their education. Rowan started primary school this year so we have three real schoolkids.
Our impression of the education in the village wasn’t really good. Children only go half a day and there are several ones that can barely read, write or calculate. Now that our own children attend school we have first-hand experience and we have to admit that the education is much better than we thought and hoped. The level is quite high and despite the children going for half a day, they get so much homework that they are occupied a substantial part of the afternoon.
The first five years of school they have only one teacher. Our children all have good teachers that put in a lot of effort to ensure the children gain knowledge. After the first five years the children get a grade mentor and a different teacher for each subject. We are considering to find a school in one of the nearby cities or bigger towns with a higher level, to send the children after their first five years. This time we will not say it to loud. We shall see, eventually we aren’t going back to the Netherlands anytime soon even though we once claimed so….

But what is going on with the children from the village that can barely read, write or calculate? The school system in Romania demands quite a devotion from the parents. Because of the extensive amount of homework the children get, you as a parent (reluctantly) are part of the education of your children. The assignments they take home are addressed during classes but doesn’t necessarily mean they grasped it and know how to put it into practice. Unfortunately not all parents involve themselves sufficiently. When they don’t get any support in their homework (especially when it concerns the weaker pupils) the kids will soon be behind. They end up in a vicious circle that they cannot turn around without help. Not very motivating obviously and these children are the ones often absent and leaving school at sixteen years of age (or earlier).

Our wish for you

At the end of this year we want to thank you for al your love and support. We couldn’t do it without you guys!

We wish you a merry Christmas and Gods blessings for 2017. That this new year will be filled with love, peace and wonderful new things.

With love, Hans & Maaike, Mathias, Judith and Rowan

 

The development of Fantanele #2

The last blog was the first one in a series of blogs about “our” development project in Fantanele. This time part two, which will be about our target audience and what we are hoping to achieve with them.

 

This target group did not simply come to us out of the blue. Our eight years in Fantanele and the network that we have been able to build with the local inhabitants have given us a good insight into the problems that the rural areas are coping with.

There is little job opportunity on the countryside and the salaries are low (around 225 Euros per month). Because of higher salaries abroad, going abroad is popular. The young people leave; the older generation stays behind. Especially these young people are important to keep the rural areas lively and economically sustainable. The youth does not see the merit of education because they see that in their environment, education does not give prospects for work per se; and if they find work, the salaries are not high enough to provide them with the freedom they are looking for.

A second threat for the countryside is the scaling up of agriculture as well as the increasing use of insecticides and pesticides. Farming has, in particular amongst youngsters, a bad reputation. For them, it is the equivalent of poverty. Even though people on the Romanian countryside seem to live close to nature, there is little knowledge about the ecology and its dynamics.

 

With the project Farmer on Gods land, we, together with our neighbours, aim at keeping the countryside liveable as well as contributing to improvement. Hereby we aim specifically at enterprising inhabitants of our village. We want to challenge these people, inspire them, and help them to set up enterprises with passion. Especially when these people do the things they truly enjoy, of which they were perhaps already dreaming of for years, they are willing to put the effort into making their enterprise a success. Successful enterprises initiate the flowing of capital but also create employment. In turn, this provides the rest of the inhabitants with possibilities as well. The personal contact and the progression of relationships with these enterprising Romanians are a great opportunity to show them God’s love for human beings, animals and nature.

 

Next up:

The role of the farm. Why would one set up an “expensive” dairy farm?