Long over-due update
Writing from my farmhouse bedroom-for-the-week in Vlagtwedde, NE Nederlands… My days here are relaxed and filled with weeding, eating yummy Italian food, and trying to comprehend a book written for 10-year-old girls. Dutch 10-year-olds I mean! This is a kind of week long retreat from… my half year Europe retreat…
The last month I spent a bit further west in the netherlands, in an old prison village called Veenhuizen (literally meaning “bog-houses”). There I got to experience a bit of the rural Dutch language and culture and a style of gardening different from what I’ve done before. De Tuin van Weldadigheid is an interesting mix of a family-owned commercial vegetables-and-beyond garden with sides in tourism and also social care. Most of the workers at the garden are unable to find work elsewhere, and benifit tremendously from the sense of accomplishment and the outdoor activity of gardening (don’t we all!?).
When I arrived the garden was just getting set for the spring: I helped to plant the first rows of spinach, peas and beans in the greenhouse, did a lot of every sort of weed removal imaginable, and tied the new berry growth to wires to keep it growing upwards. By the time I left the garden was in full swing, most of the beds were full, and I even got to enjoy the first spring spinach salad.
Beyond time spent in the garden, I learned a lot of dutch (mostly only valuable in the garden… schoofelen is a kind of hoe, boerkool is kale, and kringloopwinkel is a 2nd hand store). After work I would eat dinner with the family who owns the garden, and their 7 year old son who speaks almost no english. Then I could enjoy the delicious practical dutch cooking while listening to dutch: even though I didn’t really understand what they were saying it was fun to pick up a few words here and there. In the evenings I could retreat to my seperate house: all the houses in Veenhuizen have a motivational saying posted on them and mine was “hou en trouw” … something about faithfulness and trust. Evenings were mostly spent playing monopoly, watching soccer on TV, or chatting with my housemate Rimmer, who works part time in the garden while going to school.
On days off I mostly went exploring on the Janet-sized bicycle they somehow managed to find in the storage room (most bicycles in the netherlands are made for giants!). Sometimes northwest into Friesland where there is a different language and where the beautiful frisian horses come from. Sometimes along forest roads to nearby villages. And my favorite was into the Fochtelooerveen…. the bog from which Veenhuizen gets its name. It was incredible to leave a busy road, bike for about 5 minutes, and be completely isolated in a nature preserve, unable to see or hear anything besides birds, tall grass and surrounding forests. Of course, that was only true on weekdays and evenings, on the sunny weekend days the path was basically packed with tourists.
So now here I am on retreat for a week weeding the gardens and praying that a sheep will hurry up and go into labour so I can experience lambing at least on a tiny scale. Tuesday I go to Hoog-Soeren, a village inside a national/royal forest where perhaps the name Van Zoeren comes from. Wednesday I leave for France and new adventures!
ant
May 11, '10—12:07 pm
Hello, dear Janet… Thanks for the brilliant payoff to my diligent obsession of checking your blog for updates! Can you translate that into Dutch? – yer ant
Alice Van Zoeren
May 12, '10—7:03 pm
Thanks for the great updates. I look forward to photos…especially of sheep, kittens, your homes, families and you.
Doug
May 15, '10—5:39 pm
Great postings, Janet!
Hope your trip to the Van Zoeren ancestral homestead went better than mine 30 years ago — maybe you actually connected with some genuine VZs.
Post some photos of Holland.
We hope you’ll have time in your journeys to include a visit to one particular charming rural northern Michigan village this summer at the same time we are there.