Historians Ewout van der Horst and Martin van der Linde of the Overijsselacademie spoke with more than sixty farmers, farmers’ wives and related professional groups from Overijssel about the changes within the agricultural sector. The arrival of the milking machine, tractor and cubicle stall meant a major change in agricultural operations and the lives of farmers. With melancholy and pride, people talk about things like land, education, breeding, cooperatives and livestock markets, about how, with hard work, little by little they were able to farm ahead.
With the help of photographer and cameraman Albert Bartelds, the people’s life stories have also been portrayed.

Through the online platform MijnStadMijnDorp, hundreds of stories, films and photographs have been published that offer a personal glimpse into postwar farm life in Overijssel.

• For video footage of the interviews (excerpts), see here.
• For brief biographies of the interviewees and downloadable text edits of the interviews, see here.

In the richly illustrated book Vooruitboeren, the researchers describe how farming changed from tradition to agricultural entrepreneurship.

The interviews were made for the film Imke Klaver, memories of a Frisian farm worker (16mm, 35′, Hedda van Gennep and
Henk de By, 1975), broadcast by VARA television on April 13, 1975. In the VARA-gids of that week, an article provides context information about the film and the people featured in it; it also contains the results of (another) interview with
Roorda: ‘Gerrit Roorda, do you tell me who Imke Klaver was’, by Marinus Schroevers.

The project was started against the background of the ‘discovery’ of Imke Klaver’s diary by the historian Ger Harmsen, who
also speaks the commentary in the film. The diary has appeared in print: Imke Klaver, Memoirs of a Frisian
farm worker. Some chronicled cases from the youngest past to 1925 (introduced by Ger Harmsen and with notes by
Johan Frieswijk), Nijmegen: SUN, 1974.

The interviews discuss the person of Imke Klaver, the often miserable living and working conditions in the Frisian countryside at the end of the 19th and in the first decades of the 20th century, and the (free) socialist movement in that period. Like Klaver’s diary, the conversations end at the workmen’s strike of 1925. Otje and Jelle Klaver are respectively wife and son of the main character. Talking with Hiltje de Vries-Hogerhuis is exclusively about the infamous “Hogerhuis case,” in which the brothers Wiebren, Marten and Keimpe Hogerhuis were arrested and convicted of burglary with assault in 1895, allegedly unjustly. As supporters of Domela Nieuwenhuis, they would have been hopeless at trial. Mrs. de Vries was a cousin (uncle’s cousin) of the brothers.

Interviewees:

• Mr. and Mrs. Brandsma
• Jelle Klaver
• Otje Klaver-Haanstra
• Mr. van der Laan
• Gerrit Roorda
• Mr. Schoppe
• Mr. Veenstra
• Hiltje de Vries-Hogerhuis
• Douwe de Wit

In 1971 Ger Harmsen came across a thick school notebook in Friesland, which turned out to contain the life memories and musings of Imke Klaver. The latter had died in 1967 at the age of 87. In 1971, these memories were first published in book form, bilingual: Frisian and Dutch, by SUN. Much read and praised at the time. The editions from the 1970s have been out of print for years. Because they were still in high demand, a reprint appeared, with a new afterword by Johan Frieswijk.

For the research project ‘Bewogen landschap’ (2020) and the project ‘farmland seeks future’, the Amsterdam-based Multimedia Culture Foundation (SMC) has been collecting stories from people who tell from their own experience about the modernisation of agriculture and the Dutch countryside in the period 1945-1985. The ‘Lanbouwfilms en verhalen’ collection includes documentaries compiled from audiovisually recorded oral-history interviews and information films from LNV’s historical collection.

The PhD research ‘Bewogen landschap’ by ir. Peter Veer (UvA) provided the scientific framework within which the work for ‘agricultural films and stories’ takes place. In collecting the stories, SMC cooperates with, among others, the National Cultural Heritage Agency (RCE) in Amersfoort. The Land of Maas and Waal is one of the post-war reconstruction landscapes that the RCE is highlighting.

The PhD research took place in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum (Sound & Vision). The study covers the total collection of 533 information films distributed by the Ministry’s Film Office. The core of this historical collection is kept by Sound and Vision.

In Bewogen Landschap, a collection of historical information films distributed by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture in the post-war period (1945-1985) was studied.

Still uit de film Van oud naar nieuw (1957)

Bewogen landschap

A cultural-historical study of the film practices of the Ministry of Agriculture (1945-1985)
Veer, P.M.

Thesis 2020

A film editing programme uses a timeline that consists of several image and sound lines.30 The first V1/A1 lines contain the selected fragments from the oral history interview. The fragments that are not relevant to the subject are removed. Next, the viewed historical agricultural information film is shown on the V3/A3 lines. The V1/A1 lines synchronise what the participant said while watching the film. The film and interview lines are thus connected. On the intervening V2/A2 lines, displaced fragments from the oral history interview are used as a new commentary voice that the filmmaker deems appropriate for the historical agricultural information film. Editing is a process of fitting and measuring, whereby the storyline of the archive film is leading in this case. 

• A – The historical film M 308 WITH LESS MOST, MORE RESULTS (1959).
• B – The montage of the oral history interview captured on film in large frame and the historical film in small frame.
• C – The database with the different audiovisual elements.
• D – The timeline of the oral history film in progress.
  V1/A1 the image and sound lines of the oral history interview fragments.
  V2/A2 the lines of displaced oral history interview fragments.
  V3/A3 the lines of the historical film in full and small frame.

The last phase of the editing was the adjustment of the picture frames, the improvement of the picture and sound quality, the addition of written text and music fragments in order to create an attractive audiovisual product for an interested audience product for an interested audience. The test editing of the oral history film was completed.

During the Second World War, more than eight thousand farms were destroyed in the Netherlands, often including their contents. Because the farmers’ wives and farmers’ daughters in particular performed many household tasks and were therefore especially connected to the farm, they form a special group of war victims. As part of this interview project, twelve conversations were held with witnesses in Groesbeek, Mill and the Grebbelinie. The interviewees tell about the devastation during the war, everyday life in makeshift houses and reconstruction.

In the project, stories have been collected with different perspectives: stories from the perspective of the teenage farmer’s daughter, the farmer’s maid, the farmer’s daughter who was sent to a foster home, the worker’s daughter and the farmer’s daughter who did not come from a destroyed farm but experienced the devastation and life in the makeshift houses in the hamlet. The focus is partly on the events of the war in 1940, partly on the events of 1944/45. Most of the women have not told their stories before.

In 2009, trained volunteers conducted extensive interviews with fruit farmers and farm workers in the river region (oral history). With the consent of the interviewees, the conversations were taped and typed out word for word, after which an easily readable story was written. The project is an activity of the Hoogstamfruit Centre and the Gelderland Foundation for Landscape Management (SLG). The aim of the project was to record the history of fruit cultivation, particularly of standard orchards, while it is still possible. The volunteers were guided by SLG.

Twenty-eight interviews were held with fruit growers and workers in fruit cultivation. The stories are about how things used to be in the standard orchard up until about the 1960s. They are about the place of the orchard in the farm, about seasonal work, about pruning, grafting, spraying the trees and about picking the fruit. The stories also give an overview of all the varieties grown in those days. They are personal stories about their own memories and experiences. Together with the photos that have been taken, the stories give a nice picture of how life in the fruit growing business used to be.

Many of the memories belong to the past. Over the past decades, the situation in fruit growing has changed dramatically. High-growing trees have been replaced by low-growing trees and bushes. The pesticides used have been banned and most of the old fruit varieties have disappeared. To stop the decline of the remaining standard orchards and to keep old varieties alive, the Steunpunt Hoogstamfruit was founded.

Van Hoenderik tot Heerepeer is about historical fruit cultivation in the river area and contains stories about daily life in and around orchards. The booklet contains 27 stories from interviews with farmers and farm workers from eight river region municipalities about the history of standard orchards. This has yielded stories about yellow Californian porridge, poverty and prosperity in fruit growing, mealy Notary apples, hard work in the four seasons and, of course, cherry picking. The project of which this booklet is the final result, was made possible thanks to the support of Steunpunt Hoogstamfruit and its member municipalities: Geldermalsen, Buren, Druten, Beuningen, West Maas and Waal, Zaltbommel, Culemborg and Maasdriel.