You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Erve Middelkamp, an old farm in The Netherlands
I see why you stared at the door for quite a while. That is fascinating. Love how they cut it to go around/over the rocks. Amazing it still works.
Did they have the farm animals inside with them, to help keep them warm in winter? Seems like many places did this, and it DOES make sense. And the smell is pretty organic, so not all that unpleasant. Thanks for sharing the farm with us.
Yes, one big room, people one the one side, animals on the other. Except for weirdly jumping cats, they probably went everywhere to pay for their keep by catching mice.
Suppose better the mouser leaping the the divider and onto the kitchen table, than an errant Holstein. Think there might be a story there....
The cows were usually docile enough, and the pigs were in a closed-off area, but some farmers also kept a boar around to aid in making new pigs, and a boar can really upset a household when it breaks loose, even more than a deranged cat.
The cry "de beer is los!" would go out, and this is still a Dutch expression for "the shit hit the fan". Note that "beer" means both "bear" and "boar" in Dutch, and some etymologists claim the expression refers to circus bears breaking loose, but I prefer my interpretation, even when I'm wrong.
I worked the text of this comment into this brand-new repost.
That is interesting info. I like the "de beer is los", and I suppose there were many more opportunities to cry out about boar and pig escapes, than circus bears, so think your interpretation is MUCH more realistic. I'll check out that post now. Thanks for the comment back, I learned quite a bit here.