Roelf Maarsingh, his country on the edge of the Bargerveen for almost forty years. Now his land is making way for the Noordwest water buffer, a project that must maintain the peat bog of the Bargerveen. No resentment at Maarsingh, on the contrary: “I think it’s great that our country is added to the Bargerveen.” But the decision to leave was anything but easy.
Before Roelf settled in Weiteveen, he had already had a farmer’s career in Nieuw-Buinen. After the agricultural school he started his life there with his wife Pipy, with scattered plots of land in Vledderveen, near Stadskanaal and Musselkanaal.
But after ten years the family was forced to leave. “The AG Wildervanckanaal was then constructed, where the process had to be done through our lands. As a result, we lost a lot of land, and there were unworkable transitions between the existing plots. Then I thought: I moth away from here.”
His search brought him into contact with the province, which pointed him to a place in Weiteveen. “Then we ended up here around 1985. The peat had just been excavated. I thought it was great, partly because the Bargerveen was just in front of it. I am a huge fan of nature. Our first neighbor was a kilometer away. In the evening you heard nothing at all, it was mouse silent. Wonderful. We were completely in my place.”
Agricultural there was initially a challenge. Because the peat soil had to be made suitable for agricultural use. “It was a peat package of more than a meter, with sand underneath. That had to be mixed up. We put three cranes on it, who did a bunder a day every day.” After more than two years, that yielded a total of 104 hectares of farm land.
Then the farming life really started. “We converted potatoes, wheat, barley, sugar beets, oats, hemp, ryegrass, corn, in total fifty different crops. I was not a super farmer, but I could always manage. And I did it with great pleasure. The freedom, working in nature, that made it beautiful.”
But history repeated itself. Again the Maarsingh farm turned out to be in the way. Because after twenty years of farmers, the government was again on his doorstep. The Bargerveen, one of the few remaining high pile reserves in the Netherlands, had to be protected. For this, water buffers were needed, and the heart of the zone on the northwest side was exactly within Maarsinghs land.
“But I had two sons that wanted to be a farmer. I was just there, so I thought: what do you have to do?” He called in a lawyer and resisted for ten years, with his hand and tooth. But in the end he achieved baking sail and sold 98 hectares, almost everything.
“Eventually both boys decided to seek their happiness elsewhere. Our son Aike went to Spijk in Groningen, and his brother Albert emigrated to Canada.” Daughter Marlien chose a different path and became a social worker in Zwolle.