It still feels a bit uncomfortable for Ad Strijbosch (40): the farmer from Deurne is in the new edition of the farmer’s calendar, with bare torso. The farmer’s and farmer’s wife calendar has become an annual tradition in the agricultural world. The farmers and peasant women crawl in front of the camera in all kinds of spicy poses. “I thought I was too old, but my wife thought I was ‘calendar worthy’.”
The spotlights are not something that farmer Ad likes to seek out himself. “I’m just a farmer,” he says. “This was a whole new world for me.” He ended up there more or less by accident. “Actually, I was a bit tricked by my wife and sister-in-law,” Ad laughs. “I thought I was old, but they thought I was ‘calendar worthy’. They wanted to give me up. But that was pub talk, I thought.”
“That I walk among the corn and pretend I see some weeds.”
Until suddenly that email appeared: Ad was among the last 25 candidates for next year’s farmers’ calendar. “I thought: oh shit!” In order to be included in the final selection, the finalists all had to submit a video. And that’s what the farmer from Deurne was all about: “We made a really nice video. That I walk among the corn and pretend I see some weeds. Shirt off, you know how that goes.”
Because of course it has to be a bit of a spicy become a calendar. “Yes. Well. That’s not necessarily my nature. But ladies around me say they see it,” he says somewhat shyly.
But he has no regrets about his participation. “The organization behind the calendar tries to portray agriculture in a positive way. We are often in the dark lately. I think it is a great initiative to participate in.”
Because you can bet that Ad is proud of his work. When he talks about the switch from dairy cattle to beef cattle, the initiative to get more Dutch beef on supermarket shelves or his efforts to make it more sustainable, his love for the company is apparent. “I try to go a bit more in the sustainable direction. For example, I have had a green strip along my cornland for years. For birds, hares and insects. And I grow lupine, a meat substitute, for Lupine from the Peel,” he says.
“I always feel comfortable on a farm.”
And he is actually quite proud of those photos. In any case, making it was not that bad for him, despite those spotlights. “It was all on a farm. And then I always feel at ease,” Ad recalls.
The idea that Ad and his bare bark will soon be hanging on the toilet of complete strangers is still a bit unfamiliar. “I actually thought that the calendar wouldn’t become so well-known here in the south. I thought it was more something from the middle of the country. I had never heard of the farmer’s calendar myself.”