At eighty years old, Tini Somers is no longer the youngest, but he didn’t really want to think about stopping as a farmer yet. Nevertheless, he says goodbye to his farm in Vorstenbosch after Friday. “That’s just the way it is.”
Tini worked on the farm for fifty years. But because he has fewer and fewer cows, he now hangs the blue overalls on the willows for good. A difficult decision. “At a certain point I already had few cows and I often thought: if I had not stopped, they would not get the milk anymore, because it was too little. But it has not come to that,” says the farmer. which refers to FrieslandCampina, of which he was the oldest milk supplier.
“I’d rather not surrender everything to someone else.”
His cows enter a milking machine four by four, where they are milked. He comes twice a day, early in the morning and later in the afternoon. He is FrieslandCampina’s oldest supplier. Last year he even played in an anniversary film about the 150th anniversary of the dairy company. Tini didn’t want to look for a successor: “Then you have to hand everything over to someone else and I’d rather not do that. So I chose to stop.”
“You don’t see someone who milks cows at that age anymore.”
His decision to quit secretly also has to do with his age. “I’m still healthy, but anything can come in between. And then at some point you have to hand everything over to someone else and I’d rather not do that. So I chose to say: I’ll just stop now along.”
“There are not many cow farmers in Vorstenbosch anymore, and then they say: will you stop too? Then I say: it is no different. But they agree with me, because they say: someone who still has cows at such an age. milks, you don’t see that anywhere anymore.”
“If they’re really gone, I’m going to miss them.”
After such a long period as a farmer, the question arises whether he will not miss his animals. “If you do this work every day, and you immediately don’t see any cows anymore, it won’t be easy. That’s what everyone says. to miss.”