When the elderly live together on the farmyard, with care if necessary. This will be possible in a few years’ time near the village of Zeijen, thanks to the Huis te Zeijen housing project. Sixteen homes for the elderly and a bed & breakfast where care accommodation is also possible will be built in the yard around a farmhouse on the Minister Cremerstraat.
It is a private initiative of two people over 55 with a preference for living in the countryside. “We now enjoy the outdoors to the fullest, and would like to do that when we are old and gray.”
For twenty years, Bert Pathuis (61) and Marja Takens (59) have lived in the countryside, in the middle of the farmlands between Ter Aard and Zeijen. The daughters have been out for a while, and the two of them are actually drowning in their spacious farmhouse. Space was inside, and the same goes for outside. Around the farm is a huge piece of land, where there are also some old cattle sheds. Years ago, on the terrace in the garden, they talked with their friends about ‘their old age’, and how they would prefer to live.
“Just together with a group of elderly people, outside in the countryside, just like now”, is the first thing that comes to mind in Marja Takens. “And that you are there for each other when necessary, and above all do not become lonely. And with professional home care around the corner, if that becomes unavoidable. Because the time of care homes is over, you have to live independently for longer, why not at the countryside,” Takens says.
Story continues below the photo