Pim lives in the first house of the eco-village in Ter Apel. ‘I would like to stay here for a long time’

The difference with Utrecht could hardly be greater. He was born in the Dom city and lived for a very long time. Now Pim de Kam is the resident of the first house in the eco-village Het Land van Aine, on the edge of Ter Apel.

Water treatment fields

That Ecodorp is located on the site of the former potato flour factory Avebe. The cottage stands where the factory’s water treatment fields once were. It is small, has a living room with kitchen and a bedroom, with a small terrace outside. That is it. ,,That’s all I need”, says 66-year-old De Kam.

He earned his living for many years at Rijkswaterstaat and was involved in, among other things, the construction of the Oosterscheldekering. The Rijkswaterstaat office in Utrecht was his workshop, not so far from his home. The hustle and bustle of the city was usually around him.

The rudder was turned

After his early retirement, he decided to change course. “Also because I saw how people interact with the world, how the climate changes. I decided to live more sustainably.”

He initially moved to Dalerpeel and one day read about the plan to set up the first eco-village in the province of Groningen in Ter Apel. The initiative for this was taken by a few Groningen residents. They had bought the factory site from private individuals and had received permission from the municipality of Vlagtwedde, which had meanwhile been absorbed into Westerwolde, to initially build thirty houses there. Houses made of sustainable material, of course. That suited and fits the goal of the initiators; live as sustainably and as self-sufficiently as possible.

,,I applied to it and I liked it so much that I became a member of the cooperative that was set up by the initiators”, says De Kam. “I decided to live here, in a house.”

Help from fellow residents

He built it in a former warehouse of the factory, of straw and other sustainable materials. He did not perform this work alone, but was helped by other members of the cooperative, who often already live on the site, in caravans. Little by little the house took shape and on this sunny summer day it stands in the corner of one of the fields where water was once purified and then used in the factory.

Those two rooms mentioned look very neat. Some works of art hang on the walls furniture, a wood stove, a wooden floor, a table with some chairs, a refrigerator with counter. There is no television (“I haven’t watched it for years”). In a tiny hall there is a battery in a cupboard that runs on solar panels and provides it with energy.

Wonderful silence

There is a wonderful silence in the house and De Kam feels intensely satisfied. He does not suffer from loneliness. He talks about the contact with other residents of the ecovillage. “We have a communal kitchen where we eat together every day. Different residents cook. I don’t, cooking isn’t for me. I help with the dishes, so everyone has their job. We have joint vegetable gardens from which we get a lot of what we eat. We stock up on other stuff.”

Keeping track of the cooperative’s accounts is one of his tasks. He does that on the computer that is on the table in his room. “The cooperative already has dozens of members who regularly contribute, for example for the maintenance of the factory buildings and the grounds.”

Helophyte field

His house, which will soon also be officially registered with the municipality, will no longer have exclusive rights to that field. A few tens of meters away, there is currently also a lot of construction going on. The walls of one house are already there. De Kam is helping its owners, just as he was helped before.

In the foreseeable future, a heloyten field will also be constructed for domestic waste water. Little by little, The Land of Aine is forming, in which some inhabitants are young and go to work every day and others of advanced age. But in which everyone takes care of themselves ,,And I would like to live in that village for a long time to come”, says Pim de Kam.