A few more months, then the curtain falls for the shepherds of Balloo. After 45 years, Albert Koopman (80) and Marianne Duinkerken (67) leave the Balloërveld with their herd of Drenthe heath sheep. In mid -May they celebrate the last sheep shear party, but then the adventure for the shepherd duo stops forever. The Kloetschup, the handy help of the shepherd, goes into the cupboard.
Marianne Duinkerken knows all too well that she has made the decision, to definitively stop on 1 June. “It has just become too heavy a burden, seven days a week into the field. And I am still healthy, but what if it doesn’t work anymore? Who will take care of the animals. Because Albert can no longer do it.”
The herd of the Balloërveld arises under Albert Koopman, who is looking for the peace of the heath as a former professional soldier. Since 1980 he has been responsible for site management with Drenthe heath sheep. Twenty years later he encounters Pardoes, looking for a strayed sheep in the field, on his new love, Marianne Duinkerken. She comes from the country elsewhere, knows nothing about sheep and heath management. But soon, Koopman teaches her the tricks of the trade, and Marianne is increasingly pulling into the field with the herd, and her teacher less and less.
And so it happens that Marianne Dunkirk takes the helm firmly. Both by creating the herd, but also with activities around Balloo’s sheepfold. There her house comes, she develops a lively Wolatelier with workshops. And with a tea and coffee scenery, there is some excitement around the cage in Balloo in the weekends. But all of that will be over soon.
“The Schaapskooi Balloo Foundation wants everything to leave here. The studio has to leave, and they no longer want a hospitality industry, nothing. That is terrible”, Dunkirk grumbles. But she mainly has a lot of pain and sorrow about the animals, the sheep with whom she has had a love-hate relationship with for years. “Because oh oh, how quirky beasts they are, I have cursed them regularly.”
But of those ‘shot sheep’, she started to love that much. “That happened by bluetong. What a terrible rotten disease that is. I only noticed how many feelings I developed for these animals. I saw how much pain they had through that blue tongue, that was really an agony. I really don’t want to experience that anymore.”
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