For many Dutch farmers, the future is uncertain and it sometimes feels as if they are farming on the square centimetre. Farmer brothers Nick and Barry Buter explored space and made their father’s Canadian Dream come true. Their eldest brother Loek, a photographer, visited them.
Every farmer thinks about his or her future at all times. Can you pass your work on to the next generation? Or are you the gatekeeper? Farmer Sjaak Buter from Lutjewinkel in North Holland looked at his three sons and thought: there are too many for one farm anyway. Fortunately, Loek Buter (40), the oldest, became a photographer rather than a farmer and left for Amsterdam for his studies. Brothers Nick (38) and Barry (36) joined their father’s thriving dairy farm.
With that succession, the brothers inherited thinking about later. But every sketch of the future seemed immediately to be erased ‘by politicians who never complete a plan themselves’. And free farming, setting up your company according to your own insight and desire, has been out of the question for years. After all, every grain of concentrate, mown blade of grass and slice of cow dung must be tracked and accounted for in a country where the pressure on the landscape is colossal.
Their father often fantasized about the Canadian Dream. Pioneering overseas territory. No more maneuvering on administrative stamps, but sow and reap widely. It just never happened with father Buter.
In 2018, the decision was made at the kitchen table in Lutjewinkel. Three years later the brothers had emigrated, with their farmer’s wives Debbie and Dianne, and six, soon to be seven – ‘we’re having a Canadian’ – children.
Excess air
In Canada, the proportions are different. The state of Alberta has four million inhabitants and the Netherlands fits in fifteen times. Half of the population lives in the two largest cities, the other half lives in the farm-dominated countryside.
It is estimated that dozens of Dutch farmers seek refuge in Canada every year. The most famous, milkman and two-time Elfstedentocht winner Evert van Benthem, left for Alberta more than twenty years ago. “He lives an hour away.”
Nick and Barry feel freer in Lacombe, where they now live, than in the Netherlands. “There are rules here, too, but they’re not that fussy.” The sense of freedom is mainly fueled by the vastness and beauty of the landscape, say the brothers. On a clear day you can see the Rocky Mountains. Occasionally there is a moose in the land. At night you can hear coyotes howling. “Groceries are expensive.”
According to their brother Loek Buter, a photo only becomes interesting if you can see how people have entered into a relationship with nature. For example, he recorded the self-sufficient life of Reid and Cornelie, around the lighthouse of Workum. And for years he followed former animal tamer Maxy Niemeyer and her very old circus bear Natascha who had settled in North Holland. This year he received the Silver Camera for that series.
Landscapes intrigue the photographer. From the city his attention shifted increasingly to the countryside. He was going to miss the vistas, and the surplus of air. “The sky is half my job.” Amsterdam was exchanged for a farmhouse on the outskirts of Heerhugowaard.
Blue overalls and yellow school buses
With that move, Loek Buter returned to the decor of his youth, Nick and Barry Buter waved it off. Loek understands their choice, he is proud of them, but their departure was also a hard blow. Canada is far. He tracked them down with his camera. ‘You can only experience a landscape if you put your feet in it.’ The stables look Dutch on the inside, as do the blue overalls in the milk pit. But step into the yard and you imagine yourself in the Canadian countryside. With yellow school buses, big red barns and patches of land whose boundaries lie beyond the horizon. That entourage includes such a white, bombastic pick-up. Loek also drove around in it. You can steer it into the country from the paved road – huts – into the country. Because you want to. And because it is possible.
Since his visit, Loek understands his brothers completely: ‘Continuing their way of life was more important to them than the place where they have always lived.’
