Jan Huijgen

For most European and international people I will introduce myself and why I am starting an englisch blog.

I am a multifunctional farmer , my name is John, just as the famous Farmer John from the States, we have met each other! I am living in the midst of the Netherlands (Eemland) on a farm called The Eemlandhoeve – you can look for the website – and we are organizing at the moment the European Eemland Conference (EEC) where our Eurocommissar Mrs. Mariann Fischer Boel will come in the end of octobre 2008.

For that Conference, and broader for the movement of the European Versatile Countryside (EVC), I started this blog for telling what’s going on, what are inspiring moments, what is happening in my country and other countries and how we can bring coherence which each other.

Blogging is a new manner of expressing and communicating in a very direct and personal way. I will try to express myself in a more personal and direct way.

Our farm the Eemlandhoeve celebrate this year its 15^th anniversary. It started at 1993 at a local level, in 1998 we founded from this place the regional farmersassociation Ark&Eemlandschap for landscapemanagment, in 2003 we connected several farmersassociation tot the Cooperative Stadteland – CityandCountryside. And now in 2008 we are making our next step: the European connections.

I have learned to create our festivity on three ways:

a. making a book: whats has happened and is the story behind. Title of the new book will be Cityside Oasis – or how to bridge the gap between city and countryside.

b. a movie: we have visited three other Founding Farmers on multifunctionality in Estonian (Pisonii farm), Germany (Hermmannsdorfer Landwerkstatte) and Portugal (Freixo do Meio). Together with the Eemlandhoeve are these four farmers with there place portrated in the movie on the European Versatile Countryside;

c. the European Eemland Conference from octobre 22-24 on the Eemlandhoeve in the Netherlands. A wonderfull programm with our Eurocommissar Mrs. Mariann Fischer Boel on the last day.

I like to tell you in my blog something about this new development on the European countryside, and I hope you can understand why this will be important for the future of agriculture and for a living countryside!