For years, our farm was the worry sitting quietly behind family life. My husband had taken it over from his parents. Farming was his work, his family history and a large part of his identity. But it was becoming increasingly difficult to make the numbers work.
You cannot easily leave a business when that business is also the place where you grew up. Then the countryside around us began changing in an unexpected way.
The municipality built a nearby cycle path, and the tourist office marked walking and cycling routes passing close to our land. More people arrived from the western Netherlands, looking for the quiet roads, open fields and space that we had always considered ordinary.
My husband continued farming, and I opened a small family campsite.
What began as a way to protect our income may eventually replace farming—and I am surprisingly happy about that possibility.
The campsite worked. Guests came for weekends to escape Amsterdam, the Randstad and the feeling that everything there is always moving. They wanted to cycle, walk and explore rather than sit still.
Their demand helped other businesses too. A nearby tea garden began doing well, and I started imagining a small restaurant of my own. Tourism was turning from an emergency solution into a new future for the farm.
I also enjoy seeing traditions revived and older residents becoming involved, even when they complain about visitors. My children now grow up knowing the Achterhoek is not a place they need to apologise for or leave behind. People travel here because they value what we have.
Visitors also change daily routines. In high season, shops become crowded and I adjust my shopping times or drive into the city. Holiday homes and campsites have pushed prices upward. Sometimes I am rushing for groceries while holidaymakers block the aisle with nowhere they need to be. I usually laugh about it.
Tourists come for our peace and space, so tourism has failed if growth eventually takes both of those things away.
That is the balance we must protect. Too many facilities and visitors could damage the landscape and calm that made the region attractive.
There is an irony I enjoy. Rural people in the eastern part of the Netherlands, once looked westward, to the Randstad, where the big and famous cities are, for opportunity. Now people from the west travel in the opposite direction, spending their time and money on landscapes and traditions that have been here all along.
For our family, tourism has already given a struggling farm something precious: another way to earn a living without leaving the place that made us who we are.