I’ll write a little about Harm and his family. I was ten when the van der Laans moved from Zuidlaren to Vlagtwedde. Pa van der Laan was not healthy anymore. He often had pneumonia. They had a small vegetable farm in Zuidlaren and led busy lives. They grew all kinds of vegetables but especially beans and onions. Those beans had to be picked at the right time, then stripped and cut and packed in salt vats. It was very precise work, Harm often told me. His four older sisters Henderika, Jantje, Harmanna, and Jantine, all worked in the garden. Work, work and work, six days a week.

The younger ones, Jan and Grietje still went to school. Mother van der Laan was very busy too and became ill. She had tuberculosis in the stomach, thus had to rest, later in a small tent in the garden. All in all, it was a difficult time, especially when, during the 1914-1918 war, the export of beans to Germany suddenly stopped. Pa van der Laan needed and hoped for a larger farm.

Through Mr. Berg in Winschoten, who was rich, they could buy a farm in Vlagtwedde. (It was later, on that farm, that our Stiny was born.) Mother van der Laan got better but had to be careful with what she ate. It was a large, and for that time, beautiful farmhouse. Later it burned down, like my own parent’s farm. Harm was fourteen when the family moved and so, together, they worked that farm. All four girls were home and helped out in the fields in the summer. During the winter they knit and repaired socks. But to have those four at home was not easy for mother. She was a quiet woman and could not tolerate the girls.

But the farm did well, and their family became friends of ours. Both men were elders and got along well. Thursday evenings they had consistory meetings, and they walked home together till Pa van der Laan had to turn right and Pa Beekhuis went straight on. He then would continue on his bicycle.