From left to right: Isa, Hestia, Foskea, Laurens, Alba, Adria and Louis. Photo: Guy Ackermans House: The Farm
Residents: Adria Lopez Nadal, Alba Bofill Izquierdo, Angel Chacon Orozco, Foskea Raevel, Hestia Zinsmeister, Ilsa Phillips, Isa Miralles, Laurens van den Berg, Louis Konig. The owner has his own place on the land.
Unique because: it’s an old farm in between Wageningen and Ede.
Laurens: ‘The house is more than a hundred years old, and it has been a student house for 35 years. Well, student house… At the moment, there’s only one student actually. The others are doing a PhD or have another job. In the last ten years, the house gradually changed from being a student house to a more…er… adult house?’
Isa: ’It’s still the same though, we just have money now, haha. So, we can have ice cream for breakfast and go to the movies. And there are not as many parties as there used to be.’
Adria: ‘The difference from other houses, I think, is that many people stay here for a long time. Some of us have been here for six or seven years. Or people lived here for some time, moved away and came back. We have grown with the house.’
Laurens: ‘That’s why we have a strong connection with the house, and each other.’
Hestia: ‘We take care of each other and the house. There’s always someone cooking, we eat together every night. It’s never a question of whether there will be food. And if something breaks down, you can’t just call Idealis to come and fix it. So we learn quite a bit about the maintenance of an old house.
Isa: ’Because there are a lot of us living here, it soon gets very lively. We often have friends over and there’s always something going on. We have pancake breakfasts and organize parties regularly, with good food and live music. A new tradition is to run workshops within the house.
Alba: ‘That happened once!’
Adria: ‘Just like in a real farm, we have lots of animals: chickens, turkeys, a goose, cats and horses. And then, of course, the wild animals living on the land.’
