The quitessential cow – the one in the photo below – is named after Friesland, one of Netherland’s most northern provinces. This breed was born here, then developed in the USA by Dutch farmers, and after a century or so returned to Netherlands. Friesland cows are the most productive cows in the world. They can produce up to 25 liters per day, which is about 6.5 gallons.

Moooh.

A big discussion in Netherlands right now is milk from cows that are outside, as opposed to cows who stay indoor all the time. Milk from “buitenkoeien” (ouside cows) is deemed more nutricious by some. As such, we now have a special brand of milk from outside cows. I am not so sure this milk is more nutricious, but who am I. In line with the outside-cow-movement is the organic movement. Like in many Western cultures, organic food is very modern. Our organic milk is certicified by an independent organisation, but overall organic milk is still a tiny part of all milk sold.

Cow’s names

A name like Bettie 23 is a typical cow’s name. They are named after their mother: Bettie 1 will have been the first female cow the farmer has bought, their first daughter will have been Bettie 2, and so on. Even their grand children will all be named Bettie. This way, the farmer can keep track of the best-performing breeds. As you would expect, the male cows are sold when they are still young, because they do not produce milk.

After a milk cow has lived her useful life, she is sold to the butcher and turned into minced beef. As far as the environment goes, Dutch minced beef (from old milk cows) is a very sane choice. More so since our cows are not fed pulverized meat.

Fun cows facts

Do cows sleep standing up?

No, they don’t. They sleep lying down. But when a cow is lying down she might be digesting her food. Cows only really sleep deeply for half an hour per day. At other times she is just dozing and producing milk.

Do cows bite?

They only chew grass, so they don’t “bite” in the way you and I do. In fact they have no front teeth in their upper jaw. They only have big molars for grinding the grass, and do not use their teeth to fend off predators.

Do the yellow ear marks hurt?

No, not at all. Even setting them does not hurt, it’s just like an earring.

What does a cow weigh?

A regular milk-giving cow weighs about 650 kilograms. An adult bull can weig up to 1000 kg (a metric ton).

Netherlands is called that way for a reason. The country is very, very, very flat (i.e.; nether). In fact, about half of it is below sea level. And big parts of it used to be sea, but we drained the sea out. What you’re left with is polders. We would like to think of them as a typically .nl invention.

A polder is a Dutch piece of land that used to be sea. There is really no translation for it; a polder is a Dutch invention and very few other countries have a use for polders. A polder is surrounded by dijken and the soil is clay. As always, Wikipedia has an complete description about this phenomenon.

Polder south of Wilnis

In the olden days, we used windmills to drain the sea out of the polder. These are the iconic devices all tourist love. They are so typically Dutch I can feel a new blog post coming up even. In the mean time, if you are visiting Netherlands and would like to see some bona fide windmills, go to Kinderdijk. This is a tiny village in Noord Holland (one of our provinces) and it has the most photogenic windmills on the planet. But really, windmills are everywhere in our country.

Another polder, this one on the island of Terschelling

Back to polders. Well there really isn’t much to say about them. It’s just a flat piece of land almost always used to grow grain or potatoes. There is one notable exception. The polder called Haarlemmermeer (yes, Harlem Lake) was drained of sea to eventually fill up with airplanes. This polder is now home to our national airport Schiphol.

This subject leads itself to so many puns it is funnier for me to stick to the facts and let y’all laugh amongst yourselves. The subject is dikes (dijken), sans any fingers in holes (grr! couldn’t resist) but with a couple of facts about these water stopping devices.

As the eskimos (alledgedly) have hundreds of words for snow, Nederlanders have literally tens of words for dijken: rivierdijk, zeedijk, ringdijk, binnenwaterdijk, buitenwaterdijk… you get the idea. But what, in actual fact, is a dijk?

Ringvaartdijk, Amsterdam Oost

It is a big heap of dirt that keeps water away.

You’d feel cheated out of your hard-earned money if I left it at that, so allow me to ramble on about these quintessential Nederlandse things. Today’s post is about the ringvaartdijk (pictured above) i.e. circular water dike. This type of dike has been instrumental in creating the Nederlandse landscape. They work as such: imagine a lake you would like to build houses/grow grass/produce cheese on. You divide this lake into manageable chunks by building dams in it.

Once you have your basic chunk you can start milling the water out of it. You do this by pumping it up and throwing it across (or under, as it happens) the dams. The water level drops and soon enough it’s land ahoy. But what to do with all the water that is now outside your patch of new earth? Simple. You pump this out some more until you’ve reached sea. Ringvaarten are the key step. They surround the (soon former) lake and are generally situated above sea level. Once the excess water is in the ringvaart, it can flow out into sea.

Ringvaartdijk, Amsterdam Oost, from the bottom of the former lake

As you can see, the difference in height is quite noticeable. The photo above was taken from the bottom of the former lake Watergraafsmeer, now a residential district of Amsterdam.

Typically, every dijk had a molen (windmill) for the pumping action but these days the water is pumped out with electric pumps, nicely tucked away in nondescript buildings. And yes, every day, every year, water is in fact pumped out of the former lakes. If this doesn’t happen, they fill back up again eventually. There’s no fighting nature even in Nederland.

Since Dijk is so instrumental to .nl, we have a rock group named so, many expressions and there’s even a website by American photographer Rachel James named aan de dijk.

I will cover other forms of dikes in coming posts.