History of hay. Hay was the most important crop in the Netherlands. Less hay meant less cows, dairy, food and less income for farmers. But we know preciously little about yields. I've been investigating insurance data on stocks as well as data from the yearly provincial reports which are supposed to be notoriously undependable. Guess what... Note the variability.

Spring in Leeuwarden

Farm prices of milk: declining but still sky high. How to understand this? These are not 'free market' prices but Intra-organization calculated prices paid to farmers. Basically, what's left when other costs are paid and some money has been set aside to invest. They are, hence, a yardstick of wholesale market prices of butter, cheese and milk powder.

Consuminderen...

Where am I with the haystory? I'm reading the 1821-1857 diary of Doeke Wijgers (2600 pages), farmer, administrator of the church, the local government and a fire insurance company. The attachment shows his lands, close to Leeuwarden. It will enable me to track the vagaries of the hay harvest and its relation to (dairy) farm production. The records of the fire insurance company (insuring farms and, hence, estimating the value of hay which was kept inside the farms) survive. Wow.

From my window (in suburbia, but walking distance from my work) a roe deer (smack in the middle)

As I told you, 'A short, Dutch history of hay, 1511 - 2011' writes itself. In Amsterdam there is a cafe called 'Het hooischip' (the hay ship) at the very place of the attached picture. I know where the book presentation will be! Why 1511? Because of this article (which tallies with other work by me and enables coupling with the oldest surviving Dutch private farm account which mentions teams of wandering hay laborers going from one farm to another): https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/89081201/De_Langen_and_Mol_Distribution_and_Subdivision_of_Farmland-libre.pdf?1659029967=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DDe_Langen_and_Mol_Distribution_and_Subdi.pdf&Expires=1673689265&Signature=BRNmoffwKQJPxpLMZFfQiZsph3TRZJveujyN8OhcFpVEBrIzjpfcIlFlUs-dakGUjHQ9sya8Av2t0~T61mBDQUhjLr2dOgP1sA0PeFOwc5v19f4CwRqm627MnzqUjVmkcN-2ly8YF~WHWyir8KB7AZazWfiV~UuQiZIOE7B72jnLYhJuNKXR1fM3LN9~eynppzCrj~Kx3tg0stGk7uOqGNZ9Q8zRWTKeZfm99Pua8XmRsfDAz5I9DNE3NGd4l70jIkH4VcHug88vhMciucXQIYDsZJ~xEg~67ALEWVAFIaXwpCI2oSahs46SAKBQHI2j6hTWUcRSMGhSKKeEVAYwnw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

Hay. Econ history books of course also need quantification. For the post war period here data about what I call 'mowing intensity' (more and more often, grasslands were mowed twice or even three times while, as more and more grass was used for silage instead of hay, means that farmer succeeded in mowing more grass of which a larger part was preserved as winter fodder: a double bounty). This will be part of the chapter about the post WW II period.