📖 Our Story
What if our home could provide more of what we need?
De Klomp started with a simple question — and a belief that skills, food, and resilience are their own kind of wealth.
De Klomp started with a simple question:
What if our home could provide more of what we need?
Not everything. We're realistic.
We still need money. We still need flour, salt, tools, building materials, and many other things. But the more we can produce ourselves, the less fragile life becomes.
A tomato from our own garden has value whether the market price is 20 pesos or 500 pesos. Goat milk has value whether dairy is cheap or expensive. Bread baked at home has value because the skill remains, even when prices change.
That's the kind of wealth we're building.
More than money
Wealth measured in skills, knowledge, food, and the ability to care for the people we love.
Not wealth measured only in money, but wealth measured in skills, knowledge, food, resilience, and the ability to take care of the people we love.
Why “De Klomp”?
A wooden shoe may seem like an unusual name for a homestead in the Philippines.
For us, it is a reminder of where part of our story began.
“De Klomp” means “the wooden shoe” in Dutch. The traditional Dutch clog is simple, practical, and made for work. It represents a way of thinking that still matters to us: use what you have, build things to last, waste little, and keep going when the work is difficult.
Those values travelled with Mike from the Netherlands to the Philippines.
De Klomp is not about trying to recreate the Netherlands in Cebu. It is about carrying part of that Dutch background into a new Dutch-Filipino family and a very different life.
Different country.
Different climate.
The same mindset.
Build carefully.
Learn constantly.
Produce what we can.
Buy what we must.
Share what we learn.
That is what De Klomp means to us.
For Mike, this story is also personal
Family recipes, real bread, and food made with patience.
I learned old-school cooking from my parents, who learned it from theirs. Some family recipes go back generations, including traditional liverwurst carrying nearly 200 years of family food memory.
Those recipes were never created for marketing.
They were simply good food.
Bread that went stale after two days because it was real bread. Cheese that tasted like cheese. Fruit that was sweet because it was picked ripe. Food made by people who understood ingredients, patience, and craftsmanship.
Old knowledge, modern tools
Keeping the best parts of the past alive — with tools that make sense today.
Today we combine that old knowledge with modern tools.
We use solar power, water systems, modern equipment, practical technology, and good hygiene. We're not trying to recreate the past. We're trying to keep the best parts of it alive.
De Klomp is where old knowledge meets modern tools and fertile land.
Not a business in the usual sense
The homestead doesn't exist to serve profit. Profit exists to support the homestead.
People sometimes ask if De Klomp is a business.
The honest answer is: not in the usual sense.
We think about cost, value, surplus, income, and growth. If we produce more than we can use, we may sell it. If visitors want to learn from our experiences, that may create opportunities in the future.
But the homestead doesn't exist to serve profit.
Profit exists to support the homestead.
A good life, not the biggest farm
Food from the garden, milk from the goats, and resilience that grows a little stronger every year.
Our goal isn't to build the biggest farm.
Our goal is to build a good life.
A life where food comes from the garden, milk comes from the goats, knowledge is shared freely, and resilience grows a little stronger every year.
Producing what we can. Buying what we must. Sharing what we learn. Building a resilient life.
That's De Klomp.
Keep exploring
Why a Homestead Isn't the Same as a Farm Business
De Klomp is a home first, not a conventional farm business. We grow food, build practical skills, reduce dependence, and sell only when surplus makes sense.
Take a look →Old-School Liverwurst and the Taste of Memory
A 200-year-old Groningen family recipe brought to Cebu: homemade liverwurst, traditional food skills, and a taste of Dutch family history.
Take a look →Why Every Homestead Needs Music
Music motivates our work, softens our rest, and shapes the energy of daily life at De Klomp — and it led us to release our first album from the homestead.
Take a look →
See life on the homestead
Goats, gardens, bread from the oven — this is what we're building, one season at a time.