RIP Kees Hoekert…
On New Year’s Day 2017 a giant has gone. Kees Hoekert, founder of the Lowlands Weed Company, was a completely unique figure who deserves his nickname ‘Grandfather of the Dutch Nederweed’. He died at the age of 88.
Kees Hoekert in Holland July 31, 1969
“Kees Hoekert proves: Anyone anywhere can grow his own weed free!”
Kees more or less inadvertently started growing weed on his houseboat. Like everyone, he is convinced that you can not grow weed in the Netherlands.
“Then those plants start to grow. Then they suddenly do it! One evening I harvested, dried, everything. Then I think: you know what I’m doing, I’m going to give it a try. I smoke a stick, with the certainty ‘that can never be what’, and suddenly … Suddenly it happens. I get up. Is that true? Is it possible here too? I walk outside and there, on slippers, I feel the secretions between the different street tiles. This is a miracle! An oil well under my kitchen sink! And then the first thing you will think: sssstttt, say no to anyone. No, I think: tell everyone. We must tell this to everyone, because it is a miracle. That’s how I started.”
– Kees Hoekert
Kees Hoekert 1971
Kees Hoekert & Robert Jasper Grootveld “Lowland Weed Company” 1971