oude koeien uit de sloot halen
Dutch • Netherlands
to retrieve old cows from the ditch •
To unnecessarily bring up things from the past. It refers to the cadavers of cows that had gotten stuck and died in a ditch. The practice was to leave the body to decay there instead of retrieving it, which was a lot of work with very little benefit.
“Weet je nog toen je die trui van mij had gestolen?” “Hou op met oude koeien uit de sloot halen!”