Wind mill

My wwp907 entry

View this panorama. Flat version of the image. Show on Google Maps.

The original of this page can be found here.

A Dutch Windmill 2007 is the Dutch national year of the windmill, therefore the "Sustenance" theme is an excellent occasion to put one of the many Dutch windmills in the spot lights.

Windmills are used around the world, but they are especially common in the North Western part or Europe. Holland, being the very north western corner of Europe, still has many many mills. The Mill database list 1191 of them. In history, mills were mainly used for two purposes: draining the land and grinding cereal.

The land draining mills at Kinderdijk in Holland are world famous and have been declared a UNESCO world heritage site.

But the theme is sustenance, so I chose to show a grinding mill. The windmill shown in the panorama is named "De Koe" (Dutch for "The Cow") and is located in the historical village of Veere. It was built in 1909 on the remains of an earlier mill that dated from 1736. The mill was used for grain grinding, but since 1964 the mill is used as a recreational house. The tower shape of the mill is typically Dutch. The top part with the blades can turn to face the ever changing wind direction.

Even though there are still a lot of mills left in Holland, many of them are gone. To illustrate that: the village of Flushing only has one mill, but it used to have more than 30 of them. 450 of the remaining Dutch mills urgently need restoration, which will cost about 70 million Euros. To raise that money, the national year of the mill was declared. There is more information about it on this page.