The Dutch Countryside, and the Importance of Windmills

Monday afternoon we went on our first excursion out to the countryside. On the way, we learned that Holland is actually one of a number of smaller 'states' that joined together to create The Netherlands a few hundred years ago, something we had not known.

Our tour took us to Volendam, which is on the Ijsselmeer, or Ijs Lake, which leads out to the North Sea.

A small marina just off the huge Ijsselmeer

    

 The tour coaches were just as comfortable and roomy as expected, and somehow seemed quieter than the average bus. More insulation, perhaps??? It was raining lightly again when we arrived at our first stop, a dairy that specializes in making cheeses from cow, goat and sheep milk near the town of Edam.

We were given a short lesson on how they make the Edam cheese by hand at the dairy, versus the machine made version from the larger producers. The coating, not wax, is actually painted on the cheese over a few days, and then the cheese is stored, not for the cheese to cure, but for the coating to cure!

The vat used to heat the milk, syphon off the whey, and then cut
the remaining curd to make cheese

The finished cheeses in storage while their coating cures.
The different colours are different flavours of cheese - all delicious!

       

 Our next stop was only a few minutes away, also on the Ijsselmeer, at a restaurant run by the Smit-Dokkum family, which has specialized in smoking various types of fish, mainly eel, for 5 generations. We were shown a video of the process with descriptions and additional information provided by the current owner, and fifth generation head smoker for the company, Jan. Surprisingly, the young eels swim all the way from the Sargasso Sea near the Bahamas, where they are born, across the Atlantic to the North Sea. They make their way up rivers and into fresh water lakes where they grow to maturity. For decades the commercial eel fishery was centered in these lakes, but due to overfishing, the volume of 'wild' caught eels has declined tremendously in the last 20 years, replaced to some degree by farmed eels that, to the connoisseur, are nowhere near as tasty.

Of course, our tour here also included a description of how Jan smokes eels - and it is a very finicky job to keep the smoking oven in exactly the right condition for the 2 1/2 hours it takes - as well as a tasting. Now, quite a few people (Larry included) were somewhat leery about trying the eel, but as Jan explained that his is truly THE BEST in Europe, even featured on Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern (although why it is considered bizarre is beyond us), everybody tried some. And even Larry was impressed! What a great taste; very different from what we have had in Germany, even though it is possible that the eels actually had the same origin.

Our last stop, after a drive through the countryside for about a half hour, was at a Windmill Museum where the windmill is actually still in use. It was fascinating to learn about their history and how essential they were to the development of agriculture in The Netherlands. Much of the land in the country is below sea level; our guide explained that, without any dikes to hold the water back, almost 40% of The Netherlands would be under water now, and with global warming pushing the sea level higher, in the next few years it would be around 60%. The dikes have been doing their job, but after some big floods, there were large shallow lakes left in the Dutch interior. In order to get the land back from the sea, they dug a series of canals, using the clay they dug up to build the walls of the dikes. Then, they built these windmills over the ends of two canals, one higher than the other. As the water filled these canals, the windmills were used to run paddlewheels inside them that moved the water from the lower canal to the higher one, then the next canal would do the same, and then another, until the water was at sea level and could flow out into the Ijsselmeer and to the sea. So essentially, the windmills are a water transfer system. As they take the water off the land it continues to be drained by small canals that run through the area at intervals, so the land can be used for agriculture, cattle and sheep. And should there ever be a drought, they can be set to turn the other way to bring water back into the fields in a controlled way.

  

One of the three windmills in the
museum.

Inside the mill; the huge square shaft in the middle
is the one that turns the cogs for the wheel.

The miller and his family lived on the main floor; kitchen,
with beds in alcoves to take advantage of the stove's warmth,
a dining room and small living room. But the mill's outside
walls are all thatch for insulation.

The next two windmills in this row. You can always tell if
a windmill is working if the canvas sails are on the blades.

The top section, where the windmill blades are attached, can actually be turned 360 degrees so the miller can follow the wind to keep the blades turning. (There is a brake inside to stop the mill when necessary.) The wind power turns a cog that in turn runs the main shaft that goes through the mill to then run the paddle wheel to move the water. And according to the guide at the windmill, when the blades are turning at a fairly high speed, the wheel could move quite a huge volume per minute. Eventually the paddles were replaced by Archimedean screws and then they moved even more water. Now almost all of the large volume pumping is done by electric pumping stations, but in some areas these old-fashioned windmills are still used at times to keep the water levels where they should be.

After dinner we were entertained by a local string quartet that played well-known classics from the European master composers, from Bach to Strauss to Haydn. All in all a lovely evening and a good day. Now we're looking forward to sailing out, down the Amsterdam Canal to the Rhine and on to Cologne.