Tales from the blade runners, Dutch windmillers who are still grinding a living
- Around the river Zaan, sails have been harnessing the power of wind for centuries to grind seeds and grain, saw wood and make paper pulp
With a creak of wooden cogwheels, the two men turn the huge sails into the North Sea breeze coursing across the flat Dutch polders outside Amsterdam.
“We bring the mighty blades to the wind so that the work can begin,” says windmiller Jippe Kreuning, 30, flanked by Sjors van Leeuwen, a volunteer who is more than twice his age and sports a jaunty pilot’s cap.
Soon the sails of De Bonte Hen (the colourful hen) oil mill in Zaandam spin freely as deflection shafts transfer the wind’s force to the twin millstones weighing several tons.
The linseed is ground to produce oil for a factory as raw material for oil paints. Just like in the old days.
De Bonte Hen has 330 years of toil and transition behind it. The mill ground linseed until 1926, before the building was partly demolished a decade later and turned into a warehouse.
