.Paul_Gerritsen

gallery

So you like stories? Well here is another. Next to my home town you will find this mill between the villages of Obdam and Hensbroek. The history of their first two mill goes back to 1535. The villages had a common problem: their land became flooded by water regularly. So they decided to combine forces and erected two windmills. Wen they were finished, they quarelled about who had the rights to operate the mills. They settled the matter by deciding that each village would manage the mills every other week. Did that solve their problems? No way. You see when farmers needed to grow a new crop they actually wanted to flood their land, because of the new layer of fertile soil that the water would dispose over their land. And as a benefit of good timing, a farmer could ruin the harvest of a competing farmer in the neighbooring village. How this story end? .... Their are still fighting! P.s. Clam means fight in Dutch slang.