Queen Wilhelmina saved
windmills from disappearing in the
Netherlands some 70 years ago.
Now the craft of milling
is coming back, too
TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAUL ROBERT
Saving
A LOST
CRAFT
CULTURE
“I HAD NEVER BEEN INTERESTED in
windmills,” Jan Suurmond tells me,
smiling across the wooden kitchen
table inside De Onrust windmill.
Suurmond, 63, is one of three vol-
unteer millers who operate De On-
rust, one of the last active polder
mills in the Netherlands. Until last
century, thousands of windmills
like this one controlled groundwater
levels in polders, the low-lying land
reclaimed from the sea, lakes, and
tidal regions and protected by dikes.
“For me, windmills were part of
94 | July• 2019