They are never actually short of a job, but the men of the garden group of the reformed church of Bledenstein in Ruinerwold nevertheless come up with something new. For example, on Thursday morning a real bell tower was placed near the parsonage, made from an oak tree from the site that had to be sawn down after a storm.
The bell is not intended to warn churchgoers that the service is starting, but to let our own volunteers know that the coffee is ready. And anyone who thinks it is a big, heavy bell will be disappointed. It is actually nothing more than a bell that can simply be lifted with one hand, but the garden group saw something in a bell chair instead of a simple construction at the Munnekeweer, the association building of the church.
It all started eight years ago, when the garden team found an old bell while insulating the Munnekeweer. At the coffee table the idea was immediately born to give it a place on the site, because a loud voice was often not enough to let us know that the coffee was ready. It took many months before the bull was taken by the horns, not entirely coincidentally when one of the hard workers missed the coffee call.
They looked crestfallen
The bell chair came into the picture three years ago. “There were two older men at my door asking if I would cut two beams to size for them,” Jan Veldman – not a member of the garden society – says now. “What do you want then,” I asked them. They told me about the bell chair, to which I replied that this really had to change. They looked a bit disappointed, so I offered them to make that bell chair.”
What his eyes see, his hands create. A statement that certainly applies to Jan Veldman, even though he once trained to be an accountant. He has never concerned himself with such figures, but with the creation of beautiful things such as this bell chair. “No, I didn’t use a drawing for it, it’s all here,” he taps his head. The fact that Veldman knows what he is doing is evident during the work, where he leads the gray guard of the garden team and has already pretty much figured out in advance how it should all be done.
With united forces
Before Thursday arrived, the clock still had to be taken care of. The thing was taken apart, sandblasted and given a new coat of paint. Last year the oak was cut down and Veldman got to work. With combined efforts, the bell tower was placed in front of the parsonage and the Munnekeweer on Thursday morning, but that was not easy. Once the colossus was in danger of falling over, a tractor had to be improvised to put it in place, with the three legs in holes filled with fresh concrete, to attach the clock as the icing on the cake.
This way, the garden group, which started with four people in 2005, can complete another job, one that has very little to do with the garden. “We have already renovated the parsonage, created the parking lot and, just before Christmas, insulated the entire vault at the top of the church with glass wool,” says Jan van Calker. “We went to Anloo to see how they had done it at the oldest church in Drenthe. They had it done by a contractor there and it cost 10,000 euros, we were done for 2,500 euros.” Jan Boverhof smiles: “It was difficult to get eighty rolls of glass wool up, but in the end it went quite smoothly.”
Reverend Alberti
Back to the clock for a moment. There was some discussion as to what the clock was actually used for. “One reading is that Reverend Alberti, who was also a farmer, warned his servants who were working in the fields that coffee or a meal was ready. But I personally think that, especially considering the size of the bell, it was used when there was no bell for the church yet. This clock was simply used to indicate that the service was about to start,” thinks Jan Boverhof.
The garden group has a new job in mind, in addition to the useful spring work in the garden: the access road to the church has become bumpy due to the many holes. “We will close those holes again, but after the next Sunday it will happen again. That is why we now want to structurally improve that road,” says Jan Boverhof. And as far as Henk van Netten is concerned, the municipality is quickly tackling the main road through idyllic Bledenstein. The garden group is not concerned about this.