The grain silos in the port of Assen, Hekmans Boô in Schoonebeek, the artwork Broken Circle/Spiral Hill in a sand excavation near Emmen, the Holthersluis near Beilen, the polder pumping station at Peize, De Berk Molen at Barger-Compascuum and the ‘small’ radio-telescope near Dwingeloo. What do they have in common? They are all new protected provincial monuments. Every Sunday we put one in the spotlight and this time it is the De Berk mill.
The mill in Barger-Compascuum is a cat with at least three lives. “If everything goes well, the mill can run again in April,” says Molenaar Klaas Renting enthusiastically.
The Windreus stood slowly rotating away in the last decades on the Veenpark site in Barger-Compascuum. The Veenpark even wanted to break the mill. The cultural and educational attraction is fully engaged in major changes to be able to survive and attract new audiences. De Berk did not fit in those plans. And the Open Air Museum simply does not have the money for a much needed major restoration. It was the only mill in Drenthe without monument status, so the demolition ball could go through.
Molen volunteers then put a stick for that and started the restoration themselves. Because the outside of the mill was in very poor condition, the inside is surprisingly good according to Renting. And unique. The restoration goes step by step, because perhaps 120,000 euros may be needed to make everything back in order.
“We have calculated, the club volunteers has put it in for 2,000 hours in the past two and a half years. But that saves a lot of money.” The small steps in the beginning could be taken by the relatively small financial contributions so far: the volunteers received 10,000 euros from the Veenpark to help them on their way and 6,000 euros came in through a national mill competition.
From different angles, higher amounts have now been received and it is now going fast. Renting: “The club that ensured that fiber optic came here in the area had had money. That they wanted to return to the province, but it said: give it to a cultural goal. We received 15,000 euros from that club. The municipality of Emmen came with 30,000 euros and every year with 5,000 euros for regular maintenance.”
With a lot of self -reliance and therefore many man -hours of the volunteers, De Berk gets step by step closer to the moment he can play again. “But the big jobs such as a new tail bar and the other beams with which the hood of the mill and therefore the blades can be turned, a mill maker must be done. We can now pay for it and all that large beam work will happen mid -March.”
According to Renting, the mill can run safely again and follows the rest of the restoration, carried out by the volunteers themselves.
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