Miller Mats Faber (26) fell under the spell of windmills seventeen years ago. “I was nine years old and was captivated by it,” he says in the summer program Soul of the Region. In his own words, this was due to ‘the history behind it, the technology; the whole atmosphere.” He now lives with love in a mill and likes to explain why the historic pumping stations are so important.
“Most millers start this job when they retire, but I’ve kind of rolled into it,” the young miller tells presenter Koen Burgter.
Today, mills mainly have a cultural and educational value, in contrast to the past: “De Schermer was a lake and that was pumped dry in 1633 with 52 such mills”, says Mats. It is therefore thanks to these mills that we now keep our feet dry in the Schermer.
Yet Mats is not sorry that the old mills are no longer needed to safeguard our existence. “Modern windmills run on electricity and you can always switch it on or off.”
That is ‘easier’ than the miller’s existence in the past, when millers had to work in the middle of the night when the weather conditions were bad. “That was hard work, of course,” says Mats. Laughing, he adds: “You don’t have to wake me up at night, you know!”
Soul of the region
According to miller Mats, the eleven mills in the Schermer are the soul of the Alkmaar region. But there is much more that defines the Alkmaar region, according to various guests in the program. As reporter Maaike Polder sums it up briefly: “We have everything.”
In addition to miller Mats, Koen speaks in Ziel van de region with, among others, Zilver Dirks and Veerle van de Laar of the Cutuur Kartel Foundation about their plans for the Alkmaar nightlife.
You will also find out why fanatical campers packed and packed up camping Bakkum just after the Second World War and folk singer Joost de Vries goes in search of the soul of Heerhugowaard.