Erik and Karin Rossing have run restaurant De Schaopwas in Eext for many years. They name the establishment after the adjacent peat lake. The buffet restaurant had golden times, especially in the beginning. In 2014 they thought it was nice and tried to sell the restaurant.
That didn’t work at first and in 2018 the restaurant owners put an end to it. At the last minute, however, another takeover candidate presents itself. Nowadays the farm houses a Steak & Pizza restaurant and the name De Schaopwas has disappeared.
The peat lake, which is called sheep wash, has been located in the middle of a heathland area for years, Bruining knows. “The sheep wash has been used for hundreds of years to wash sheep. Not only the two sheep flocks from Eext, but also the sheep from Andere, Gieten and Gasselte were washed here,” he says.
Every year in the spring, usually in June, it is time to shear the sheep. This happened, especially before 1900, in many places in Drenthe. “Before you can shear the sheep, you first have to wash them,” Bruining continues. “But for that you need clean water and not every village had that.”
“Fortunately, Eext was in possession of a large, clean water hole, where there was no mud on the bottom. This is a flooded pingo ruin (a bowl in the country that was created during the Ice Age, ed.), as we often see in Drenthe. The sheep were driven from Andere, Gasselte and Gieten to this sheep wash. The sheep from Eext were always washed first.”
Old images in the RTV Drenthe program Anno Drenthe show how exactly the washing of sheep works. The images come from the Drenthe Archives in Assen.
See below how the sheep used to be washed in Elp. Text continues below the video
