I have posted about watermills and windmills in my region of The Netherlands, but I almost forgot about one ancient source of power that was also use extensively for driving mills: horses.
On one of my walks I saw this relatively modern (around 1910, I think) horse mill. In local dialect, this type of horse mill is known as a geubel, and just across the border in Germany as a Göpel.
Olympus Stylus 1s, 33mm, ISO200, f5.6, 1/60
Basically, it is a set of gears with a connection (bottom, right-hand side in the photo) for driving early mechanised farming equipment. Horses pulled the beams around and there it went. These days, we locals also use groups of tourists as a power source, they seem to like it and we get to grin.
These horse mills were used for driving farming equipment like threshing and heckling machines. These old pictures from Meyers Konversationslexikon give you some idea:
In my region, this was not the only way horses walking in circles were used; the local peat came out of the ground so wet, the water had to be squeezed out before it could be cut and left in the sun to dry. For this, a kluundel was used, a cobbled open space near the peat bog:
Olympus XZ-1, reposted photo of a kluundel in the Aamsveen
A horse would walk in circles all day to squeeze the water out, much like a horse driving a horse mill, but less tiring. I've seen demonstrations of both in action, and the horses didn't seem to mind going round and round again, but maybe they were so dizzy they were beyond caring.
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I didn't know theese things existed, however now it kind of seems obvious to me. Thanks for sharing it with us.
My pleasure.
Happy holidays, and keep on loving !
@ocrdu Oh oH the government is after you :)
geen feestdagen ook?
ik doe niet mee met de kerst dus ik blijf thuis maar nu even stemmen mischien wat later bloggen maar te stil dus even kijken :)
Wat familiebezoek, ik ben niet zo dol op de feestdagen. 't Is al een paar dagen wat stil hier, qua posten en stemmen.
Welke government? Waar?
@ocrdu daar beneden - het is een usernaam :)
wij ook niet de drukte is gewoon gekkehuis soort of
hahah maar goed, toch Fijne Feestdagen!
O die! Ik schrok al.
Jullie ook fijne feestdagen!
@ocrdu hahaha sorry
dat was niet de bedoeling hahah
:)
EDIT : kan je ook dit aub lezen? Ik heb een steun voor de actie nodig, dank je wel :)
your windmill and other mill blogs seem to be successful :) great work. By the way - I guess you didn't get my translation answer on your last windmill post because I had to comment my own comment since there's now 5th cascade. So check this out. Cheers
Got it and commented in the same awkward way 8-).
fantastic ;-)