NEERLANDIA – After more than a year of planning, volunteers gathered in September and collected their new treasure, a replica Dutch windmill, moving it from Edmonton about 145 kilometres north of the city to the hamlet of Neerlandia.
The replica Dutch windmill structure is 33 feet high to the top of the tower, but the sails extend even higher, explained Lambert Veenstra, one of the organizers of the project.
“We had to take it apart and move it in sections. We had 19 people that day, four tractor trailers, a man-lift, and a crane," said Veenstra.
“We started the 8:30 in the morning and at 3 p.m. we were on the highway.
“It was a team effort.”
The replica windmill is approximately 45 years old.
The windmill was in worse shape than the group of volunteers thought it would be.
Because of the size, the windmill had to be dismantled before loading on it on the trucks and getting everything moved to Neerlandia.
The group of volunteers reviewed a book at the Dutch Community building that showed the assembly schematics of how they originally built the windmill.
They used that information to determine how to separate the windmill into smaller pieces.
Someone from Neerlandia had been at the Dutch Community building just over a year ago and had heard they were selling the building.
They questioned what was happening with the windmill and were told that it would be put up for sale.
Veenstra has always felt there should be a Dutch windmill in Neerlandia.
The foundation has been poured and the plan is for work to happen over the winter to get the windmill rebuilt.
The windmill will be located near the Neerlandia Co-op Replica building which sits on the parking lot of the Neerlandia Co-op.
A fundraiser will be planned to raise money to pay someone to re-build the windmill using what parts are salvageable and re-building other parts with the hardware from the replica.
In the Netherlands, windmills were used to drain water from land because 26 per cent of the Netherlands is below sea level, according to the Netherlands Insider.
At one time there were more than 10,000 operating windmills in the Netherlands.