Week 17 Moai Fuort, no?

Week 17

Moai Fuort, no?

Pronounced "Moy Fot, No?"

Frisian for (something like) Nice to be away, no?. Or, if you're from Queensland, "nice to be away, ay?"

Janny got one of our kids (she's 21 but going on 6) to write it fairly large and then took a photo and worked it through her printing system/press and so on.

For this year's boating ensemble...

at last...

and went for a 30-minute trip and managed the mooring without any bumps or crashes, despite a stronger than expected wind.

Unusually cold and still a lot of boats "on the wall".

...(fingers crossed)...the batteries are still fully functional and fully charged after 8 years, thanks to the solar panels.

Around the farm

girls on the tractor!

Chocolate Brownies

Ah, believe me folks, I'm gonna have the world's greatest pumpkins! 

(might be going a bit early here - these seeds were left over from my seeding trays in the glass house).

Officially, April has been colder than March!

The Turf Route

I've written about the "Turf Route" ( a canal near us) before. I found a little more history.

thanks to Google translate...

In a gray past, Southeast Friesland consisted largely of uninhabitable marshes. Only on the higher sandy grounds was habitation possible. These were the places where the first inhabitants had settled. Over the years, peat has developed in boggy areas. The peat consists of compressed vegetation remains. In the Middle Ages, it was discovered that dried peat can be burned. For a long time, even until the beginning of the last century, peat has been used as fuel for, for example, heating homes. The demand for peat was large, so that money could be earned with it's extraction and sale. In the second half of the 16th century the extraction began from Heerenveen in South East Friesland. Rich businessmen bought the farmland. There are co-operative relationships, such as the Schoterland Compagnie and the Opsterlandse Veencompagnie. The owners of the farms (verveners) employed workers for digging the peat. Cutting turf was hard work and it was badly paid. Often the workers had to buy their food at high prices from the employers. In addition, part of the low wages was also spent at the employer-owned pubs, with all the consequences of that. The peat workers often suffered a miserable and poor existence. These abuses contributed to the rise of socialism in Southeastern Friesland. With the dredging of Southeast Friesland, the shovel was also used to dig canals and quays to transport freight by ship. In the course of time, commercial use has transformed into watersport (recreational use).

We have always done the "small Turfroute" which passes through Wijnjewoude. It is possible to go further through Oosterwolde and Appelscha into Drenthe, which also has a peat extraction history. The same geological developments, including the Ice Age, which created the peat, have also resulted in producing oil and natural gas in this area.

(it's a public holiday today, so I have been whiling a few hours away by doing some research into possible boating routes for this year).

The Veenvaart (another peat boating route)

Old lock renovated....

English Version

https://www.emmenmaakhetmee.nl/english

and a Dutch YouTube video if you can be bothered (just for the pictures!). 4 mins 30 secs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2mFgscheWI

The new lock is "water-saving" - something I have not seen here before..... Instead of letting the water flow downstream, it is moved sideways and stored for the next lock operation.
An animation of how it works can be found here...

https://youtu.be/_Is91aaYHMY

Ben's 21st Birthday!

Janny's parents put the flag out for the King's Birthday - but we can pretend that it was for Ben!

He came to see us, at least! He has found new "rooms" (and a new job) in Amsterdam - looks like he won't be coming "home" anytime soon.