A meeting at Bjerre Mill.

I drive on the highway on a bicycle from Horsens to Juulsminde.
It is by the time when people get free form work, so there is a heavy traffic, and I keep me to the right out the side of the road. I'm probably out of town now and landscape has opened.
Now I can see it. The Mill. The goal of my trip.
I stop at the lake to the right of road. Sunlight reflects in water surface and catch my eye. The mill is a very ordinary mill and its contour is blurred by atmospheric haze.
I ride the last two or three kilometers to North Bjerre and turns
right, westward along the road to Stenderup and now Bjerre Mill is
closely. Yes, it is red, as I had been told. The body is roofed with red tiles. I have never seen that before. In my recollection is miller black. And I had only had picture below from the lake by this mill would also have been black as all other mills.
At the entrance to the mill are two millstones. Painted white and with the inscription: "Bjerre Mill".
The Mill is about fifty yards from Stenderup-road, and between the mill and the road there is a parkingplace. I see benches and table. Slowly, with eyes from the mill. Present, watching. Sit on a bench and eat some apples to satisfy your hunger and thirst.
There is a fresh breeze from the west, but the air is warm. A boy is cycling and running now into the parking lot.
He runs up to me and we get to talking. I helped to make the mill, and now it's me that fits it he says. Is it true that I ask. Yes. It was me who put wings of the red you see up there, I have made it. I wonder, he is not very old. How old are you, I ask.
Eight years,he says. And I go in first class. How could you fix it when it sits up there, I ask.
We had a crane. It lifted me up in a bag so I could make it.
I look up. The wings are made of strong timber. The wood is new and the metal buckle which holds the wings together and keeps them firmly on the shaft into the inner workings are floury red.
- It's also me who made the windows.
I look up. There are small windows with six panes broken down brick covered surfaces. Two windows on some pages. One on others.
- I also made the shed. No, not a shack, built of stone partying. On it is a stable window and which, he says, pointing at a little because it is not made of wood. It is the side that faces toward the bench, a door.
- Is the window you put in here, I ask.
_ Yes;
- Can you go into the mill and see how it is inside?
- That can be good. I can get the key down at his. You can see there is a padlock.
" But I will not go into the mill now.
- Let's go up to the mill, I say, and we are going to opening in the fence which is made around the mill. We go on to the east side and looks at the mill. The wind is still good, and up at the hat is a wheel with wings. It keeps the rotor blades into the wind. There is an ingenious system of gears for rotating blades, and I see that the entire mill cap to twist slightly when the blades are spinning. When the cap is in place,the blades stop turning round. A moment later the wind takes hold again and the gears are activated. The wind direction has changed a bit, and immediately adjusted the hat.
Even if I look closely, it is not possible from where we stand, seeing that the hat and thus turbine blades are pitched.
But turning blades has calmed down again and sprockets were launched from a wooden rotating blades during a metal chain hanging down into a level one can get.
- We must not draw the chain, says the boy, so it goes to pieces.
I do not quite understand and have not asked the wheat is happens if you pull on the chain. But I understand that it is important to keep away from the chain if you do not know what you're doing.
We look closely at the mill and talk.
- You can see that it is real tile.
I can do that, and the boy speaks and explains.
We sit on the fence.
- It's made to telephone poles, I say.
- Yes, those are the stakes going saloon here sloping down from the poles.
They are the ones we have used. You can also see the labels is stronger here.
They are made of iron, and there is nothing on them.
We look after what it says. Going into details.
I ask.
- When the mill was used was not on the mound here, right?
- No we drove land here, and the stairs by the door, we have also
been made. You can see the big rock over there.
- Yes, I can.
- The ones we had in place with a grapple on a tractor.
I'm on the stairs. Look closely at the largest of the stones. A beautiful red stone. Wondering ~ what kind of a rock or what it has been used before. We go around the turbine.
Coming to a door.
- What do you call it, is it .... the back door?
- Yes, it's back door. That's right. You could look into.
Now I draw, so you can see into the turbine.
I get a glimpse.
We go around. Is now under the wings. At mill hat is written a year: Anno the 1860th
- I'm here not learned to read yet, so I do not know what it says - It says the 1860th This means that-it was in the year 1860 the mill was built. That's over a hundred years ago.
When you just started first Classes are hundreds of years many years.
Five years, ten years, a hundred years. It is a long time. The difference is-alike.
We go to a projector that illuminates the mill when they are on. I get a good and useful explanation of how cables are buried in the ground, from which flow came is.
Will confirmed that it is an electrician who has been the innstalller.
- This is also how some projectors they use in circuses. Here animals come in and they dance in the air. But they also have a network of if they should fall.
- Have you been a circus, I ask.
- Yeah, so can you believe I have.
We go down to the table and the bench again after talking a bit about the elder tree behind the outhouse. Berries are not ripe yet, but it does not last long.
A car comes into the parkingplace. Four women exiting the car. They have a great ice cream in hand. They speak Dutch, I think, and cars have yellow number plates.
~ It is almost always foreigners coming. Englishmen and Germans and Swedes. Everything. But not many Danes.
It's tiresome. I can speak best to the Danes. I have learned to speak English but not Dutch. Can you speak Dutch?
- No, I can not. It is not to learn any language well.
- No, now I hope that they will not pull the string as this will breaking it, he says.
Soon after they run again. They have seen an attraction.
The boys mother came by, when we sat up on telephone poles.
- It is surely no dessert, we have today, she said the boy out of the car window.
He had been longer one at the grocery store for buttermilk, but fall into conversation Mon. you forget time and place. Especially when we talk about something that is worth talking about. The problem with the buttermilk is solved.
Down at the table we sit. The boy sees a caterpillar sitting on a herb .He takes it and we watch it. Look how it moves once the warts by pulling himself together while releasing the rear walking warts. Stretch out and drop the front waling warts. I say:
- I do not know what kind of caterpillar. It is black with toxic-
yellow stripes along the body. It is approximately three for long.
It is not a spinnlarval, for they have long bristles on the body and is toxic.
- I do not know what it's called. Yes, I know.
It's a drag larval. It's called the because it is pulling together when it goes.
I have my doubts whether it is the accepted name for the larval.
But we two may well use it. If we were to be in trouble, we could agree to give the phenomena name.
But time passes and we agree to a break up. I say to the boy that now he shall drive straight home, the clock has been many.
And I must catch the bus in Horsens.
I ride west towards Stenderup where my new friend at school.
I had not seen inside the mill, nor talked to the old miller, who lives in the mill yard.
And I do not yet know much about the old Dutch windmills.
But I know a lot, because I've talked to a professional.

Palle Finn Jensen
22 October 1989