Rietdekker / Thatcher #01

TVGreen's Time Machine presents "The Thatcher"
from the series "Claim to Fame"

Berend, he is the man. His grandfather worked with them, so did his father. At eighty they were still thatching roofs. The music provided amusement and relaxation.
Berend van Echten was thirteen when he first learned about roofing. He got a letter from his father for the headmaster: "We don't have a helper. Berend has to toss up the bundles." That said enough. Three years later he had branched out on his own.
While curlews and wading birds call out their winter song over the reed marshes, Berend van Echten and a colleague take a punt out to an old fringe of reeds where they still have a lot of bundles to cut.

Always wet marshland. Misty and rheumatic. Luckily the hut is dry and out of the wind.
Lots of reeds have already been cut, but a lot more has to get done. one behind the machine to work the knives, the other alongside to keep the reeds within reach.
The rubber boots are put on only in the wettest parts.
The reeds are cleaned with a kammer or comb. Get rid of the moss and brushwood and you're left with the cane.
But not all of it is good for thatching. only reed of the same thickness with an even firm stem. That's the best sort, once called Kalenberger reeds here. The second-best is called dule reed
.
It's hard work and tests the back of the fittest. A generation back it was all done by hand.
Nothing like a glass of comfort and a sandwich in the but.
The reed business has picked up in the last few years. But if you want to keep butter on the table, you sadly have to spray the reed with chemicals. otherwise your source of income will be overgrown in no time. The reed is sprayed when it starts growing, sometime late in May.
Nature reserves are kept undefiled.

The marshes are cleared of reeds between mid-December and mid- April. The empty lots are delivered to the owner on the fifteenth of April; He then pays the cutting expenses.
The reed here is of high quality, but there isn't much. Not enough for a roof. The turf should actually be wetter.
If the machine can't get to the water's edge because it's not freezing, then the reeds have to be cut by hand, with the reed- cutter or rietsnit. When the heavy reed-cutter is the worse for wear, Van Echten makes a comb from it.

broadcast footage: http://www.stockshot.nl/stockshots/beroepen.htm

Music title Hypnothis by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0"

webcasted by http://www.tvgreen.nl

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