Three feet tall

Hear the glasses tinkling as they are being filled with Dutch gin. It is your fourth glass that day and it is part of your payment for loading a peat barge. Quite a heavy job, which you and your children are sure to be busy with for several days. 

Your eldest son brings the peat to the 65-ton peat barge with his wheelbarrow (5). That means he has to walk more than 34 kilometres there and back, half of which with 110 kilos of turf on his wheelbarrow. With the younger children, sometimes barely three feet tall, you stack the blocks in the barge’s hold and on its deck. That is very precise work, because it is crucial that the deck load cannot slide off along the way.

You know where the peat goes: into the stoves at home, the furnaces of the brick factory or the steam engines of the potato, flour and strawboard factories nearby. Before 1900, the peat went all over the country, now only to towns and villages in the northern provinces. Every village, town and city had its own regular peat skippers. The cargo was unloaded with the help of turf haulers, who carried the turves in peat baskets (6) to the carts and wagons on the quay.

Well, you’ve finished your share of gin and it’s time to call your children. Back to work!