Page 39 - Poat_to_Poot_Engels

usually built so they would subside to no less than 3 feet above the
mean tide level.

The construction of a succession great dykes from about 1400 until
1600 enabled them to drain a great finger of water called the Middle Sea
that had divided Friesland into two separate regions. Over the centuries
this new land was reclaimed and was then settled with many small towns
and villages. The village of Oude Leije is on a polder that was made
possible in the 1500's by the construction of the Long Dyke (Langendijk).
The family of J.W. Poot would eventually live there.

Because homes and barns needed to be above the floodwaters, people
often lived on shared mounds in small villages of less than 200 people.
The residents' farms and grazing fields encircled each mound. Larger
villages could produce enough debris around the perimeter to gradually
enlarge the mound, but this would have been at the expense of the
adjacent farmland. Transportation and other issues limited most towns,
such as Berlikum, to less than 2000 people. Only a few larger cities were
able to develop in Friesland. An example is the capital, Leeuwarden. In
modern times, construction equipment and modern engineering have
overcome many of these historic problems, but at considerable expense.
Friesland continues to be mostly low-density farming and dairy lands.
However, Industrial Zones have been engineered near some towns to
help diversify the economy. Stiens has such an industrial park. These
industrial parks create jobs so the nearby villages, such as Oude Leije,
are no longer economically limited to farming jobs. This in turn allows
the farming to become more mechanized which reduces the labor costs
and helps the products to be more competitive in the export market.
This is expected to gradually transform the landscape by replacing
thousands of small polders with larger fields maintained by efficient
mechanized production.

- Friesland - page 3 -