The NOE family from the Meetjesland in East-Flanders, Belgium

About money, weights and measures

One pound is 20 shillings (exactly like in the United Kingdom before 1971).
20 shillings is 240 "grootten", pennies and that is 6 guilders (gulden in Dutch).
1 shilling is 12 "grootten", pennies (exactly like in the United Kingdom before 1971).
1 guilder is 20 "stuivers" is 80 "oorden". (My dictionary says "stuivers" are pennies but it doesn't mention the word "oord" in this sense.)

They used to write 1-8-5, meaning 1 pound, 8 shillings and 6 grootten.

"Grootten", how do we pronounce that? The oo as in "grootten" and in "oorden" is pronounced like the o in open. (Open, the verb and the adjective are exactly the same in Dutch as in English and they also have exactly the same meaning.)
As a rule oe as in "groeten" (greetings), "boek" (book) and "koekoek" (cuckoo) is pronounced like the oo in the English words noon and book. And if the oe combination is to be pronounced as two separate vowels then we put a diaeresis on the e like in "Noë". Here you can find some more on the pronunciation of Dutch words.

Just how big is that piece of land ?

1 hectare (ha.) is 10,000 (ten thousand) square meters or approximately 2.47 acres.
1 hectare (ha.) is 2 "gemete" and 37 rods.

"Gemet", plural "gemete" or "gemeten" is used extensively throughout the Meetjesland. Some think that's where the naam Meetjesland comes from.

A square with sides of 300 rods = 1 "gemet" which means:
1 hectare is 637 rods.

1 are (a) is 1/100th of a hectare or 100 square meters
100 are = 1 hectare
1 are is approximately 119.60 square yards

1 centare = 1 square meter or approximately 10.76 square feet.

Achiel Sturm in his admirable book "Van Paarden naar Paardenkrachten" ("From Horses to Horsepower"), 1997, shows us he knew a good deal more about all this and about so many other things of importance to our parents and grandparents (and to us as well). He tells us a rod ("roe" or "roede" in Dutch, plural "roeden" or "roen") was the size of a square with sides of 3.85 meters. The size of a "gemet" was different in Bruges, in Ghent and in Walcheren.
He writes: "If you asked ten farmers how long a rod was, perhaps you received eight different answers. I myself never measured a rod. The cartwright or carpenter made the rod. Perhaps each carpenter had his own length for it." This is a really interesting book by a really good and generous man who, since 20 Feburary 2003, is unfortunately no longer with us.

And now five years later we are very pleased to add some more to this page, to sing the praises of a book by Anne Sturm, Achiel's daughter. Talk about oneupmanship ! "M'n Eign Taole - Mijn Eigen Taal" (My Own Language). Here we have something really unique: a great little book with two cd's. This is much much more than just another autobiography. I listened again and again to the cd's where Anne herself, in that gorgeous dialect of South-West Zealand tells us about the youth of a (little) girl on a big Zealand farm. But I also savored with great pleasure her thoughts (and now and again her animadversions) on a thousand and one things. Zealand for those who are not too familiar with Benelux geography, is just across the Belgian-Dutch border from our Meetjesland. If you don't speak Dutch, I'm terribly sorry, you're out of luck. For those who fear they won't understand the spirited Zealand verses there is an easy to follow Dutch translation. Highly recommended ! ISBN: 978 90 808871 3 8.

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