Characteristic of the 1980s is the image of thousands of windmills dominating the picturesque plain, surrounded by mountains, like a hand-painted oil painting inviting other artists to celebrate the landscape in their own way. And yet, it is an image that was even praised by Odysseus Elytis in his artistic collage “The Message” (1968).

From the wings of the Daedalus to the sails of the windmill

In Crete, the use of wind energy dates back to antiquity, when in Minoan times the Minoans exploited the power of the wind on land and sea. The important inventor and craftsman of antiquity, Daedalus, was the first to use wind as a driving force. According to one version of mythology, this great craftsman built two individual ships with masts, on which he placed sails made of sails. These ships, taking advantage of the tail wind, were faster than the rowing and slow-moving ships of Minos that pursued him. The use of sails on ships, therefore, developed the navigation of the ancient Greeks.

Inspirer and manufacturer of the first wooden pumping windmill was Emmanuel Papadakis, the so-called “Spirtokoutis“, who like another… Daedalus invented the “vehicle” to exploit the wind. His idea was presented at the age of 20, in 1890, and was inspired by the flour mills, making Lasithi rich, as the whole region owes its later agricultural and tourist development to him.

It is worth noting that until then the pumping of water was done with the old means of pumping such as the Gerani Vinci or even with the bucket and the rope, which apart from being tedious was not efficient and that is why we had no development of crops in the plain but only a few ditches near the villages for the needs of the family.

The wooden windmill becomes metallic

In 1920 Stefanos Markakis(Markostefanis) will make a series of innovations to the existing wooden windmill of Spirtokoutis and will gain the reputation of one of the most progressive people in the Plateau. With his inventions, Marcostefanis managed to modernize and perfect the mill reaching its present form, changing the wooden tower with a metal one, making it more solid, thus increasing the height of the mill and mainly by constructing the iron bobbin, on which the head system slides circularly.

The windmills, with a total installed capacity of over 5 MW, were then constructed by local residents, at a time and in a region where the available materials and technologies were limited in quantity and variety, to serve the simple farmer, blending harmoniously with the environment, constituting an unprecedented spectacle and even in one of the most leeward areas of Crete.

Identical windmills in Africa and India

It is worth noting, as was revealed for the first time, that during the period of the great drought in Africa and India in the early 1970s the UN (Unisef) sent special engineers to Crete, who copied the windmill of Lasithi, transferring the know-how of water pumping and constructed identical Cretan windmills in Ethiopia, India and America.

The mills today

The mills were divided into flour mills and water mills, with the latter clearly outnumbering the former, although the flour mills clearly precede the former. Besides, most farmers had other crops, which they tried to water with the help of the wind – and of course their mill.

We found ourselves in Seli of Ampelos, where is the northern entrance of the Lassithi Plateau. There were once 26 flour mills (seven on the right side of the road and 19 on the left) facing north. All the others were in the plain and were water mills.

At the moment some of them have been restored, while according to Pantelis Papadakis, president of the Cultural Association “Nostos”, today the number of mills in operation does not exceed 200. A disappointing number, compared to the glorious past of the Lassithi Plateau, but we cannot ignore the fact that even today thousands of tourists are attracted to the area.

George Hatzakis is the man who today makes the sails of the windmills under restoration. The need for daily supervision of the windmill, but also the constant consistency required (the farmers had to open and collect the sails every day), created many problems. The fact that the technique developed by this mechanical engineer is considered a pioneer, making the windmills operational all year round, in all weather conditions. The use of perforated polyester sails brought the solution. These sails have elasticity to cope with the intensity of the winds (the holes in the sails relieve the wind pressure). Our goal is to increase the number of restored windmills so that they remind the glamour that the Lassithi Plateau used to have in the past”, he concluded.