Rural Europe on the move English_E_version_all | Page 108

9
Surviving
below sea level
HANNES LORENZEN
L
orenz, Flora and Alma sit in front terns, avocets, and oystercatchers - a
of the colourful beehive on Hallig lively and always excited company of
Süderoog eating potato soup. With
our guide Knud Knudsen, we have
sea birds.
The mud drying on our feet is as
just crossed the North Frisian tidal black as the bees leaving and entering mud flats of the sea - barefoot. On the their hive. Dark or Northern bees are Fenja, the couple runs a 62 hectare
horizon, we can still see the skyline an endangered species and currently organic island farm in the middle
of Pellworm island like a thin pen mainly preserved in Norway we learn. of the Wadden Sea National Park, -
between the sky and the mud flats. They are part of Nele Wree’s and alone. “Our land is regularly flooded
Holger Spreer’s ARK, a project for during winter storms,” says Nele. “The
deeper parts of the North Sea, it saving and regenerating endangered North Sea then may come licking at
took us one and a half hours to wade farm animals. Around the farmhouse the threshold of our living room. But
through black mud, tide gutters and toddle rare geese, ducks and colourful we still feel quite safe. The house was
fine white sand banks to get here, chickens. Sheep and cattle are quietly built on this little hill called ‘warft’, six
in the steady company of seagulls, grazing in the salt meadows. metres above sea level. If the flood gets
With the tide withdrawing towards
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With their two year old daughter