The wind of change makes our windmills move… yet is this change for better or for worse?

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The traditional windmill, once a common sight in Maltese fields, has all but disappeared from our nation’s agricultural inventory. Only a few remain to serenade our fields, replaced by electric pumps, fuelled by the hideously disruptive wires pictured. Their quiet grace seems to have blown out as the modernisation of the agricultural industry regards them as relics of the past. Apart from the pictured metal windmills introduced in the 1930s, there are also a few remaining stone windmills from the Knights’ period. Less than a dozen of these stone structures retain their sails, and most of them are degrading at an alarming rate. These windmills would have been used to crush grain, a practice which is now fully mechanized, with their structures either abandoned or used for various other purposes. To see the Maltese windmills vanish from our countryside would be a tragedy of the highest degree.