Peraküla sawmill

The current State Forest Management Centre’s Nature House was once the site of the Peraküla sawmill.

The first sawmill was founded around 1912 by August Targama together with his brother-in-law Toomas Koppelmaa in the yard of Põlluotsa farm on the other side of the road from the Peraküla Nature House. The mill was powered by a hot-bulb engine, which was a fire hazard for working in the farm yard. It is not known how long the mill was in operation. They built another sawmill near Paali on the land of Põlluotsa farm. The mill used a steam boiler, fuelled by sawmill waste, sawdust and scrap. There was a flour mill, a grain polisher, an edger and a planer. The planer could be used to make matched floor, ceiling and cladding boards. The flour mill produced pearls, bread flour, sifted flour, flour for animal feed, and could even be used to grind malt.

Around 1934-35 the sawmill produced a large amount of sawn timber on the order of a/s [public limited company] Eesti Saeveskid. An under-cut swing saw was brought in. All this work provided a living for many people. Baron Traubenberg from Piiumetsa manor was brought in as the manager. There were stacks of hewn logs and boards by the mill. The logs were hauled from the forest using horses.

Horsepower was also used to take boards to the storage area by the sandy bay. Rolling tracks were laid by the sea and a pier was built about a hundred metres out to sea. Roller trolleys were also used on the pier. Because the mill was run by a baron, the pier was later dubbed the Baron’s Pier. It was used to bring sawn timber in smaller boats to a large steamboat anchored in deeper water. The steamboat then delivered the cargo to England. When the local timber supply ran out, so did most of the work at the sawmill. Life returned to normal.

In the early morning of 31 August 1938, the mill was destroyed by fire. Only the forge remained, as it had been built further away for fire safety. It was a huge loss since the mill had no insurance. August Targama and Toomas Koppelmaa immediately started building a new mill on a new site next to the forge. The old boiler house was a clay structure and therefore the boiler sustained relatively little damage in the fire. The new boiler house was built with concrete blocks. The load-bearing wall between the boiler house and the workshop, which was also the base of the chimney, was composed mainly of marble from Vasalemma. The saw guide and the edger were also restored and the sawmill started working again. Even the planer was restored after a while. Flour production stopped.

In 1938 the mill was nationalised and turned over to the former fishing system. This meant that the mill was mainly tasked with sawing boards and assembling boxes for cod. The boxes held 100 kilograms of fish.

The Nõva Fish Factory was founded in autumn 1938. Logs were gathered from the state-owned forest and taken to Peraküla to be sawn into building material and boards for boxes. A garage with four places and a two-room workshop were built. During summer, ice was needed to cool the flounder and this was collected in the spring from Lake Allikajärv. A special saw was devised to cut the ice. The boat’s engine powered the chain saw. The saw could be lifted and lowered and it was pushed forward by manpower. Ice squares were harvested from the frozen lake, loaded onto trucks and taken to the ice cellar in Nõva. The Nõva fish factory was liquidated by the end of 1950.

The sawmill was handed over to the Haapsalu Motor Fishing Station in 1956 together with the land plots. When it was liquidated, the mill went to Haapsalu Fish Factory. The mill closed on 1 November 1960. The saw guide was taken to Vanaküla, the boiler was scrapped and the buildings demolished.

In 1980, the Nõva forest district built a nutria farm on the empty site. In the autumn of 2002, the nutria farm was demolished and an information centre of the State Forest Management Centre was built on the site of the former sawmill and nutria farm in the winter of 2003, next to the Peraküla swing grounds. The State Forest Management Centre’s Nõva Visitor Centre now operates on the same site.

Salme Targama’s (née Vainu) recollections of Peraküla sawmills.

The labourers loading the boards reported to Baron Traubenberg. A sturdy pier was built into the sea from the shore. Tugboat TRIKS would bring barges there. There was a railway track along the sandy beach by the pier and on the pier with pushcarts running between board stacks and the barge. The finished material, planks and boards, were stacked by the sea. There was a separate stack for every thickness and width. Stencilled letters were painted on the ends of the boards. Sawn material that had dried by the sea was loaded onto ships. This was done in the summer. It was about 500 metres of smooth sand from the beach ridge to the sea at that time.

One summer my sister Liine and I both went to load ships. Liine got to use a pen and paper. First, she showed the captain of the TRIKS how to navigate between the ship and the pier using the forest landmarks to prevent the ship from getting stuck on a sandbank in the sea. Then she wrote down all the wagon loads that were loaded onto the barge. The second recorder was on the big ship. The figures had to match. I had a paint can, a stencil and a paintbrush. I marked the numbers on the ends of the boards. A large ship then took a full load to England. Pit props were also loaded onto the ship to be taken to coal mines.

There was also a flour mill in the mill near Paali. I remember those big stones. Children were not allowed to go near them. The Estonian Swedes came to the mill with their sacks of grain from Põõsaspea (Spitham). Toomas was used to understanding their Estonian and they could do their business.