In use for at least 800 years in more or less its modern-day shape, the clog, though shunned as outmoded by city folk, makes up an enduring part of rural life in the Netherlands.

"Some 350,000 pairs of working clogs are manufactured in the Netherlands every year," said Paul Nijhuis, 56, owner of the Nijhuis clog factory in Beltrum. This small eastern town claims to produce 90 percent of the world's "klompen" from poplar and willow trees.

"I go through about three pairs a year," said 77-year-old pig farmer Theo Startelder, spotted riding his bicycle on streets of Beltrum in a bulky pair of well-worn, unpainted clogs.

  Wooden shoe (clog) factory owner Paul Nijhuis explains about the first process for producing wooden shoes behind his factory in on 9 March 2009 in Beltrum.

"I work in them and I relax in them. When they are worn out, I throw them into the fireplace." A pair of workers' clogs sells for about EUR 25 (USD 33).
Francis Adriaanse, 44, entered the factory shop carrying a massive pair of weather-beaten clogs held together with ducktape. She wanted a new pair of the same size for her son's 18th birthday.

"He wears them around the house. He is lazy, he doesn't like laces," she told AFP.
Many children still wear clogs, she added. Once they grow out of a pair, it is common practice to hammer the tiny shoes to an outside wall as plant holders.

"Clogs are very versatile," she said with a smile. "Young people also drink beer out of them."

Clogs, mentioned in age old proverbs, form an intrinsic part of the culture of the Dutch who are sometimes derisively referred to by outsiders as "cloggies".
One of the world's oldest specimens, dated to 1270, was dug up by archaeologists in Rotterdam in 1990.

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