Here are some rural buildings in Friesland.

I don't know what this one was used for, but it was obviously very old.  Looks maybe like a carriage house and a storage barn, but I'm not sure.

The next two pictures are of an old house/barn building.  In old times, animals were stabled in the same building as people lived in, for the sake of the heat they generated.  The thatch-roofed part would have been the stable, and the front area would have been the living area for the family.  The Dutch term for this style of building is "covered farm."

Here is the front view, from where you can see another stable area off to the side.

This picture is interesting.  There is the classic farmhouse on the left, and in the backyard (click to see the picture bigger) is a boat, with a sheep pasture on the side.  It just looked so typical of the country lifestyle, to me.

Here is an old "covered farm" building that was totally renovated, with only the original shell of the building kept intact.

This is my favourite country house picture.  It is a recreation of the oldest style of rural dwelling.  They were built of peat cut out of the surrounding earth, with a thatch roof and a peat cap on the roof peak.  The original houses did not have glass windows, of course.  The story goes that they were built over the course of just a few hours.  When it was finished, the farmer would light a fire in the chimney.  If the chimney drew smoke properly, the family moved in.  If the chimney did not draw well, the house was demolished and rebuilt.

These houses were about 10 feet wide by 15 feet wide, approximately.  Families with 7 or 8 children would live in them, with one outhouse outside.  During the brutal winters, there was no place for the smaller ones to move around, because they were too small to play outside.  In many of these families, only 1 or 2 of the children would live long enough to grow up.