A look inside an old Dutch farm

Last winter, I had the opportunity to have a look inside an old Dutch farm called Lammerinkswönner, the building on your left in this photo:

^{Olympus Stylus 1s, 35mm, ISO200, f5.6, 1/50s}

You can find more photos of the outside of this farm house here.

The interior of this farm house is still largely original. On the inside, there is just one big room where people and animals lived together, which is why this type of house is called a lös hoes ("open house") in the local dialect. The only separated parts are the closet-beds and the attic, which was used for storing crops. At the centre of the household was the fireplace:

^{Olympus Stylus 1s, 28mm, ISO1600, f5.6, 1/30s}

The stove you see here is a modern addition, for practical purposes. Originally, these houses had stove nor chimney, just an open fire and a hole in the roof. The roundish wooden contruction over the stove was for gathering the open fire's smoke and leading it outwards.

The fire was used for warmth and cooking; the kitchen parafernalia hung from a wooden beam that could be swung over the fire. The open fire's wood was more or less kept together with a firebox:

^{Olympus Stylus 1s, 55mm, ISO1600, f4, 1/40s}

Note that the cobbled part of the floor is original, but the rest of the floor was just the sand the house was built on; the bricks are a later addition. Along the sides of the house were the closet-beds, and often a loom:

^{Olympus Stylus 1s, 33mm, ISO100, f8, 4s}

Many farmers had a such a loom to supplement their income. They mostly wove linnen from locally-grown flax. This home industry was wiped out with the advent of the large textile factories in the region.

The rest of the single room was for the animals, with a closed-off part for the pigs on the left:

^{Olympus Stylus 1s, 28mm, ISO200, f5.6, 1/30s, built-in flash}

The cows were usually docile enough, and the pigs were in a closed-off area, but some farmers also kept a boar around to aid in making new pigs, and a boar can really upset a household when it breaks loose.

The cry "de beer is los!" would go out, and this is still a Dutch expression for "the shit hit the fan". Note that "beer" means both "bear" and "boar" in Dutch, and some etymologists claim the expression refers to circus bears breaking loose, but I prefer my interpretation, even when I'm wrong.

Two things you would expect indoors, a toilet and an oven, are actually outside. These ovens, called bakspiekers in the local dialect, were mainly used for baking bread, and often for communal use:

^{Olympus Stylus 1s, 35mm, ISO200, f5.6, 1/40s}

Those are all the photos I was able to take, they should give you some idea of how the people lived in the region of Twente, The Netherlands up to a century ago. Count your blessings.

Here are some photos of another old Dutch farm, for your viewing pleasure.

Thanks for watching!