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Learning From Past Farmers and Housewives

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I have acquired a new obsession. If you are not a fan of Healthy Homesteading’s facebook page you might not know about it yet. A friend of mine introduced me to a English television series called Tales from the Green Valley. The series is like a reality show and  history show all rolled into one and it’s fascinating.

Tales from the Green Valley is only one of a series of great films about farm life of long ago. There is also Victorian Farm and Edwardian Farm. All three of these shows have the same three people living the life of the time (Ruth Goodman, Alex Langlands, Peter Ginn ), wearing period clothes and using period tools. Tales from the Green Valley also has historian Stuart Peachey and archaeologist Chloe Spencer but for some reason they are not in the other shows.  Ruth Goodman, a domestic historian, is my favorite of the team. I just love watching her work with period tools for cooking and cleaning.

I didn’t think I was going to like Victorian Farm and Edwardian Farm  as much as Tales from the Green Valley but I ended up liking them just as much.  Watching the films in order helps to see the progression of time and industry. Throughout all of the films they refer to books of that period. In the Victorian Farm, the book of reference for farm related tasks was The Book of the Farm. I made sure I wrote down all the book titles mentioned on the shows. I was excited to find out that most of those books are still available. Even better, I found The Book of the Farm Henry Stephens available for free download from Google books. I also found for free download a book called Manual for the Apiary by Albert John Cook. This book was not mentioned in any of the films but is very similar to book that was mentioned in the Victorian Farm called The Apiary: A Book of Bees, Beehives and Bee Culture by Alfred Neighbour. I also found a book that Ruth referred to called The Family Save All by Robert Kemp Philip in the free download section of Google books.

If you are the least bit interested in homesteading, farming, gardening, animal husbandry or domestic living, I would highly recommend watching these shows. In this technology age it is very easy be unaware of simplicity at it’s finest. Generations and generations of people functioned very well without many of the things we “can’t live without”. It’s not like I want to go back to using outhouses or wood burning ovens but I do appreciate seeing how things were done in a simpler time.  By understanding skills used in the past, I can understand why we do things they way we do them now. Not only that, some of the skills and methods used 400 years ago are far better than the methods we use now. Learning about how farmer’s wives prepared and preserved foods when there we no refrigerators or freezers is fascinating to me. Most food preparation and preservation methods were healthier and safer than our modern factory processed food industry. Did they fear having “pink slim” in their meat ? I think not ;).

Tales from the Green Valley

The Setting

Tales from the Green Valley, explores life on a British farm in the 17th century. This 12 x 1/2 hour television documentary, produced and directed by Peter Sommer, attracted large audiences and wide critical acclaim. Tales from the Green Valley follows the five as they labor for a full agricultural year, getting to grips with period tools, skills, and technology from the age of the Stuarts, the reign of James I (1620).

Everything must be done by hand, from plowing with a team of oxen using a replica period plowing and thatching a cowshed using only authentic materials, to making their own washing liquid for laundry and harvesting the hay & wheat with scythes and sickles. Each of the 12 half-hour programmes, made by Lion TV for BBC Wales, follows a month in the life of the farm situated on the Welsh borders. Source

Victorian Farm

The Setting

Historical observational documentary series following a team who live the life of Victorian farmers for a year. Wearing period clothes and using only the materials that would have been available in 1885, historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn are going back in time to relive the day-to-day life of the Victorian farmer.

The project is based on the Acton Scott estate in Shropshire – a world frozen in time, lost in Victorian rural England. Its buildings and grounds are cluttered with antique tools and machinery collected by the Acton family, who have lived on the estate since the 12th century.

Working for a full calendar year, Ruth, Alex and Peter are rediscovering a lost world of skills, crafts and knowledge, assisted by an ever-dwindling band of experts who keep Victorian rural practices alive. Source

Edwardian Farm

The Setting

Following life on the farm over a whole calendar year, Edwardian Farm goes deep into a lost rural world where life was tough and working together was the only means of achieving anything.

Setting up home at Morwellham Quay, in Devon, the trio have to get to grips with the trials and tribulations of life at the turn of the 20th century. This was a time of great social change and tumult – a time when farming was becoming increasingly mechanized.Source


My obsessive nature often takes me on rabbit trails where I discover all sort of great resources. After watching these films I plan to continue my entertaining educational journey with the following list of films. I have always been fascinated with history but have never committed myself to learning more of it. I hope to find time to start reading historical fiction books to help with my pursuit of educating myself. In the mean time, I am going to watch these next set of shows.

1900 House

Texas Ranch House

Frontier House

 

Are you a history lover? Do you have any historical fiction books you would recommend me starting with? 


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