Victorian Farm

I'm not a professional horseman, but the one thing I think I understand about the species is their dedication to a task. It is, I think, the one thing that distinguishes them from other animals. Horses learn one thing and seem to spend the rest of their lives focused on that one item. Oh, they can handle other tasks, but are truly happy doing the one. Thoroughbreds, for example are born to run. Even the slowest horse knows the excitement of the race, the roar of the crowd and the 2 minutes of the actual race. Win or lose they know they have done what they were born to do. The same is with work horses, mustangs understand ranching and how to deal with cattle and Clydesdales glory in pulling large loads. All horses when not doing their tasks tend to get surly and difficult to manage, but set them free to work in the world they understand are generally pleasant and easy to work with, and will do their task until their great hearts explode. Civilization would be impossible without the horse and the dog. Humanity owes them much better then we have ever given them. 

In episode six they do a sort of "day in the life" thing which mostly works.

Alex takes some boots to a shoemaker for repair. His brother is one of the few people still working at that craft. He mentioned that it was around the Edwardian time that factory shoe making became a big thing and which brought many of these skilled men into the factories. Others went out of business, of course.

He also noted it was with the advent of the competition from the factories that the "cobbler" was born. He wasn't the guy who would make your shoes. He would mend them.

A fox injures one of the geese. Alex and Peter take drastic measures...they buy a gander. Apparently a gander will have little problem driving off most foxes, dogs, or even humans.

Speaking of luxury goods in supermarkets, Ruth goes to a local Edwardian store and stocks up. It was at this time that branding started in earnest. Although you really ought to have been able to buy flour that was produced locally, more and more food was shipped via rail cross-country and you reached for the big-brand names with the well-known logos.

Peter and Alex have a hand in the kitchen and make "beef tea." I never knew what that was. But it's nothing complicated. It's just the water you pour off after having boiled some lean meat in it. Drink it hot.

Nothing unusual in that. Many people take pride in keeping their cars or guns or other such tools (particularly when new) in tip-top shape. Yet they still drive or hunt or go to target practice with the same cars or guns.  They haven't lost sight of the original purpose of the tool.  I think it has gone beyond that with much of technology today. 

More of the type of history which is interesting. 

When I was a child, the land on which I now live, as well as hundreds-of-thousands of acres in the area, was farm land. Many is the time that I saw those disk harrows and thought they were plows. 

I vaguely knew that farmers had to break up dirt clods, but didn't know much about how they did it. 

The cows they have in Edwardian Farm are ruby reds. They really are a gorgeous and quite red cow, although the picture below might exaggerate that a bit:



Their own fields have not yet rebounded from the winter freeze. But a neighbor has some spare fields and in episode 8 the boys drove the cows a couple miles to these fields. Easier said than done. Where a cow wants to walk, it walks. They got offtrack for a while.

Alex and Peter later volunteer as crew on one of the last remaining sail-powered trawlers left in England. They again face problems with the weather...or lack of. Without a breeze, they can't trawl with the nets.

They bring some lanolin on board to lubricate the ropes. Ruth extracted some from sheep's wool by boiling it. It's just some thick white stuff that floats to the top and hardens when cool. If you've ever petted a sheep, you'll well know just how thick their coats are with this stuff.

Ruth also smokes some fish in an improvised smokehouse. She also makes laverbread. The laver has nothing to do with bread, per se. It is seaweed that is harvested and then pureed. From the remarks of Peter, it's nothing to write home about although it apparently is a very nutritious food, high in protein. This would definitely have been peasant food. But currently the shorelines have abundant supplies of the stuff. Few are eating it these days.

This is something everyone should experience. I loved High Tea at the Mandarin Hotel Hotel in Hongkong. 

I completed the twelfth and last episode of Edwardian Farm. It's sad to have to go. As one reviewer wrote:



The measure of good TV has usually been "Do you want to spend time with these characters?" In this case, it's a definite "yes." That may sound sad and pathetic, to be reduced to television for company. But there's no getting around this aspect of what makes a show good. The reviewer also writes:



Certainly recreating it (and being able, presumably, to sneak off for a Big Mac when you want) is different from having to actually live in that time. If any of them were to be seriously injured (and there seemed to be ample opportunity for that), they would not have been taken to an Edwardian-era hospital.

And it's unclear to me if Alex, Peter, and Ruth actually did spend their time 24/7 in Devon. We never see (if memory serves) where any of them sleep. I think in Victorian Farm we get much more of a sense of them living there. But in either case, I have no idea. They may have just gone back once a month and filmed some segments. I'm not saying this is a big deceit. (This is "reality" television, after all.) I just have no idea if the immersion was complete.

Still, I would rate this sequel to the series, Victorian Farm, to be its equal and perhaps a little better. Seen as a series of demonstrations of techniques, practices, customs, and with a background of the history, the show works well. And I have little doubt that you could throw these three back into the Edwardian era and they would thrive. They are all obviously knowledgeable and resourceful. Most of all, none of them seem allergic to hard work.

Would I want to live on those times? I would not, especially knowing that WWI was just around the corner. And they do touch on that. This is when the Edwardian period ended. It was a brief period. And after the war especially, it was looked back upon by many as a golden age...if only (as they said) because so many of their friends and family would have been alive.

The Edwardian era is probably best visited for a while...as this crew does. I would gladly pay $1000 (or so) to spend a couple weeks in that life, as this crew does. The are (apparently) immersed in it rather than gawking at it and making jokes at it from afar. And every expert or guest who enters the show is suitably dressed in Edwardian garb. They do a good job keeping up the pretense.

And certainly via Ruth we see unabashedly how hard these people worked. To dabble in it a while would be fun. But the nostalgia would likely quickly wear off after a few weeks if you actually had to live that way. But then you never get the impression that Alex, Peter, and Ruth aren't anything but born for that time. They seem to love it, hard work and all.

There's an accompanying book to the series as well. Reviews on it are mixed. But I found a used hardcover version (supposedly "very good" condition) for $17.00 including shipping and should receive that on…Empire Day, May 24th.

Secrets of the Castle is another series (one season, 5 episodes) on Amazon Prime that features Ruth, Peter, and Tom (not Alex). This is yet another documentary centering around Guédelon Castle in Treigny, France. I had previously seen a different documentary about this project. In this 2014 documentary series, they said they were about 17 years into a 25 year project. It's a big project so I wouldn't be surprised if they're still at it. And I wouldn't be surprised to see more documentaries. Wiki states:



Watching them actually build things is enormously interesting. You see the stone being carved, then being hoisted aloft by man-powered machines. You get the sense that it took years to build these great castles (because it indeed did).

Ruth finds a way to make interesting the domestic and dietary situation of the support workers who built a somewhat ramshackle settlement around the construction site. It was noted that very often that villages that exist today got their start in this way.

The amazing thing about castles is that so many were built in such a short period of time. Thousands were build from the time of the Norman conquest 1066 to about 100 years later. Even more amazing are the number that still stand. Not only in GB but on the continent also. Some were simple mote and bailey with wooden stockades and others more durable stone. I believe I might have watched this a few years ago and it does give insight into the entire castle building age.