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Post by artraveler on May 25, 2022 10:45:23 GMT -8
It sounds like the Tudor Farm is also true to history. At least as regards the tools and methods available to the people of those days. The Tutor farm like the Victorian farm is little changed from the Viking farm or the Roman farm. Until the 20th century when modern farming methods, fertilizer, pest control, refrigerated rail cars and mass transit trucking. Farming is not much changed since the first nomads decided to raise crops in the fertile crescent 5000 years ago. At that time the population of the entire world was maybe 14-15 million the size of a large city today and famine was just around the corner for about 90% of the population. There is a nostalgic attraction to simpler methods of doing almost everything but progress will out. The Romans made the most of advances in farming with their massive farms called latifundia, but were not able to feed even the city of Rome, pop about 1,000,000 in 55 BCE. Rome would have starved without the grain from Egypt and Israel. As we, as sleepy Joe says, transit to a green economy prepare for famine in the third world that hasn't been seen in 200 years, and shortages here and Europe, thanks you meely-mouthed MF.
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 25, 2022 15:25:59 GMT -8
Mostly. There are small, but significant, movements to simplify. Much of it is done in the name of "sustainability." But if you're making your own butter instead of buying it from the store, I don't care what you call it.
Perhaps there are the dabblers who grind their own flour (not a bad idea) and think they are living again in the 16th century. But there are more and more people looking to live "off the grid" in some way, shape, or form. I do. No Twitter. No Facebook. That's way the hell off the grid compared to most today.
Many of my conservative friends are into making their own soap and/or other basic necessities. I doubt they'll save any money. But at least you know what's going into it and it's a way to suck a little less at the teat of "woke" corporations. And they end up gaining a lot of satisfaction from doing at least some things themselves.
But no one is ditching their car, although a friend of mine told me about his fiance's father who they visited in Montana(?). I think his method of living would definitely be Artler-approved from what I hear. They could live off the grid for years if necessary. They're not nuts. But the father has a ranch and has strategically planned ahead in tangible ways in case Antifi or BLM ever comes calling. I suggest they don't.
If Tudor yutes were suddenly offered smart phones, 4-wheelers, drones, forty flavors of cheap soda-pop, and unlimited online pornography, I'm guessing most would ditch slopping the pigs and would spend their time staring into small glowing screens. One day Bill would then "identify" as Betsy and their children (or their children's children) might long for the good-old-days when things were at least saner, if not also simpler.
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Post by artraveler on May 27, 2022 18:17:39 GMT -8
Did you hear about the Arab astronauts who wanted to go to the sun? The they were asked about the heat and burin in the sun's glow. They responded, no problem, they were going at night.
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 28, 2022 9:18:56 GMT -8
I received my book this morning: Edwardian Farms. It's the companion book from the TV series. It came from Amazon reseller, AwesomeBooks.com. The condition is surprisingly good. A quick glance shows the book is full of charming photos printed on a non-gloss paper. You would normally expect glossy paper for a book such as this. But this would appear to be a conscious choice. The photos are certainly color-corrected and such to print on non-gloss paper (a field in my wheelhouse) so care was taken. And since glossy is probably cheaper than non-gloss (or near enough), I think this was an artistic choice rather than a cost-cutting one. The book itself seems to be thoughtfully done and not just a churned-out book to strike while the iron was hot with the series going. It's probably 2/5 picture book and 3/5 text. On the cover, you see the shire horse, Clumper, that Alex is holding. He was used in both the Edwardian and the Victorian series. Although he was hobbled for a while in one of the series, he was a hard-working horse. Alex seemed to handle him very well and the two seemed to be chums.
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Post by kungfuzu on May 28, 2022 13:51:12 GMT -8
Is the the same as "matte" which one finds in paints, etc, or is there some other process involved?
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 28, 2022 16:58:58 GMT -8
Good question. There is matte-coated paper (it takes an actual coating to make it "matte"). This kind of paper (as far as I know) has the same substrate as the gloss-coated paper, just different processes or pressure-rollers give it a different finish at the end. But both have added chemicals that do coat over the paper underneath. The paper in this book however is "uncoated." Newsprint is uncoated, for example. The textures of uncoated can be anything from "smooth" to much rougher or more textured paper. Some kinds mimic old styles of paper making by imprinting a "laid" texture that mimics the wire sieves (the spacing of these wires produced a distinctive pattern) in the original process of dipping a mould (frame) into a vat of diluted pulp.
And there's linen paper which (as far as I know, is more modern) is impressed with a cross-hatch sort of pattern to resemble fabrics. And I think vellum papers are meant to resemble the "paper" made from animals skins. And various "parchment" papers (which it is called if the skin was from a calf) are of this same type. These "vellums" are often thought of as tracing paper, although for printing they can come in all kinds of colors and tectures and may be quite opaque.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 3, 2022 18:16:04 GMT -8
Even though Wartime Farm is not on Amazon Prime, I'll continue the discussion here. Alex, Ruth, and Peter are back together again in this 2012 BBC series. It can be found on Acorn TV (sort of a mirror image of BritBox in regards to content). I'm doing a 7-day trial and I'll see where it goes from there. Cheap imports from America, Australia, and other friendly lands, meant that at the time that war broke out, Britain was importing 40% or more of its food. With the threat of U-boat blockade, the wartime government instituted a goal to double farm production. And they had vast powers to decide what would be planted where. What I didn't know was that British farms were in the midst of a 20 year recession which started at the end of WWI. There were yuge challenges in regards to simply getting enough working farm equipment into the hands of farmers because they would have to plant the land not merely (as they had been doing) using the land for livestock to graze upon. If food production was to double, raising livestock was too inefficient. They needed to plant crops that humans would use directly. The first challenge for Peter and Alex is to use a "mole" in order to create drainage for a heavily-clay field. A rod (haven't seen them do it yet) will somehow be dragged a foot or so below the soil which will then prevent the rain from merely sitting on top of the clay and choking the potential crops. This was a more modern method of drainage as opposed to digging channels, etc. Not sure how it all works yet, but Peter and the blacksmith are right now pounding and shaping the mole from an old axle.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 5, 2022 18:52:24 GMT -8
Wartime Farm is proving to be excellent. I'm 4 episodes into the 8-episode series. You can find it on Acorn TV.
Correction: I said that Britain was importing about 40% of their food just before war broke out. It was actually a whopping 60%.
There was significant overlap between Edwardian Farm and Victorian farm in regards to some of the processes and things they made. And that's fine because, for some reason, I never tire watching these guys get out the heavy machinery and try to plow a field.
However, In Wartime Farm, you have the special circumstances of the war. And that means a lot of stuff that is going on is unique.
Rationing is the word of the day and heavy central planning in all aspects of life. I was at least partially aware of just how regimented British society was as it mobilized for war. Still, it went even deeper than I had imagined. The War Agricultural Executive Committees (War Ags) determined what you were to plant and graded your farm from time to time. A rating below "C" could mean the confiscation of your farm as they handed it to someone else to run. And this did happened.
We hear a little about the Land Girls, which is also a series (somewhere) that you can stream. I haven't watched that one yet. Looks way too chick-flicky for me. But there's no doubt that the Land Girls did an exceptional job.
Ruth shows many of the innovations that homemakers used to make the rations stretch. I found the "hay box" she used for cooking to be particularly interesting and ingenious. Her stove is a paraffin stove (those in town might be gas). But all fuel had to be conserved as best as possible. Ruth had a large stew she was doing. She brought the stew to a boil on the stove and then transferred it to a box filled with straw which she then covered with more insulation and let sit. The captured heat would cook the stew the rest of the way. Very clever. And very easy to do.
The boys are "told" by the War Ags guy (a historian filling in for the role) that they should plant a field of flax. England once grew a lot of flax. But she had, before the war, gotten most of it from abroad. But it was needed for fire hoses, parachutes, rope, and, of course, clothing material. The War Ags kinda-sorta made "suggestions." As the expert explained, they had iron fists inside of velvet gloves. I got the idea that their "suggestions" ought to followed if you wanted to stay out of trouble and get a good grade for your farm.
Although keeping livestock was frowned upon and mostly phased out, that did not include dairy cows. Milk was one of the highest priority products of the farm. But pigs and cows (raised for meat) were out.
However, farmers (in concert with their neighbors) were encouraged to form "pig clubs." What's a "pig club" you ask? No, it has nothing to do with America's Democrat Party. It's a pig that is communally kept and fed by the waste scraps that are fed to it by the pig club participants. Sound much more interesting than a mere record club.
Raising rabbits was also encouraged because rabbits apparently are very efficient in regards to turning vegetable matter into meat.
Turkeys were hard to come by, but Christmas was apparently the one day of the year when you would do your best to simulate normal extravagance. Ruth makes a murkey (a mock turkey) which seems to consist of dressing formed into the shape of a turkey with two parsnips positioned to look like drumsticks. The whole thing was then covered in strips of bacon. It wasn't the most appetizing thing to look at but Peter, in particular, said it was delicious.
There was a great mixing of city and country folk as millions escaped the cities (and the blitz) to go live in the country. This aspect could have made a series unto itself. But we see that farmers used whatever out-buildings they could as makeshift residences for the refuges. Everyone then (presumably) would pitch in on the farm work. A lot of city folk (especially the children) had never seen a pig so it was a real adventure in some respects.
The boys are freed from having to use the near impossible-to-start Fordson tractor. A new brand is brought in (I forget the name). But it is more modern, more fuel efficient, and easier to start. One of the highlights was watching Alex (under the direction of an expert) start the tractor via use of a shotgun shell (no pellets, just the charge). Worked like a charm.
Butter, sugar, meat, and just about all the good stuff is rationed. The rations don't start out particularly large. And in a year or so, some (like meat) will be cut in half. But, surprisingly to me, there is no rationing of bread. It was all-you-could-eat regarding that product.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 5, 2022 18:58:53 GMT -8
This system was used in a number of airplanes as well. I have seen a shotgun shell being used to start an aircraft engine several times.
This happened again later. After WWII, Great Britain had rationing up to 1955, as I recall.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 5, 2022 19:04:16 GMT -8
That vaguely rings a bell we me as well. When I saw them starting the tractor, I'm pretty sure I'd never seen a tractor started like that. But I think I've seen something like that before elsewhere. Another interesting segment was when Alex and Peter (with help from some land girls) make silage: They made it from cutting nettles and various other plants. Tamp it down inside some type of small "silo"-like structure (to keep the rain and oxygen out as much as possible), tamp it down (by stamping on it), and then sprinkle the top with molasses. Their first try at it was a success which can be judged by the fact that the cows ate it. This is one technique recommended by the War Ag although apparently very few farmers actually did it.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 9, 2022 7:55:22 GMT -8
I wonder if any (or how many) of the wartime restrictions in England were vindictive such as those imposed by Whitmer and the kind of dark souls who would pour truckloads of sand over skate parks to keep children from not "social distancing."
Government officials under the guise of "emergency powers" are prone to exert those power for no other reason than that they have a Napoleon complex. We see this happening all over the country due to the KFF. I wonder how rampant this was in Britain. But so far there are no tails of such instances in the Wartime Farm series.
But the breadth and reach of Parliament leads one to believe that their powers were unlimited. And given that this really was a life-or-death struggle for an entire civilization, those powers were warranted. As they say about our own Constitution, it is not a suicide pact.
But could we trust our U.S. officials today with emergency powers even if there was a real emergency? I'm fairly certain that we could not. But it does seem that they made things work in the United Kingdom during the war. Everything was regulated, controlled, marshaled, or rationed. They even had a program whereby children could take off from school and help bring in the harvest because labor was in such short supply. And children could actually make money by scavenging for medicinal plants that could be sold back to the pharmaceutical companies for the making of things such as aspirin.
Being conscripted into the army was a harsh enough reality for any man. But what I never knew was that 10% of the men conscripted were sent to work in the coal mines. And that was dirty and dangerous work.
Via the extreme emergency measures, Britain did vastly increase its food supply. Even so, rationing continued to be ratcheted up. Given the shortage of metal, petrol, etc., you would think that Britain returned to horsepower in these years. And they did say that there was a resurgence in the use of the horse. But the government also induced farmers to use, loan, buy, or whatever, the latest farm equipment for reasons of sheer productivity. The same inside the home. Labor-saving devices were apparently fostered. As Ruth pointed out, simply having your floor covered with linoleum was a yuge time-saver when it came time to scrubbing the floor. Ten minutes with a wet mop and you were done which was quite a contrast to getting down on your hands and knees to scrub some other kind of floor.
The same with laundry. Any device that could save time and increase productivity was encouraged, although the show really didn't get into any details as to if the government was making loans for such equipment or whatever. But the plain facts seems to be that despite shortages of everything, there was a push to automation wherever possible.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 15, 2022 8:38:09 GMT -8
I finished Wartime Farm, although there is the Christmas Special still to watch. After VE day, in the general election of July 5, 1945, Churchill was thrown out of the majority and the Labour Party achieved a surprising landslide victory. More info here: Churchill wasn't wrong. And it was Thatcher who helped remedy many of the misguided ills the idiot voters voted for in 1945. But regarding Wartime Farm, all they talked about was that British farmers, given the choice, rejected going back to a free market economy and instead were content to continue the heavily-regulated one that had been assembled during the war. After all, it had worked, they said. But it's hard for us to put ourselves in the voter's shoes. But what we do know is that this decrepit socialist system certainly played a large part in food rationing not being lifted until 1954. The rationing of some items had obviously been phased out earlier than this. And yet here we have Britain out of the EU. They seem to swim in socialism for a while and then step back. Go figure.
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