One of the most fascinating television series shown by the BBC last year was called "Tales from the Green Valley". This was an attempt by five professional historians and archaeologists to live in a farmhouse in the way common during the reign of James I and to do all the agricultural activities and use all the equipment that would have been available in the 1620s. There were twelve episodes in the series, one covering the activities (and food eaten) each month of the year. As none of them were farmers (although one, Chloe, had been raised on a farm and could help manage the animals) they had to come to grips with the various period tools, skills, and technology from the age of the Stuarts when everything was done by hand, from ploughing with a team of oxen using a replica period plough, thatching a cowshed using only authentic materials, making their own washing liquid for laundry and harvesting the hay & wheat with scythes and sickles. This was not what is nowadays called a "reality series", these were historians trying to learn how things actually worked then and everyone was clearly revelling in the experience.
I don't know why the BBC don't have a website on the series but the director of the tv series has written something about it which can be found here. The series is absolutely fascinating and if you have any opportunity to watch it I do recommend it. So, if you are in the US try to look out for it in your TV schedules. The Husband and I are currently enjoying the series again as it has just come out on DVD.
3 comments:
I had read or heard of the exercise's being performed, but don't think that I knew it was a television offering. I'll watch. Some of the "ancient" tools that you mention are tools that I used as a kid (more precisely, my elder family members did most of the using while I watched or "helped".) Horses did the field work with the plows, discs, etcetera; but, my grandmother and uncle had a small, hand plow that was mounted on a wheel (that acted as a fulcrum) so that one could push it along in front of one. [The man down the lane had a small forge and did smithy work, in addition to selling gasoline for the few cars/small trucks in the community (this was a community with dirt roads and lanes.)] Of course, here in Kansas (our family was in a fertile part of Missouri), the ground is hard-pack clay so one wouldn't have a ghost of a chance plowing with a hand plow. Oxen were used to break this prairie land, I imagine, until the steam engine (and later, internal combustion engine) took over the task.
Until I was about 7, our washing was done (and how I hated what it did to my knuckles!) using a corrugated washboard and a rather large steel tub. In my lifetime, however, I must admit that we, in our family, did no spinning of thread or weaving of cloth. Mostly, we used the sacks in which flour, sugar, or other commodities were sold to us for cloth from which to our clothes and household linens. I clearly remember that when I was 13 (1951), my mother took me to Sears and Roebuck to buy me 3 store-bought dresses--my first--for school.
I helped grandmother make soap--on a kerosene-fired cooking stove and, of course, heating was by one coal stove in the kitchen. (Well-to-do families had another coal stove--in the dining room, if they had one, in the living room if they had no dining room.) There was no such thing as heat directed to a bedroom in my family until we moved to Kansas City in 1948. It never occurred to me as a kid that some day I should be "lecturing" people on history. *giggling* Sorry.
Cop Car
Cop Car, I find it fascinating that within a lifetime so many of the old ways have now disappeared. I suspect that, having lived through them you might say "Thank goodness".
In the series they were learning how to use the type of plough available in the 1620s, a wooden thing with a metal piece. This was pulled by two oxen, although they did use an experienced pit pony for some of the work hauling stuff around the farm. The type of hand plough available at the time did not have a wheel but looked a bit like a spade and was pushed along the ground braced against the breasytbone of the one doing the ploughing. This was, of course, after they had cleared the feild of much of the bracken and weeds using their pigs to root up many of the roots. They had no washing tub or washboard - they took the washing down to the local stream and hit it with paddles until it was clean. No soap either - the only source of fat in the farm came from the animals killed and they did not have enough to waste it making soap (it appears that soap was rather rare during the period except for the rich)
Your memories of what life was like when you were a girl are absolutely fascinating though. Have you had any opportunities to record them? This is the sort of personal social experiences that should not disappear but be recorded and told to young children of what life was like for their grandparents.
No, I haven't given any thought to writing any of my experiences down because no one in our family has the faintest interest in such tales. When my elder brother and I die, such stuff will die with us--and I can't say that that is a bad thing. Others, outside our family, have set down the "tales of old" much better than I could. My memory isn't all that good, and my brother has no interest in setting it out (although, he has been working on the family geneology--much to my surprise.)
Cop Car
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