24.10.20

"Victorian Farm" BBC (2009)


Lo and behold, I have stumbled upon this documentary on youtube and it has completely captivated me, proving again that I can really do without any paying web sites with their streaming movies & programs - good ol' youtube is still a cornucopia of goodies that one just needs to discover. 

One way or the other, I found "Victorian Farm" and this is something completely up my alley - a historical program about daily life of ordinary people. Not just kings, queens and their battles but what actual people ate, how did they sleep and lived centuries ago. This particular program is in fact second part of BBC historical farm series where a group of historians and archaeologists play the parts of ordinary people on a farms in a British countryside, using only and exclusively gadgets, utensils and clothes available at that particular times. So no telephones, lighters, gloves, tennis shoes, sun lotion, sport jackets or anything that was not in the picture at that time. It is not really important, but the program was created this way:


"Tales from the Green Valley" (2005)

"Victorian Farm" (2009)

"Edwardian Farm" (2011)

"Wartime Farm" (2012)

"Tudor Monastery Farm" (2013)

 



Since each program is completely self-contained, it is not really important to watch them in any particular order, in fact I have devoured "Victorian Farm" and than found out about other series. As the title says, Victorian Farm is set in 19th century and joyful trio of Alex Langlands, Peter Ginn and Ruth Goodman are dropped in a miraculously preserved (but still completely neglected) Victorian farm in Shropshire, situated on a land owned by The Acton family who are around since the the twelfth century - Actons just come for a occasional visit to check how the things are going and to show the guys how to use certain Victorian machines but for the most part Alex, Peter and Ruth are left on their own. Dear reader, this was completely and utterly fascinating: they had to often look into old books popular amongst people back than, like "The Book of the Farm" and such, with detailed instruction how and what to do in certain situations. Both guys are super handy (and persistent) with all this hard physical work, while Ruth is just unbelievably skilful indoors and knows hundreds of little household tricks useful in the kitchen, etc. I mean, today we made our lives easier with all sorts of appliances, buttons and electricity but these people had no electricity whatsoever and their whole day was one of hard work. For example, when Ruth was doing the laundry, this was going on for several days - today the housewives just push the button. Also what was fascinating was that their whole existence was focused on food, livestock and seasons of the year - one had to wake up early, take a good care of the animals (first build a warm place for them, using materials available in the forrest and in the fields), make sure they are healthy and well fed and than hope that for the rest of the year everything will go as planned. There are lots of forgotten skills that local people are willing to show, like basket weaving, cheese making, etc, etc - I have binged on the whole series with a glee and now already started "Tales from the Green Valley". 




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