"Tales from the Green Valley" BBC documentary (2005)

So now I am going backwards and this show was actually made before "Victorian Farm" and it was equally pleasure to watch group of historians finding their way in a 17th century farm. What is different is that initially the group was slightly bigger but producers obviously later decided that Ruth Goodman, Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn works the best as a team - Stuart Peachey and Chloe Spencer are also present here and to be honest, in my opinion each member of the group has something interesting to say. 

In this particular season we see the way farmers used to live & work in a 17th century - just like in a "Victorian Farm", everything is all about the time of the year, crops, tending the livestock and land cultivating. While Ruth and Chloe gather fruits and veggies, guys are taking care of the building the outhouse, covering the rooftops with straw, ploughing the fields with ox, etc - as expected, a lot of hard physical labour and every time they sit by the dinner they seem to be grateful to have whatever greasy intestines are served. What is interesting is that everything is recycled here - in modern times we are used to a completely different lifestyle where things are discarded and easily purchased time and time again, but in the 17th century farm one would recycle even his own urine (to use for washing and stains removal). Animal fat was made into a soap, rags were used for fire lighting, chicken bones and human waste re-cycled as fertilisers. Absolutely nothing was thrown away. There was a very interesting process of hedge laying which was artificial fence between the fields but built from living parts of the bushes and branches in a way that they would continue to live and grown - one of those completely forgotten professions that used to exist centuries ago. And naturally, they ate in a seasons, so all the fresh fruit and vegetables were consumed in the right time of the year, unless something like Pears were collected and stored in the attic for later. There is a certain voyeurism about the whole thing - after all, we are comfortable in a nice apartments with central heating while the guys are building the pig house with bare hands - but it was very, very interesting. I have actually binged on this.