Posted on 08/20/2005 9:03:36 PM PDT by nickcarraway
For a year five experts ditched theory for practice, running a Welsh farm using 17th Century methods. What lessons for modern living did they learn?
The BBC series Tales from the Green Valley follows historians and archaeologists as they recreate farm life from the age of the Stuarts. They wear the clothes, eat the food and use the tools, skills and technology of the 1620s.
It was a time when daily life was a hard grind, intimately connected with the physical environment where routines were dictated by the weather and the seasons. A far cry from today's experience of the countryside, which for many involves a bracing walk ahead of a pub lunch.
While few would choose to live a 17th Century lifestyle, the participants found they picked up some valuable tips for modern life.
1. Know thy neighbours. Today it's possible to live alone, without knowing anyone within a 20-mile radius (the same goes for townies). That was simply not possible in the past - not only did the neighbours provide social contact, people shared labour, specialist skills and produce. "And women were judged on good neighbourliness," says historian Ruth Goodman. "If you were willing to help others - particularly during and after childbirth - then others would be more prepared to help you in times of need."
2. Share the load. It was nigh on impossible to run a 1620s farm single-handedly, and the family - either blood relatives, or a farmer, his wife and hired help - had to be multi-skilled. Labour, too, was often divided along gender lines, but at busy periods, such as harvest time, it was all hands on deck.
3. Fewer creature comforts have some benefits. No electricity meant once daylight faded, work stopped in favour of conversation, music-making and knitting. And no carpets meant fewer dust mites, which are linked to asthma and allergies. "They scattered herbs on the floor which released scent when trodden on - this drove out flies and other insects," says Ms Goodman.
4. Eat seasonally. Today it's because of "food miles" and the inferior quality of forced products. In the 1620s, it was because foods were only available at certain times of year - and not just fruit and veg. Mutton, for instance, was in abundance in spring, soon after shearing time. This was because a sheep's wool quality plunges after eight years - thus animals of that age were killed after their final fleece was removed.
5. Tasty food comes in small batches. Today farmers' markets are a tourist attraction and many delight in regional specialities. For these producers play to the strengths of their ingredients, unlike, for instance, the makers of mass-produced cheese. This has to taste the same year-round, despite seasonal variations in milk quality. "So high-quality milk in the spring is downgraded so the finished product is consistent throughout the year," says Ms Goodman.
6. Reuse and recycle. Today we throw away vast mountains of packaging, food, garden waste and other materials. In 1620s, there was a use for everything, with tattered bed linens made into fire-lighters and animal fat into soap. Even human waste had uses. Faeces was a fertiliser, and urine was stored to make ammonia to remove laundry stains.
7. Dress for practicalities. Today fashion and social convention dictate our wardrobes. While polar fleeces and high-performance tramping boots may be all the rage when going rural, the wardrobe of 400 years ago proved more comfortable. "While the crew shivered in their modern garb, we never felt the cold in just two layers - a linen shirt and woollen doublet," says archaeologist Alex Langlands. Breeches meant no wet and muddy trouser legs, and staying covered up - rather than stripping off in the heat - prevented bites, stings, sunburn and scratches.
8. Corsets, not bras. "By that I don't mean Victorian corseting," says Ms Goodman. "Corsets support your back as well as your chest, and don't leave red welts on your skin like bra elastic does. They made it hard to breath walking up hills, but I get short of breath doing that anyway. And most people feel sexy in a corset."
9. Biodiversity protects against unforeseen calamity. While the developed world no longer counts the cost of crop failure in starvation and mass migration - the result of Ireland's Great Potato Famine in 1845 - the 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis decimated farms up and down the country as animals, the farmers' livelihoods, were put to death. The 1620s farm had grains, fruit and vegetables, and a range of animals - if one failed, alternatives were available.
9. Reliance on any one thing leaves you vulnerable. Hence the country ground to a halt during the petrol blockades of 2000, and a shortage of coal during 1978-9's Winter of Discontent caused electricity shortages. On the 1620s farm, when oxen used to plough fields fell ill, the implements were reshaped and horses did the job instead.
10. No pesticides means a richer variety of birds, butterflies and other insects, many of which feast on pests - a result as desirable for the gardener as the farmer. And the hedgerow and fields of wild flowers of the past are today making a comeback, as these provide habitats for these creatures and allow edible plants to flourish.
\Tales from the Green Valley will be broadcast weekly on BBC Two from Friday, 19 August, at 1930BST.
You write many words, but they have little meaning.
You're saying that because your grandmother said "people were mean years ago" that therefore currently people in general are kinder and more well behaved.
Total nonsense.
"People were harder because they had to be."
Absolute fact free opinion.
I'm pointing out that you made a blanket statement that people "back then" (whatever that means - all of history?) were "mean" and "hard".
Blather.
He was talking about the practical aspects of mutton/wool.
By butchering the sheep soon after the wool had been sheared the farmer would then make room for another sheep that would grow wool. That way he would be using his limited amount of feed in the most efficient way.
Even as rich as our country is, I'm sure that still enters into the equation of deciding when sheep should be butcherd.
You always have to get in the last word too, don't cha? Well so do I. It looks like this is going to be a loooooooong thread.
Good post.
Do you mean "mean" as in the modern sense of cruel or unfeeling, or "mean" in the historical sense of unrefined or crude?
Because you made a wholesale statement that people were meaner and harder in the past [than now]. I take issue with that statement.
Currently, millions of babies are slaughtered before birth. What can be harder and meaner than that?
Regarding punishments, certainly there were various times in history when people were mercilessly punished for what we would consider minor infractions.
But counter that with what we have today - murderers getting off with nothing, wife (and husband) beaters, incredible child abuse both sexual and merely "regular", revolving door prisons, meth and other drugs turning people into vicious addicted animals and the gangs who sell the drugs, enriching themselves on human misery.
Humanity is no more civilized now, despite the trappings of technology. Quite a few years ago I read several eye witness and well researched books about Nazi concentration camps - books like "Treblinka", "Babi Yar", "Dora", "Anus Mundi" and several others*. You should read them. People are no better now, and such horrors are bound to happen again for that very reason.
And the question then naturally arises: Well, what makes people good?
Techonology and modern medicine certainly don't make people good, or happy. Well, what does? I know the answer, and it isn't to be found in greater quantity now than in the 19th, 18th, or 17th centuries.
*You may think, "Oh, I know about the horrors of the concentration camps already." I thought that too, until I actually read a half a dozen detailed books about them. It's quite an education to read thousands of pages of details.
But at least before abortion and many changes in the sixties, the average person from the USA and most Western countries, were not as hard and mean as people from almost anywhere in the Middle Ages and before. Neither were our authorities. In Britain, Henry the 8th was chopping his wives heads off. There was far more physical cruelty and brutality in the West then, during peace time, as evidenced by the story of William Wallace in Braveheart, for instance. And of course, going back even farther, there was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
But in modern times, with the legalization of abortion and declining morality, the average citizen in the west is reverting back to a more barbaric state. Life in America is far more dangerous than it was 40 or more years ago. People growing up during the depression and WWII in the inner cities have memories of sleeping in the park and on their porches during hot summer evenings. One would be out of their minds to attempt something like that today.
Hogwash? Actually, the National Library of Medicine (medline) has dozens of scientific abstracts reporting that cancer cells do indeed die when exposed to elemental sulfur or methylsulfonylmethane (biologically active sulfur). During the transcription of cytosine (one of the DNA bases), the sulfur atom temporarily binds to the DNA cytosine binding site effectively slowing cytosine translation. This temporarily stops DNA synthesis in G1 phase, which kills certain kinds of fast-growing cells, including most of the cancer cell lines tested.
So if your well water contains elemental sulfur or methylsulfonylmethane...you shouldn't filter it out.
Has cancer been around since the dawn of time? Not according to Dr. Dean Edell and his team of pathologists. They autopsied 200 Egyptian mummies and found NOT ONE tumor. Undiagnosed tumors are found in 30-50% of autopsies
today.
Your post contains some valuable information. Thank you.
I agree with your comments. Or even when I was a kid, riding my bike on country roads half the day, or walking through the woods and neighbor's fields for hours, and no one worrying about me. Nor should they have.
Without high standards being taught for people to try to live up to, people become barbarians.
Grampa's rule: If it doesn't work for the farm, it doesn't stay. Gramps would say why feed it for extra months after its final shearing...why waste the feed? Give that feed to the beef and pork you will harvest in the fall.
You just didn't cook it long enough.
Like the song says,
Pease porridge hot and pease porridge cold; Pease porridge in the pot nine days old.
Cook up that mutton at the slow boil for three or four days, chucking in handsful of strong herbs and garden veg every other day or so and letting it get tender, and then start washing it down with tankards of good porter or bitter and wiping the plate with good hot, fresh bread anointed with freshly-handmade butter and currant jam, and see if you don't change your mind.
Also related to the Dutch/Afrikaans word Boer and the proper name Bauer, G. for "farmer". From bauen, "build".
Exactly, hippy commie reenactors. What morons.
A bit trickier sans crock-pot. Who'd keep the stove going at night?
Cause they all died way too young to get any?
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