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.
the 45 stuff is still a figure combining higher childhood death rate vs. a lot of people who made it into their 60s and 70s.
Yep all these things were true. Life was hard. Some things were different. Women had a higher death rate in childbirth, particularly after doctors started taking over childbirth rather than skilled midwives.
Other things were also true. Clothing of working class people of the past is comfortable and useful. Things were more brutish after the enclosures of common grounds began in Scotland and England. The 18th and a lot of the 19th century was harder for people than many times earlier (one result is that heights of people dropped in England due to poor nutrition during this period.)
It's not all collectivist silliness. There is some truth to a lot of what they say...Given the choice, I prefer to live now, but I make a hobby/avocation/passion of studying the way things were in the 18th century in America. If a person thinks that life in the past was all brutish and hellish, they are wrong. If a person thinks that those days were some idylic period before industrialization, they too are wrong.
Not too long ago I read quite an interesting history of the Middle Ages (a bit earlier than the period the article is talking about) and one of the points was that the idea that people in the Middle Ages (or what to speak of a few hundred years later) rarely lived past the 40s or 50s is actually erroneous, that historians have been quite wrong for a long time. The authors researched many, many contemporaneous records and came to the conclusion that there were indeed many who lived up into their 70s.
You may think that you possess the sum total of all there is to know about history, but perhaps there's a little more you haven't learned yet. Or maybe some things that you think you know might need to be updated.
Actually, many cancers and other diseases really are modern phenomenons that were exceedingly rare until recently. On the other hand we don't have to worry much about diseases like polio or tuberculosis nowadays and in the past they and many others were endemic.
Hey, I used to watch that show. A couple from NYC move out to the country and have all sorts of run-ins with country bumpkins.
Lisa and Oliver Douglas. Funny show.
Actually, many cancers and other diseases really are modern phenomenons....
Or the medical technology to even know that Cancer existed was- wasn't there in 1650. Everything old died of a "heart attack."
Quite the contrary, it sounds like people relying on themselves and each other rather than sucking welfare checks or agricultural subsidies out of the government teat.
Add another word...FIRE.
If food for the sheep is scarce, why would you continue to feed it if it no longer produces wool (which is why you have it in the first place)? Do poultry farms keep elderly chickens around after they have stopped laying eggs?
"Sleep my child and peace attend thee, all through the night
Guardian angels GOD will lend thee, all through the night...."
They live in rushes ( which is what herb and grasses strew floors are ), as do other bugs. And you obviously didn't read the article...THE FLOORS WERE NOT BARE, THEY WERE RUSH COVERED.
Even back in biblical times they refer to the human lifespan as being 3 score and ten, or 70 for those of you in Rio Linda. If you survived to adulthood you had a reasonable chance of seeing old age.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Psalms 90:10
The technology is there today and many diseases just don't seem to exist in primitive societies until they adopt modern diets and lifestyles.
I know that lullaby!
It was sung to me when I was a child.
I didn't know it was Welsh, though.
It's a beautiful song, and I have wonderful memories of it.
Thanks for the history lesson. ;o)
People who worked in the Welsh coal mines used to spend all day there, and they'd get bored. So, they started singing hymns to pass the time. That's where the Welsh choirs come from.One of my favorite movies is How Green Was My Valley.
What would you do, oh brilliant one? Shear them in the winter? Summer?? You obviously know less than nothing about raising sheep!
Sheep are sheared in the spring because that's when their wool is at its finest.
It's also the time of year when the vast majority of lambs are born. I guess them dumb collectivist sheep don't know no better. (sarcasm off)
I was sung that as a wee one and I sang it to my daughter, when she was a baby. It's one of THE most beautiful lullabies ever written; IMO.
That happened to my Grandpa's first wife (and twins) about 1930. There is a plot in our local cemetery with parents and five children; wiped out in the late 1800's (dates within one week) by some disease.
Please...don't sweat writing the letter.
I want you to enjoy yourself on the forum tonight.
"I was sung that as a wee one and I sang it to my daughter, when she was a baby. It's one of THE most beautiful lullabies ever written; IMO."
My experience is exactly the same!
It was sung to me, and I sang it to my daughter as a baby.
To me, it is THE most beautiful lullabies ever.
One more commonality. ;o)
I am off to bed, now.
You take care of your sweet self, fair lady.
Nitey nite!
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