Why Farm Animals Were So Important To Victorians | Victorian Farm | Absolute History

here in shropshire is a farm that's frozen in time lost in victorian rural england a unique project has brought it back to life as it would have been in the 1880s this is the way to travel isn't it that smells delicious ruth goodman alex langlands and peter ginn are living the lives of victorian farmers for a full calendar year from the cold of winter to the warmth of summer turning the clock back to rediscover an age gone by they're an unruly bunch they really are going keep it going keep it going backwards live drop it you've done it that's it [Laughter] [Music] they're halfway through the project so far they've planted wheat only to see it attacked by wildlife which they dealt with in true victorian style first one they've nurtured livestock through the harsh winter and in their restored farm cottage experience the reality of life without modern conveniences bathing in a room with no central heating is pretty cold now it's spring and time for the animals to produce their young the lifeblood of the victorian farm [Music] it's march there are lambs and pigs to be delivered and chicks to hatch but nothing comes easy on this farm especially when the hens are under attack a prized used life is in danger the foot rots got in and i'm deeply deeply concerned about this and a lame horse may jeopardize the crops but the victorian age was one of scientific invention and the team hope this will get them through walk on smiler the option is animal if they succeed they'll have something to celebrate at the mayday fair if they fail all their hard work will have been in vain oh no i've broken it already it's make or break time on the victorian farm lambing has begun right the focus found them got the legs yep got the legs there you go i'm just going to pull it so far just one you has given birth but there are still nine to go alex must watch his flock like a hawk for signs of them going into labor we've got our mobile shepherds hut so we can park it up next to the pens and hopefully keep watching them overnight boy but already things are not going to plan we borrowed the shepherd's hut from our good friends over at the home farm and just as i was bringing it out of the yard cartwright said to me i was wondering whether that front would hold but it seems to be okay but i think i'm gonna have to go back to him now tell between my legs i'm not gonna be the most popular man peter do you think we should leave the cart there what do you think yeah middle of the field makes sense can't see the bloody sheep though spring cleaning was a victorian obsession and scrubbing the cottage from top to bottom is a job that will take ruth days [Music] you get a huge amount of dust and doing this sort of thing and rather than breathing it i intend to take it out of the house and for that purpose i save my tea leaves i'll keep them in a pot and then when i need to sweep i just chuck them damp down on the floor and as you're sweeping the dust sticks to the tea leaves and they become like little balls so instead of flying up everywhere stuck to the tea leaf and you can brush it out get rid of it all six months ago alex sowed wheat in this field it survived the winter but he's concerned about its progress in some places it's it's really come up really rather well but in other parts it's looking a bit threadbare failure of this crop would be devastating a year's work lost for the victorian farmer it meant loss of income and he could have found himself one step closer to the workhouse in the 1870s a series of wet summers ruined harvests in britain and ushered in an agricultural depression [Music] british grain became so scarce and costly it was cheaper to import it from america but alex is determined that this crop won't fail so he's seeking advice from their victorian farming bible i've had a look at henry stevens book of the farm he talks extensively about a place called wathamster where they set up an experimental station and researched all sorts of different types of fertilizers and the great thing is this experimental station is still going today so i think what i'm going to do is see if i can get some of their experts down to give me a little bit of advice hamster experimental station was set up in 1843 to develop fertilizers and scientists like dr john jenkin continue this work to the present day hello alex hello john nice to meet you so uh what do you think of the uh the wheat crop i was a bit concerned about it myself uh some of the other wheat crops around here are doing really rather well but mine seems a bit feeble i think it doesn't look too bad actually for the time of the year what can you tell me about it well it's gone in after something in the region of i think 60 years of grass i think for this time of the year that's not looking too bad and after a very long period of grass there would be plenty of nitrogen in the soil right so it won't need very much at all for centuries farmers used simple fertilizers like manure blood and bone without much understanding of how they worked stands but victorian scientists identified that elements like nitrogen and phosphorus helped crops grow the chemical fertilizers they developed greatly improved harvests so when the farmers first start sort of using chemical fertilizers well it developed during the uh 19th century and particularly i suppose from about uh 1840 1850 thereabouts so we had nitrate of soda the form of nitrogen yep guano which is bird droppings yeah and then the super phosphate fertilizers which were produced on an industrial scale by treating uh minerals mineral phosphates with sulfuric acid so what was the the the impact the true impact of all the scientific research on british agriculture it was pretty big everything was developing during victorian times science developed right so that we understood better what crops needed and the differences between different crops so root crops for example respond particularly well to super phosphates whereas cereal crops are more dependent on nitrogen i think in true victorian scientific research fashion what i look to do here is to do half of the field with our fertilizer and then leave the other half i think that would be an excellent plan in spring everything is growing on the farm including the pigs princess the gloucester old spot is heavily pregnant and due to give birth at any time peter's monitoring her closely [Music] she's been up and down here for about an hour now collecting up bits of twig a lot of hay a lot of straw and then just dumping it in there i think that this is a definite indicator that the piglets are imminent with princess about a faro she'll need a bigger home for her new family so her neighbors the tamworths must go two will be sold one will be slaughtered really sad actually always known this day would come but you know they've been such friendly little pigs and now it's time to say goodbye i know something's up don't they peter is looking for the fattest one to slaughter in ruth's family save all book it says that as a handy hint 48 inches in circumference around the belly that equals 14 stone and every inch beyond that is an extra stone so i've got my tape measure and she is that's 46. so just under 14 stone [Music] right i think it's time to let one go [Music] come on out you go out come on [Music] damp newspaper is really good for cleaning glass vinegar's not bad either but um newspaper to finish gives the most smear-free glass i think i've ever managed to achieve although the victorians could buy ready-made cleaning products they were expensive so it was often easier to make your own i'm just grinding brick dust and the dust makes a fantastic abrasive for cleaning things i thought i'd give all the pots and kettles and things a bit of a go because they got terribly horribly black on the range all i do is get a grubby old cloth dip it in some vinegar just to wet the cloth and then dip it into the brick dust it just scrubs and polishes it all off just like a modern metal cleaner it's an abrasive with a little bit of acid that's all most of them are when you buy them yeah let's wash them off look at that oh lovely bright kettle looks a sight better than this [Music] nice and bright with the cottage and span and the winter dirt removed ruth disposes of the household waste dragon bone man's due so the bones that we've been building up and collecting are in the bucket ready for him to pick up he'll sell them on to somebody who'll grind them down and turn him into bone meal fertilizer for the land if we lived in town i'd let him have the rag too um because one of the many uses for old used up bits of cloth was as fertilizer on the fields selling poultry was a good way to supplement the victorian farms economy so ruth plans to breed chicks at the moment the hens roam freely around the farmyard but for their fertilized eggs to hatch they must sit on them in a sheltered safe place i managed to acquire an old victorian style chicken hut it's a mobile chicken hut but it needs a new roof and the idea here is i think we've got about 18 chickens what i want to do is get some of them settled in here lot of eggs lots of chicks and hopefully we'll have a small poultry concern here to roof the heart i'm using this corrugated iron sheeting which is actually galvanized and because it's so durable and easy to put up you actually find it replacing thatch as a traditional roofing technique in many parts of the british isles it's another one of these rural country crafts which is very much threatened by mass production in the late victorian period the hut's all set to go ready for the 18 chickens to roost inside but there's a huge blow to their poultry enterprise while roaming free in the farmyard they've been attacked by a dog we've got five here that are either dead or dying and four missing another one peter we've had a duck in a e and today we've we've had four we've come back to the farm four and just seen the dog running off that one's still alive he's still alive and he's making a bit of noise as well it's the same thing look the same the puncher wound to the back oh dear though i i think at the end of the day i suppose victorian farm the same as a modern farmer today if there was an errant dog on the land shoot the dog especially if you've got sheep they're about to land in that field you can't have something chasing them now the chicken hut is finished it should be a safe house for the remaining birds if i want the eggs to hatch rather than have them for eating then the chicken has to sit on them and keep them warm for an incubation period if those eggs get cold they'll die so we have to make somewhere where she wants to sit where she's going to be comfortable she's going to keep her eggs in top condition until they hatch and then we get chicks these are the eggs that were laid overnight and these are the ones that i'm going to put the hen to sit on and it's marking the egg so that i know these are the ones i've set underneath her to hatch so if any new eggs pop up i'll know that they're not part of this batch and then i'll be able to take those out for eating fresh leaving these under the hen to hatch it's often a good idea to put a hen to sit like this at dusk because the dark makes them go dopey and happy to sit in the first place they like to be nice and quiet and go to sleep overnight go go for it one one movement so far five of the ten u's have land and the new arrivals are doing well but it's not over yet all the way up right she's trying to stand up as well that's all but that's a great sign to be honest a great sign right peter and alex are still watching their flock from the shepherds hut i have got a boy's own paper chest puzzle from 1897. oh excellent i should imagine we're going to get very good at this game with all the waiting we're going to be doing over the next month yep i mean that's all it is isn't it it's being here with our sheep in our field waiting and watching right this is white as well as watching the sheep peter's also keeping an eye on princess the pig at 2 am she goes into labor [Music] so far we've had four piglets it looks like we're getting a fifth oh here it comes it's just popped out but the fifth piglet is barely clinging to life this one it really is absolutely tiny compared to compared to these other ones here i mean look at this look at the size difference there this one really doesn't look good he's nowhere near as lively as the others oh i mean we've got four five now come here little fenner i think it's gonna be a really busy night i think this one is really pulling through now this is our runt i've been helping her to suckle or helping him to suckle i haven't checked yet but i think i'm gonna call and dylan because dylan means run to the litter by dawn it's all over princess has successfully given birth to nine piglets and these guys are all in line for a nipple because once they've got it that's it they don't swap around whereas this one is really going to need help feeding i'm keeping an all night vigil so that she doesn't squash any of these guys and also a little one needs feeding princess giving birth has been what this farm has been all about in these spring months it has been absolutely amazing [Music] it's mid-april two weeks ago alex fertilized half the wheat crop and already the improvement is clear to sea the hens and ducks are finally sitting on their eggs [Music] and the use of all lamb little friends look at those sadly dylan the runt didn't make it but the other eight piglets are thriving these little gloucester old spot piglets are now five days old a little curious and fluffy and cute and cuddly with a gloss or old spot you might have a litter of 12. we've only got a litter of eight but that's not a bad thing because they'll fatten quicker and they'll also get bigger so i mean in the long run that could actually be quite beneficial for us you know the faster they fatten um the bigger price you're gonna get them and quicker throughout the 19th century breeds such as the gloucester old spot pig like princess here were improved and it gives them a much better quality meat makes them far more docile and essentially you get more for your money [Music] the tamworth's been slaughtered once butchered and cured it will last for months it's said every part of a pig can be eaten except the squeal and that was certainly true on the victorian farm where money was tight ruth is using the head to make a popular victorian dish for the upcoming mayday celebration so i'm going to take the brains out first there we go the main body of the head i'm going to make brawn out of it's lots of little tiny fragments of meat that have been boiled up and then set in jelly it's also our traditional christmas dish by the victorian period already gone but in the early middle ages right through to the early tudor period brawn formed the dish for christmas day so i'm just going to drop that into the pot and boil it as it is and when it's cooked all the little pieces of meat will be very easy to take away from the bone now i do want to actually include the brains in the brawn but they cook much more delicately so i'm going to cook them separately just poach them very lightly in a little water and just drop them in it should be fine [Music] the lambs are doing well but there's one more crucial job left clipping their mother's hooves [Music] okay we'll try and make this is as painless as possible for her and for me roller over my knee like that oh look at that oh look at that new beauty just gotta hold her steady yeah there's a lot of work needs doing here and they absolutely stink they really do i just smelled really really cheesy feet i mean it oh jeez it's made my stomach turn those the reason we do this is essentially because you can see here you can see how it's growing over traditionally sheep would winter up on the hills and they'd wear all of this nail down because they'd be walking on rocks but of course out in these plush meadows there aren't little rocks to wear down the nails so what happens is they grow and the shepherd's got to step in just to make sure that they don't grow so far that they go over the hoof trap the mud as you can see this one is beginning to do so and then they get infections this is absolutely killing my back this is christ knows how you do a block of 200. back in the cottage the pig's head has been boiling on the range for three hours the meat is falling off the bones now i'm very very soft so i'm just picking through and finding all those bits that are good and tasty this would have been quite a cheap dish to do if you even if you had to buy a bit of pig you know the head is not the most expensive cut by a long way if you're living in a mostly outdoor world you're busy farming doing heavy manual labor you have no heating then you find that your body quickly begins to crave animal fats and things that you might actually turn your nose up at in a modern living thinking ooh lard yuck dripping once you're living a victorian life suddenly becomes delicious that's the eyeball many people really enjoy the eyeballs find them a delicacy so seeing as that one's come out nice and whole i might put it in the center of the brawn let's see how the boys take to it [Applause] these sorts of bits normally get sort of turned into sausages or um some sort of burgeryness or sausage rolls that sort of thing and i have to be honest anybody who thinks they've never eaten eyeballs is just plain kidding themselves i'm also going to lay the brains whole now the gelatine is simply the water that we boil the pig's head and the feet and the tail in all i've got to do is strain it through a cloth leaving jelly behind and one of the reasons for putting the gelatine on like this is that it excludes air and without air bacteria can't get a hold so the jelly is a short-term preservation method in its own right no alex and peter have a serious problem one of the ewes has an infected hoof we're just going to have to wash that good girl if it worsens it could be life threatening her nails have just grown too long and what's happening is you can see the toes exposed there the actual toe and the foot rots got in and rotted this away and i'm i'm deeply deeply concerned about this now i'm touching that toe there is that she's feeling it isn't she she is feeling it right yeah yeah she's feeling that i'm really worried now for a lot of the other sheep i'm wondering whether our over winter pasture's just been too damp too muddy the victorian farmer would do whatever he could to save a you if she dies her lambs will almost certainly die too and of course she has the potential to produce young for years to come there's better news in the poultry hut where the chicks have hatched we've got a nice little clutch of both chickens and ducks i brought the ducks in because i thought they'd be safer and away from marauding foxes the hens brewed them now that they're past a little bit the hens look after them whether they're ducks or chicks hello sweeties soon the farmers will be looking to harvest hay to ensure a good crop ruth is fertilizing the grass the muck that i'm taking out of here is really good manure if guano was the natural wonder manure of the age then this is something that was domestic was very very similar guano's just bird droppings that haven't had the nitrogen leached out of them by rain one of the great beauties of this chicken shed is rather than me having to try and spread this manually on the fields i just move the shed and then kick all the muck out the back door so i don't know see if i can give it a shove if i can get it going no peter you can give me a hand just shifting the chicken shed could you stay when that'll do yeah yeah lovely cheers that's right [Music] the farm will soon need more pasture grassland where their sheep and lambs can graze the victorian farmer would have scientifically created a seed mix to be both nutritious to sheep and withstand all weathers for advice alex is visiting the owner of the farms estate thomas stackhouse acton so this is the book this is a book of grasses published in 1804. mr acton an expert on victorian farming has sought out a 200 year old book on grasses in his library this book lists all the grasses to be found in the british isles right we've we've got some here which are good yielders right meadow foxtail yes it says here it ranks high in the estimation of the farmer springing early and producing plentifully wonderful okay so so meadowfox tail yes sheep's fescue pistouca aveena this grass i think is is very good for sheep's wool so this would be a good grass then for for pasture for the the sheep yes so we'll have some of that definitely i mean it all sounds very technical all of these different selections of grasses is this something that um a victorian farmer would have been aware of oh i think so yes armed with a list of grasses alex is now all set to sew at the cottage ruth is also deciding what to plant this time in their small cottage garden according to the book of the farm farmers as a rule are bad gardeners not unfrequently the garden or where the garden should be is one of the most thoroughly neglected spots on the farm vegetables could be quite expensive to buy in victorian britain um there wasn't much importation of fresh veg so if you wanted veg you pretty much were better off growing your own this is why when you look at recipes for feeding the very poor food in institutions work houses prisons hospitals even there's almost no veg because the veg was pricey food for the poor was about grain and starch and possibly potatoes it's all about gruel so you know there's this whole push amongst ordinary people to get as much food as possible out of the little scraps of ground they've got [Music] got the beetroot seeds in i like beetroot you can plant them really close together when you're doing bed system like this you don't have to give the space that you would in others which is really good for a cottage garden grab as much food as possible in the tiniest possible space [Music] clumper come on fella [Music] to sow the grass seeds the farm's shire horse clumper is essential but as alex attempts to move him it's clear he's in distress i spent all of winter looking forward to spring you know and getting out in the field with a horse on my own and going it alone really properly for the first time and sowing a crop myself and then come the big day he's lame and i don't know what to do now look he can bare look he's limping can't put any weight on it i'm just giving his feet a clean just so i gotta have a good inspection of them and see if there's anything in the in the in the hoof itself it's a bit of a bit of a nightmare really because trump is so important to the effective running of our farm you know if we're to compete as victorian farmers we need him to be in shape and if we lose him for you know a considerable period it will significantly set us back after seeking professional advice alex has been told that clumper probably has a sprain so it must completely rest for the next few weeks [Music] ruth spring cleaned the cottage only last week but already everything is grimy with coal smuts every day and i mean every day it's like this on every single surface to the victorians coal had become cheap and plentiful coal also burns longer and hotter than wood making it an ideal fuel for a range but whereas wood burns cleanly coal is a dirty fuel all your clothes become black or your tablecloths become black or your napkins or your towels all your sheets and it means you have the most enormous amount of laundry [Music] but on the victorian farm almost everything is recycled even the troublesome soot soot from chimneys is really really useful on the garden it's a fantastic fertilizer right up to the second world war lorry drivers would bring veg into covent garden market and then their return trips they'd be taking london's soot back out to the fields in order to fertilize them it's fantastic for roses stops them getting black spot tea leaves good for roses too so a little bit around the base and actually just let it shake over the plant itself alex needs a horse to help sow the grass seed but with klumpus still out of action he's asked the estate owner if he could borrow his horse smiler i went to mr acting and said i've got this problem we thought we'd get smiler out of retirement and put him back between the shaft despite his name smiler is anything but cheerful at returning to work come on walk on come up walk on come on the option is animal look on walk on spoiler come on we'll contact pop walk on walk home come on come on walk on come on fella come on come on lost up i'll spit come on come on good lads that's it good boy good boy to sow the grass alex is using an enormous seed box a fantastic piece of victorian technology good lads you can imagine though just how quick this kind of equipment would have made a job like this back in the late 19th century just such an enormous seed chest you know 16 foot across so you're talking about getting through about five acres a day with this thing when you're hand sowing broadcast sowing well you'd be looking at maybe an acre maybe a bit more so how do you think he's done today mr acton considering he's done no work virtually for eight months i don't think he's done badly so i think we can give him a pat on the back [Music] back in the cottage ruth plans to make a new dress for the mayday celebration [Music] she's invited an expert in victorian clothing luca castillo go to the farm i'm very well how are you quite well pleased are i'm so glad you could come i really really really need your help so this is the fabric i've got i don't know what you think of that it's a nice print a big loose weave compared to what a farmer's wife would have got well it's so hard isn't it to get that quality of fabric now yeah it is i've got a series of women's magazines um and this one for example has got what to wear chitchat on dress and it's got various pictures of the fashion for march um i mean this is a bit posh for me isn't it yes indeed but i i reckon that a farmer's wife really would be looking at this stuff even if she can't afford to do it it should be looking different so in this page you actually get the bodies the sleeve and an apron that goes on top of the skirt and on the other page we have got the skirt the skirt patterns were commonly featured in magazines in an age when it was expected that every housewife could sew first thing i'm going to measure your best so fold then down to your waist now one of the things i read on this was that a perfectly proportioned woman's waist should be 10 inches she's 10 inches smaller than her breasts what's that 27 he's not bad well my natural waist is not 27. my natural waist is 29. so the course is already doing two inches yeah but i think that if the corset was cut a bit more shapely then you could without feeling too compressed i found this book common sense clothing and it's got these really quite horrendous diagrams of what corsets would do to you oh i love this now i wonder if this is really what happens to your inside i have seen victorian with a 17 inch square that's that big that's 17 inches oh good grip scaling then transferring the pattern from the magazine to the fabric is a skilled and time-consuming job there's such a lot of work involved in making any clothing in this period that you couldn't possibly have a lot of clothes an ordinary farmer's wife like me probably owned no more than three maybe four dresses at any one time you darn them you mend them you turn them inside out to keep them going a bit longer probably only embark upon a new dress say after two years something like that [Music] as may beckons winter is well and truly over the longer sunnier days are helping the wheat grass and vegetables grow by june the farmers will have the luxury of beetroot and beans to eat [Music] there's good news for the livestock too the pigs chicks ducklings and lambs are maturing and thanks to alex and peter's swift action the u's infected foot is clearing up saving not just her life but those of her two lambs [Music] it's time for the lambs to go out to pasture and fend for themselves but first there's one more job to do we're just going to mark them and then mark the mother so we know which you they belong to you can use numbers but if you use letters as we are you save on rattle and every little penny counts because of course there's nine numbers isn't it it was 10 including zero right okay and of course 24 letters 26. just test it so i'm going to rattle her well i'm going to mark her c yeah okay yeah her m oh that one's a geezer that one always gets that wrong this one could be it could be a decent show ram so if he turns out to be good we want to know which umi's come from and which one to then breed from you see so it's quite important that's c you want to go back to mummy excellent the u is marked with the letters of her two lambs the rattle is made out of a red ochre which we've mixed with some linseed oil and a little bit of tallow fat so uh it should hold for a long time but of course not staining the wall permanently so when we come to shear we should be able to still get a good price for our wool the kidlets can go too oh it's going that way but this is the front of the skirt which have now prepared and tucked together i'm just going to sew one of the scenes so it's like this ruth's now ready to stitch her summer dress together so luca's giving her a crash course in using a victorian sewing machine i have to say this is a very good machine it might be old but it's very good an innovation of the age by the 1880s singer was selling over half a million machines a year worldwide yeah look he's like this yeah carry on carry on unlike modern electric machines this one is treadle treadle-powered requiring plenty of hand-foot coordination okay just concentrate on the water high-tech sewing machines together with patterns in popular magazines made fashion no longer the preserve of the rich don't look there anymore use your hands and just try to feed that into the machine yeah okay i think you're actually quite good oh oh you see how i went to the back please concentrate [Music] ah [Music] and stop you haven't really followed the line on the pencil at all feel the machine the machine is just an extension to your body [Music] it gives me a heart pain every time you're going the wrong direction i feel sorry for the machine when are you going i'm going at five o'clock alex treated the wheat with chemical nitrogen fertilizers to the victorians this was the latest in agricultural science but to fertilize the new pasture the book of the farm describes an old-fashioned way of putting nitrogen into the soil by sowing clover over the grass it traps atmospheric nitrogen in little nodules in its roots and that nitrogen is then released into the soil there's a very traditional way of fertilizing a field it's all part of a rotation but it's only really during this period that the victorians start to understand the science behind it clumpers still out of action but the book of the farm recommends an innovative way of sewing clover without a horse using a seed fiddle hello mark hello alex thank you so much for coming along today local farmer mark morris used one as a boy and has come to show alex how it works how it works is you fill the the bag up with grass seed or clover seed or whatever you're going to sew there's a setting on the side which alters the gap of a hole for the stuff to drop or the speed of the the grass seed or clover seed to drop onto the disc which as you walk spins and it just throws it out onto the ground so it's a mechanized way of doing what they've done for years and years before that's right just broadcasting that so any old tom dick and how he can do it basically you put your left leg forward and push it and push it push it all right and then when your right leg it comes back the other way right oh yes these seed fiddles are actually an american invention and introduced to this country in the 1880s like so many things in the late 19th century the americans were sort of innovators really introducing sort of scientific practices to agriculture so is it oh oh no oh no mark i've broken it already oh dear look the handles come off the end this is the fourth thing i've broken you're welcome to use mine no because i'll just break that one it's the first of may and this evening the farmers will celebrate the new life on the farm i'm making a fitchit pie this is a traditional shropshire recipe with bacon potatoes and onion this is our bacon from the tamworth i've had it hanging in the larder i've got a splash of cider to go in and a little bit of stock ruth encases the filling with pastry using a victorian recipe made from boiling water suet and flour all the fat and the water hot water crust pastry is particularly important for this sort of pie because it's very tough and doesn't melt when you put it into the oven traditionally all pies have to stand up in the oven on their own without a tin and it's only in the mid-19th century that technology changes and it becomes possible to make cheap tins in pretty much any shape you want cheap enough for the likes of us to afford now fitchit pie is actually called a fidget pie because of its shape it's thought the word fidget comes from a shropshire dialect word meaning five now we've sort of formed the pie shape in goes the filling in some ways by packing them really full it helps to support it in the oven slip it on top pull in the center for steam okay there we go last the sheets removed yep one lamb each year yes let's do that let's the lambs are now fending for themselves so it's time to move them out to pasture in theory when the lambs are taken their mothers should follow the last to go is the u with a sore foot now fully recovered back to full strength it'll be a while before alex's pasture is ready so thomas acton is letting the sheep graze in his field in front of acton scott hall we should let these guys go yeah let's let them go and run over to mummy it's paradise field for you guys oh dear there we go go on over to there we are look what you've got you've got a view of the hall [Music] look at that it's for a success story 10 happy mothers and 16 lambs go on up you go don't play with your friends well that's it yes it's over yes i felt actually a sort of tinge of sadness when we took that last sheep out empty lambing pen empty filled and it seems a shame i mean at the short of shearing them towards the end of the year that's it that's it yeah but i questioned myself as to whether i could eat one of those little lambs i think i could yeah after it's reached maturity but as it's been born it's all about bringing life into the world you're not seeing the pound signs no you're seeing you're seeing a helpless or the nice lamb shank with mint sauce but i think really for for our first time round i think we could hold our heads high at a kind of victorian livestock fair and say look nine ram lambs all in good shape yeah make ourselves a few bob plus seven used to breed off of so our flock has increased yeah and we start to look forward to this may day festival yes excellent why didn't that ruth got to grips with the sewing machine in the end and finished her new summer dress it's taken an age i think if i added up i think i'm on nearly at 60 hours now um it's all very well if you can sit down you've got nothing else to do for a couple of weeks and just work on something but amongst everything it's it's been hard so this is my first time i've had this on properly so that should be the straight panel at the front and then please hit the side and gathered at the back to give the help give the shape this feels quite nice actually quite high at the back this is all my leftover fabric some of the pieces are big enough to do something useful with but these little bits the little scraps i can sell these to the rag and bone man all these bits of fabric be sorted and then shredded down into fiber re-spun and made into new clothes shoddy that's the name of the fabric the modern word shoddy meaning something of poor quality comes from this fabric it didn't wear very well um didn't last but nonetheless it's cheap and it means people can have clothes who perhaps couldn't have had them otherwise i'm really pleased with it actually hey mayday here i come good morning lords and ladies good morn to you i say we've brought from you a girl and from now's the month of may oh it is john kirkpatrick is an expert in english folk traditions he's providing the entertainment for may day traditionally one of four important days in the farming calendar you get uh 2nd of february which is candle mass may day which is a huge huge festival 2nd of august is la mas and then end of october and november we get halloween and bonfire night all sort of mixed up so may day was a huge course of celebration the animals are out in the field and everything's starting to bloom and blossom and so it's a kind of relief that everything's working as it should [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Applause] as a gift to his tenants mr acton has donated some of his famous cider here's to may here's to spring springs yeah i really think this is a very scrumptious drink and i shall look forward to drinking many tankards of it as life on farms and everywhere became more mechanized and more scientific there was a sort of a movement back sort of sentimentality about these older folk traditions celebrations like these were usually alcohol-fueled raucous affairs something that the victorian clergymen were keen to stamp out towards the end of the 19th century mayday was cleaned up and romanticized leaving these earlier drunken celebrations behind i have to say i find the acting cider is kind of like the marmite of the side world i love it i hate it and i love it you can tell from your cheeks anybody want something to eat oh yes please we've got fidget pie um brawn and bread can i interest you in a nice bit of brawn the bronte is fantastic absolutely fabulous where are the eyeballs in this there's an eye there's an eye isn't it and there's some brains right in the middle come on give me that eyeball there we go it's not gonna burst open spray all over my face they're all right aren't they it's very tasty actually it's just i i spent you know quite a long time with those eyeballs looking at me lovingly in the morning and evening came around the [Laughter] some may day games involve the new life of the farm well we're going to try singing for a pig this is a popular game at mayfairs and so on you hold a piglet under your arm and you sing a song and whoever sings the longest before the pig squeals wins the pig brace yourself here we go there's little chance of anyone taking this piglet away [Laughter] she knows your game she knows your game [Music] as the party carries on into the night the farmers now look forward to summer where a whole new set of challenges await [Music] next time on victorian farm it's summer this is the most fantastic tray they're a sheep to shear the loose skin and cheese to make women's work doesn't make it any easier alex takes up a risky new enterprise how long is it going to be before i get stung and it's time for the all-important hay harvest if you get it right you've got a hail off full of hay for your cows your sheep and your horses if you get it wrong it could spell disaster for

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 231,849

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, victorian farm, corsets, fashion history, victorian fashion, ruth goodman

Id: IgtpYUy0FVI

Length: 58min 34sec (3514 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020