How Sloe Gin Was Made In 1910 | Edwardian Farm EP3 | Absolute History

here in Devon and the tranquil Tamar Valley is a port that once bustle dwith industry Overground farmers supplied Britain's growing towns and cities with fresh produce daffodils City London [Music] underground miners extracted copper and precious minerals now it's more well and key archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Gill and historian Ruth Goodman are going back in time the early 1990s to live the lives of Edwardian fires for a full calendar year not just for farming but getting to grips with the rural industries that once brought wealth to Devon Wow I'm sorry so far the team's endeavors have laid the foundations of all working edwardian afar look at that gorgeous they built in livestock be good to get some new blood into the flock stopped up the ladder in preparation for a long winter what we might actually have something to eat this winter and planted high-value crops he goes oh no it's November and if the team are to prosper as Edwardian farmers there have to turn to the latest farming practices of the age get to grips with the technologies at the time like a steam engine and use an audience science to set up an exciting new venture you're playing golf without really knowing what God should be doing [Music] on the edwardian farm the time has come to plough the land [Music] Alex and Peter wanted droughts essential as feed for their livestock and potatoes a reliable source of income new technology was on the horizon but most farmers still relied heavily on horsepower coming into the season where these fellas really earn their keep because it's out to the fields it's working in heavy clay and this is this is really what the Shire was bred for it was the heavy Draft work boy let's go boys come on in lads let's go shires Tom and Prince have never pulled a plough before me lifelong Plowman will Williams has been cool to help them on their way and that's a nice straight line you've done that's more look you think it's more like than judgment that inside I do end up having lines this straight so early on in the dike well how long have you been doing it yeah well I've brought up really from childhood right Oh how do you now I'm 7777 price it's a fair old time then yep [Music] good lad the two shires are working together well but will is unhappy with the flower not deep enough not deep in hope whoa oh that just right was very important to get get that to cut your night place we've noticed we've got a bit of a problem here whilst our sheep have been out here and eating this down we've still got quite a lot of growth on the field and that's not a good thing if that's showing because all that'll do over the winter period and into the spring is that will grow and that'll affect whatever seed we put in here that essentially that'll hamper the growth of that seed so what we're doing here is we're setting the depth of this little accessory here it's called the skimmer and what the skimmer will do is it'll go in and it'll cut off the first inch and a half or so so that'll actually cut that sort of through there upside down and roll it right in where the car are you happy yeah see how it goes where they store deep are two narrows this is what I really like about ploughing because we just we we don't really recognize what an art it is [Music] every furrow should be like turning over a page in a book right repeat lying this actually the same data be straight I think we do [Music] this is it this is what makes a farmer it's enough it's a skill it's a science it's an industry livelihood it's a way of life [Music] but it was a way of life that was rapidly changing the days of farming with horses were numbered [Music] in 1903 a revolutionary new considered wooden technology at the marketplace promising to change the face of farming [Music] what have we here Wow in the age that gave rise to the Traveling Salesman tractor enthusiasts David white hopes to convince the team to trade in their horses and join the factual revolution morning ladies and gentlemen morning I've come to demonstrate the new I've Alegre cultural motor Tia got ourselves a cultural motor yeah furnished with a two cylinder engine running on petroleum motor spirit start and stop it will it needs no rest I may not need to change as you need to change a horse team so let's get this straight the internal combustion engine has arrived on the agricultural scene with this machine yeah this is the future sir today this X demonstration model is the oldest working tractor in the world and you've bought your Plowman along with you now with a good team of horses yep I'd say you'd plow an acre of land in eight hours this will plow two acres in four hours two acres in four hours so it takes a quarter of the time yeah allow us to demonstrate excellent [Music] Monte Vista forever they'll be able to smile we give you about it open here we go [Music] this way we only plow in one photo because the flowers sliding on the bank why I say in that way so far it's looking like the eyeball loo be a tough sell not the prettiest bit of planning I've ever seen it's been all this time trying to lift the soil up to get the air into it only then to drive machines across it you know these are people that have spent their lives working with horses the father's our grandfathers you know we're going back hundreds of years working with animals who couldn't you know disperse their weight there's this thing it's struggling I know it's how you said woe to the tractor so relentless form of power it is it's just push this this using power to push Luther whereas the ploughman would be using his brain of body to react against the slope to work with it here how he's believers this is the change of this countryside I suppose from being quite a peaceful rule it'll all be very hard work you've been quite easy just really well though one thing we don't know about it let's before we have a heart attack oh let's see what it can do in the barn because it might might redeem itself someone while the men take the ival up to the barn Rufus come to commiserate with Prince there's no osteen always attractive busily superseding you at the beginning of the 20th century well over a million shire horses still worked on farms and in industry for just 50 years later the Shire faced the very real threat of extinction so many people who remember working with horses talk about the joy going out of farming to some extent well then stop teasing horses practice I mean I know the tractors are more powerful and versatile in many ways you can see why people moved over to them something was lost in the process [Music] in the barn the team of team to see if the IVA will power an older gaudium Qibla the device used to grind down cereal drops into animal feed previously requiring the horse power to drive in the field the tractor could save the team a huge amount of work Carrie's house the power on a farm could save an enormous amount of time I think really this is where the internal combustion engine is going to come into its own silence that gentleman I'm super impressed I've never seen milled cereal come out of a machine that quickly before and we've worked with fair few machines but that's as brilliant isn't it sounds to me you need a eivol aquaculture no it's kind of redeemed itself right I remain to be convinced on the plowing front there's a couple of ticks on the plus column yeah the big question is I made a comfortable loving operative how much it's a mere 300 pounds pounds so if I find that today six years wages fixes wages well not sure we could work out easy installments for you don't sell [Laughter] yours in 40 years time yeah [Music] dude such a hefty price tag only 500 evils resulted worldwide that's quite a machine quite machine is Tony Jonathan world owes it feels nice for Edwardian farmers the new technology would become increasingly important to their survival facing stiff competition from abroad for traditional crops British farmers had to stay one step ahead again the latest scientific knowledge enabled entirely new forms of Agriculture to emerge in 1901 going to one of the country's first fish farms does the river Tama is a formidable barrier that runs between Devon where we are now and Cornwall over there and come the awarding period the mining that happened in the hills around us it polluted this river it was so bad you could take a horseshoe pop it in the water and a few days later it was copper plated the pollution from mining wiped out fish stocks in the river so the Tamar's biggest landowner the Duke of Bedford turn to Edwardian science to farm fish in an artificial hatchery his aim to breed salmon and trout to restock the river my aim is setting up a fish hatchery here on our farm to explore Edwardian science which is now a multi-million pound industry first pioneered in Scotland in the late 19th century today over a quarter of all fish consumed in the world is farmed PETA is hoping to reach trout to understand the science behind it he's traveled upriver to meet you ugly hill 96 year old Horace Adams who worked at the hatchery on the Judith Bedford's devon juris state so this hatchery was built around a sustainable 1919 1900 and 1910 a readapt period Horace is one of the few men who is bred fish the Audion way we had four boxes water becomes comes through here here's the taps and it runs into this box here yeah I know flows through there on to the next box and then the eggs will put into the artery and the old days they used to sit the eggs on the glass tubes singly and then last days they used to put em in big trays once you played them onto the onto the tubes post-op doesn't end up here with them again here Rose I said Oh unless there is a bad egg and then you gotta be very very careful how will I know if an egg is dead if one one starts to go bad they go white right if you leave them there for over a day and you saw a kind of fungus and and that affects the other eggs so you've got to make sure you get that egg out immediately otherwise you can destroy the lot right and then they start at you know and the h odn from 39 to 41 days there's a little yolk sac which feeds them for about 14 days but when that dissolves you start an feeding along with the dogs biscuits liver rabbits almond stuff oh and different awful and what isn't it in the summer the blowflies would come in and you know your name hundreds and hundreds of Mancos there's quite a smelly business right the biker hey go for the maggots I bet they could smell your mile off you learn only the same toys or dogs or think you're worth money like you do you have any confidence in me to build a hatchery well no not really [Music] well Horace and Rodney they've given me a lot of information but also give me a lot of doubt these eggs are so fragile if the Box gets not if it gets too cold if the water is too flowing through too quickly they're all going to die so it all come to nothing while Peter contemplates the complexities of his new venture on the farm Ruth is attempting her own project breathing new life into the old important Privy facility that in rural areas had changed little although in the earth warden age an awful lot of people were moving on you know from this sort of privy water closets getting really quite common actually in towns I mean even really quite modest houses and having water closets installed but out in the countryside most Edwardians were still working on privy systems rather like this rural privies were often found in the same building as the pig studs so the farms animal and human waste could be composted together a system that was no longer viable in the increasingly populated towns and cities towns have to move over to new forms of Sanitation as their populations rise push people in closer and closer together you're going to get more and more disease you've got it you've got to find a new way of dealing with it out here where you've got plenty of fresh air to deal with all the fumes and South coming off plenty of space for composting you can manage a hygienic system without needing the new technology to sterilize the Privy seat Ruth uses caustic soda and this will kill every last remaining little trace of bugs in the late Victorian and Edwardian period people are first really getting to grips with what germs are what bacteria is the microscopes are revealing all and as a result it's sort of provoked earth well almost a paranoia really about germs and bacteria and dirt search you find really very very very rigorous cleaning regimes for the Privy walls Ruth uses a solution made from limestone whitewash being based on line is caustic an alkali and it killed bugs it's a sterilizing solution as well as making an area a lighter and brighter so it helps with you know to see in the dim light [Music] to build his trout hatchery Peter will need timber an important industry in the Tama keep pace with a deniable wood Edwardian foresters process the timber on a site using steam powered portable saunas [Music] farmer and soya boy haptic runs this now rare so venture traction engine do these things travel around dipping the site they'd only going forward to an estate to set up same state effort two monks cut about over of the timber live classes five years remember that moving around for some money when the roads are not earning anything or I'll show you worry like yeah mine come on it follow from the engine rights creates rotation motion fish are and that's driving the surviving the Salt Lake direct right yeah the shaft speed on this one is by between 420 and 4:30 revolutions per minute yeah gives you a roughly a tip speed around 95 under Molineux that's right on the very tip there do you ever got your fingers caught in that that be it really I think I think I'll let you okay makes boys steam-driven traction engine powers both the four-foot six-inch blade for the suave this enabled the abuse or two cupcakes interpreter intuitive precision the never the food has ten point eight seven there you go six oh six okay [Music] this is timber soaring edwardian-style none of your hand soaring none of your physical effort this thing it just eats through it it's all about setting it up and letting it garden there you go you're now a Sawyer yeah there you go Sawyer congratulations then I know yes every really do [Music] on the farm Ruth has been applying the finishing touches to the newly refurbished privy making toilet paper this is a really old tradition people have been doing it for centuries in fact there's even a Shakespearean line talking about some other sort of literature as being fit only for bomb fodder now all the proof he needs is some animal dung to compost with a human waste these are - yep these are our two large black farmhand Megan Eliot has brought two sounds for the pigsty local yeah in the late 1800s the large backs who know where the breed at that time big this fat pig but yeah they've got this big glop here yes that go over their eyes and because they can't see so well that makes them quite Placid nice nice easy pigs good girls just a bit more now come on with the sows safely in their new home next to the Privy Ruth and Megan turned their attention to grooming we should do this oiling of the takes then it's just when you when you think when you look at their skin and anything all they need a bit you know looking a bit dry or if they're itching you know fair bit brushing a paraffin based oil onto the pigs will help to condition their skin who killed parasites it's funny actually could this works on people - head lice I get rid of them by just using any vegetable oil I'm just pour vegetable on my head yeah rub it in and leave it for a while and then wash it out and cuz they breathe through their skins that like a lot of these little parasites and so if you can clog their skin up with oil or fat you can't breathe it's enjoyer anyway do you seem to like it like better groomed than I am [Laughter] [Music] constructing these trout actually fish jump out here he's attempting to replicate the Edwardian design that Horace my Rockne described to so I finally finished Maya my hatchery the waters gonna come in here through a pipe and it was slowly feed through these holes into these three chambers this first one it's gonna have glass rods upon which the eggs will sit these other two and then put stones in to mimic the the riverbed water will flow over the top keep it well oxygenated and hopefully we'll have little trout it will jump over here into the final box to waterproof the hatchery Petey uses pitch which is extracted from the roots of pine trees this pitch is amazing stuff it's actually a liquid if we were to leave this long enough there pool in the floor without being awfully long time for the pitch to be used as a paint it has to be melted down the same process used to waterproof boats time to get it on the hatchery [Music] as far as I understand the eggs are very very fragile they're very susceptible to vibrations they're very susceptible to temperatures they're very susceptible to pretty much anything I mean I just really don't see us working to be honest but it's worth a shot isn't it peter has also built a baffle box a device to filter out sediment from the stream which could damage the fragile of drowned eggs that's wood the wharfs will come through this pipe and end up with my fancy box over there from the baffle box clean oxygenated water is siphoned into the hatchery where Peters trout eggs will be stored the idea is to replicate a natural riverbed but in a controlled environment see if you're working the water is trickling over moving keeping oxygenated and it's ready for the eggs but to get the eggs I need some fish that are ready to spawn and I think I've got a strip of it whatever that is [Music] [Music] whilst Peter sets up his hatchery concern have come up here on to Dartmoor to just get a good look at the Devon landscape and you'll just see how important the hedgerows are to this landscape it's almost as if when you look out there's a patchwork quilts been draped through these valleys and the reason you will want these hedge banks all over your farm is so that you could manage your stock more profitably you can stop them from getting into certain fields hold back the pasture and then sure that throughout the year you're giving your animals a regular feed and of course you also want to keep them off of your crops as well so these hedgerows are in fact fundamental to the farming industry of the Southwest not just today but back in the Edwardian period and beyond over the winter months it was vital for farmers to build and maintain their hedgerows the craft that Alex is keen to learn but first you'll need the right cutting tool a job a deathly build room please come to see Roger balmy finish foundry on morning having me over so pleasure so I've come here to see if we can get a traditional Devonshire style billhook made up yeah we've certainly come to the right place here's Simon one of our Smith's and I saw these are chuck buckle maker the tool that you require just basically get it roughly there but we're not gonna Forge it right out yet because it's gonna be quite thin right back in again to making it long been the job of the local village blacksmith but by the Edwardian age larger state-of-the-art forges began to take over at the fish foundry blacksmiths manufactured over 400 tools a day they made a whole range of stuff and we've got a catalog actually this is some our period this yes our fantastic and you can see them yeah they may choose for every occasion here all sorts of things here selection of shovels different patterns you'll notice there's a Cornish shovel and there's a Devon shovel slightly smaller so we've got a Cornish shovel in a Devon shovel there's a bigger lads now they don't agree on anything either side they take two different patterns but this isn't just a cottage industry is it it's gone up a gear up a step this is no longer what taps a lot of us remember as the village Falls your smithing yeah this is mass production before it uses water power technology to drive heavy hammers embark into its pilot now this is this is the water wheel here which flies the fan like we're gonna open this one up using this leave it here [Music] that wheel drives through a lot of gearing inside the building we have which used to be placed the original fellow the good news for me today is that I'm not gonna be spending the whole you're gonna be doing a better day pumping fellow water and gravity's gonna be doing that for me that's right fantastic the water powered machine blows air into the half bringing the fire up to the temperature of 1500 degrees centigrade what enough to soften iron steel what are we actually starting with the raw material so what we've got here is a piece of wrought iron this normally came in big bars and almost pigs Pink's a small piece piglet pig knit right but what we do with this yeah we hammer this out and we finish up with something like this two pieces of wrought iron yeah I'm running right down through the middle yeah a bit like the filling in a sandwich yeah is a piece of what's known as shear steel shear steel yeah right now that is a version of hardened metal and then once it's ground that hard steel edge is expose comes through the middle that's right so you start off with the sandwich like so and it grinds it down like that yeah and it comes to the point comes to the point and that's your cutting edge and that was the secret of the success of this business I say the mysterious art of the blacks meter for finding the blade edge now so right you're trying to keep it straight and maintain that straight [Music] after constructing his trout hatchery Peter now needs fertilized eggs these guys are they're ready to spawn away these fish are ready to spawn he's come to see fish farmer Trevor Wyatt who's netted some female brown trout beautiful fish with lovely red spots down the flank Trevor plans to remove the unfertilized eggs from the trout which you would normally lay on the river bed so how can you tell when they're they're ready well they were quite swollen and soft on the belly there she's four Lakes right so if you would hold the bowl for me removing the eggs from the trout involves a delicate and harmless process known as Strich they're ready to spoil all blimey I'm it weeds are just the eggs coming out either these are the wonderful eggs so gently stroke the eggs towards the vent and they'll come out into the bowl quite naturally Wow I saw olivera's it's an awful lot of eggs how many eggs are we looking at here this fish is about 2 pounds and therefore should give us about 15 to 16 hundred eggs that's a lot of eggs it's a lot of eight and this it doesn't hurt the fish at all it doesn't harm them at all as long as we're careful not to squeeze too tight you know then their fish are perfectly okay and eventually we'll see where the stomach is completely collapsed all the eggs are out and we can release the fish back into the river she's going back to where she came from so we've got the female eggs in the bowl yes we're now adding the male just milk to the Milt yeah traps but without sperm that's exactly what it is in the wild a male trout would release his sperm onto the eggs lying in the river bed gently stir the Milt into the yolks so from that moment onwards young fish are starting to develop first cell division is a taking place by doing a hat for us we've got slightly more control we have a lot more control and in actual fact we can get 80 percent or even more of these eggs to be properly fertilized wow we're in the wild maybe only two or three percent really would be fertilized so I mean in in this way if we manage to enhance the number of fish in the stream then the stream can be restored to its former glory just clean it up at the forge Alexes Devon bill Hawk is taking shape right now we need to take some material down quite rapidly right just to speed things up we can take that down with the TripIt hammers so we have the technology here with the trip hammers and these on the very last surviving authentic trip hammers which with a little bit of luck we can still see working the 3/4 of a turn hammer is powered by its own new two wheels wow that's quite some engineering isn't it is made in Tavistock the largest of our water wheels it's a you see something like about 12 and a half horsepower oh okay so that's pretty when you think of this size of the shire horse two and a half show up in a half horse that's really something nice but of course you don't have to feed this now this is all three Hill feeds itself it feeds itself all we need is the the water yeah over top 20 laps or any of that in this by the world yes well I suppose you'd better see it in motion I'll give you a shout I'll stand back yes please do you'll get wet otherwise [Music] so here we go time to see the biggest wheel working so this is the moment then when when his boundary comes to life [Music] [Music] listen to that sound like a steam engine ready [Music] [Music] helps to flatten home building saving the blacksmith valuable time and effort [Music] [Music] what you saw it was just a fraction of what it would have been like so in our heyday they had mass production this hammer would have been really hammering it would have actually been striking at 240 beats a minute 240 beats him in here pretty much a blur that one's 3/4 of a ton he thought was the tongue this one that bad boy is a ton and a quarter we dance use this one this would shake the whole building apart this was used to make plate to make blades for shovels right oh I see you're really smacking down to get really thin that's right you couldn't buy plate ready-made you've got to make your own from that same raw material right you remember yet the pig so you've got the pig there we're hammering that out yet to make a sheet yep oh we end up with something a bit like this our fantastic that forms the basic shape of in this case definition they are responsible for forming the Devon landscape really they're that kind of odd shape because by and large down here in the West Country there's so much stone in the ground yeah yeah traditional garden Spade is totally useless right just a general cleanup now in the foundries heyday a blacksmith could make a billhook from scratch in half an hour a good brush up and probably we run the rasp over just to take in the earth rough edges even layer man we're gonna play yellow yeah number seven 12 shillings but does a dozen yeah shilling apiece yes yes search fought five peach you've made yourself hi pence today Simon well-known over that don't make no problems I'll get a few points for that aspire yourself a sip of cider [Music] there it is my authentic Devonshire billhook as fantastic all hand-forged we've walked about all with water power as well you couldn't get more authentic than that I don't think I hope that gives you many years of good service [Music] gently does it this is your new home stain the ages to build this hatchery I hope you like it yes that's very nice well thank you for saying that price I pop you in here Peter must get is fertilized trout eggs into the fresh oxygenated water of his hatchery as quickly as possible before they begin to die all these eggs have a tiny little black dot in the center of them I'm hoping these little black dots are natural I'm hoping that just the nucleus of the egg and I'm going to lay these very carefully onto the glass rods easier said than done the idea of the glass rods it will help us identify the bad eggs and then we can periodically get rid of them because they turn white they grow spores and those spores affect the other aids bit like apples in a barrel that's a bad one there it's gone white who just starting to go bad it's very very fiddly but I can't see the merits of the system really it'll man comprar his environment playing goldfish [Music] right now that we've got well a number of eggs when I'd are Short's it's time to put the names for water just hope at the end of all this we get at least one trout [Music] it's late November and the long winter evenings of set in now that your Devon's very own fish Baron I'd like to introduce you to my new tool Ruth has borrowed an Edwardian gramophone an innovation in home entertainment that was rapidly gaining in popularity [Music] popular culture our fingertips let's call it culture I'll reserve the gramophone brought the sound of London's Music Hall stars to a wider audience for the first time so who is this famous Billy Williams he was this really great musical style over time and he's thought to be one of those prolific makers of records most prolific pre-recorded artists maybe even of all the time certainly of his own time Wow didn't know you were such an expert it's funny those as well to think that those Tunes are gonna get whistled around lanes all over the place mmm you might have the same tune being whistled here as you would in the Highlands of Scotland [Music] flirting with all the ladies for the time comes I'll be glad and I'll be coming in the office very late [Laughter] [Music] [Music] armed with his brand-new Devon bill book alex is ready to take on the farms unmanaged hedgerows this is exactly the problem that we're having here on the farm this hedge and this hedge bank simply hasn't been maintained properly and as a consequence we're getting vast gaps here which are sheep tired of this field they're running off into pastures that we actually want to use later in the winter and the reason this isn't working as a stock proof barrier is simply because it isn't being laid properly or pleated as they say in this part of the world and it's a skill that we are rapidly losing so I'm desperate to try my hand at it to see if I can can hedge as good as the next man and when my new billhook I'm hoping we should have any problems to teach him this ancient to rural craft hedge layers from the black down hills hedge Association have arrived on the farm ideas thanks ever so much for coming down and they brought their own selection of bill hooks for the job that's a typical devaron some of them add more of a hook on write a sentence and pattern printed in as your editors in Kenya right actually quite similar to that one it this is from Yorkshire Yorkshire so it's a big that's a big old beast vote for a lot more to hand you can use it two handed as well as single-handed okay and it has a thin blade yep so you can get in where you can't get an axe in Rhine stems right oh I see so that gives you an idea then of the kind of variation you're getting throughout the country in the different styles of billhook we just cut it down in the direction you want it to go so if you wanted to go straight up show you put it 90 degrees out right ahead George has been laying Devon hedges since he was a boy yeah I've been doing it 45 years and I'm still learning never you never learn on us every hedge is different once any excess or dead foliage has been removed from the hedge the bare stems or bleachers as they're known a laid flat still actually attached to the base you can see there's bit of bark wood in here that's allowing the goodness that the roots are collecting from the soil to travel up this part of the plant and along the horizontal once the features down all the dormant buds that are along there they'll get the sunlight so that's where they will grow up 1 2 3 all very evenly spaced yeah and what you're saying is they're gonna chase it alight they're gonna look for the light and that's going to create our stop proof boundaries that the idea one thing I'm already picking up on is the fact that this isn't as simple as it looks actually just a case of laying all the various decisions you happen to make if you're working with the hedge trying to decide what you're gonna lay how you're going to use it what you're going to take out how you're gonna use different species it's exactly quite a lot to learn so just have to keep my wits about me today and listen out and hopefully I'll be able to pick up some of the tricks of the trade [Music] a well-maintained hedge acts not only as a stock proof boundary but as a habitat for wildlife were fruit Ruth is taking advantage of a rare spell of November sunshine to forage for slow slows are pretty much the last of the autumn hedgerow fruit so and everything else is finished and bear they come out for your slows we're all starting to realize again now you know just how important to resource these sorts of scrappy bits of hedge line are now one of the joys of British countryside get this lovely gold and Wyatt's through everything it just makes you feel good [Music] love doing this or picking a free food it's a really good excuse to be out across the health advice for Edwardian women was to be out and about walking as much as possible you're forever saying that the woman who walks out of the fresh air regularly every day in a vigorous fashion is the one who has no problem with her monthly cycle is the one who has babies nicely easily is the one who remains in cheerful spirits supposed to be really good for you for some reason women seem to need walking more than the blokes know why Ruth is going to use the fruit to make slow Gin when the boys say so what have you been doing all day nobody's gonna argue with me and I so be making gin [Music] for PETA the trout hatchery is becoming a full-time job he's checking on it twice a day all these leaves getting swept down and they're clogging up these pipes and try my hardest with chicken wash just to keep the pipe open and the flow of water into the hatchery continuous everlasting battle there we go got it leaves are clogging up the battle box which is supposed to filter out sediment from the stream keeping the hatchery and it's fragile eggs clean Oh everything is covered in sediment they all look pretty white to you that is properly white that is a dead a every single day the quite warm though boots quite waterproof they yeah they trap the water and it gets heated up it's nice oh that one's delusional [Music] I smells good Ruth is making slow Gin for Christmas a practice that many Edwardian would have frowned upon I'm being really wicked here I'm being bad the Edwardian period is the absolute height of the temperance movement in Britain the band of hope people signing the pledge refusing to take any more alcohol and great huge campaigns led by the church all of which were very very very anti alcohol how many have I got in there oh so I want it sort of up to about there [Music] it just prick all your SLOS I'm using litany Lucas not so pointy on the fingers is using a pin and you just fill the bottle up and then you add some gin and sugar just as much or as little as you like really [Music] I'm so bad [Music] cork shut it in [Music] slowly slowly over the next couple of weeks and the juices from the Baroness will color the gin they'll go dark purple then come Christmas it'll be absolutely delicious don't tell the neighbors so much to remember here she want me to vote on the lady could Alex and his team of Labor length of a new hairdo known in the industry as a chain this is 22 yards single edge layer would deem to be a satisfactory day's worth you've done some very good cuts you please and here we are doing what's good there so you're gonna be renovating the entire ready farm knowing you it takes a while thing inside a time Cheers cheers to a fantastic days hated long long way to H live yet tis a bit more Russian that's very nice [Music] it's been 41 days since Peter introduced the fertilized eggs to his hatchery the trout should now be hatching let's see how they're doing quite a few dead eggs there I have to say I mean it's a real insight into the effort that went into a new enterprise because this has been a real struggle you're playing God without really knowing what God should be doing that makes sense the so much silk coming through here well this one's tilting up a lot an awful lot oh look just down here yeah I mean I you know waxing lyrical about my file that if I'm not very much mistaken are trout and they're moving and they've got the little fact they have hatched we've got at least three at least three that is absolutely incredible they've got the the the egg sac which is currently feeding them but once they finished eating that I've got like a tadpole they then because to find their own food and that's what I'm gonna have to build them a new tank and that's what I'm gonna have to start grinding up rabbit and then we feed them into trout I think we have fought with one we have trout we have succeeded in our new enterprise [Applause] next time on it Wardian farm gone it's December and the team face the challenges of earning a living away from the farm Wow speed freedom with part-time work in a country house and reaping the oceans bounty all Peter in luck again mate

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 562,229

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, edwardian, edwardian farm, health and safety, dangerous edwardian, edward vii, edward vii documentary, edwardian period, british history, living in a farm, dangers of 20th century

Id: QWyHDXEfklo

Length: 58min 32sec (3512 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/_Punko_]

the sloe gin was the shortest segment in this episode. More time spent on blacksmithing, repairing hedges, and cleaning privies.

All the same, I enjoy sloe gin, so I watched the whole episode.

[u/Gerry1of1]

Love this show. And the Tudor Farm and the War Time Farm. Love all of those go-back-in-time shows. The Coal House and Coal House At War etc.