How The Edwardians Prepared Their Farms For Winter | Edwardian Farm | Absolute History

here in Devon and the tranquil Tamar Valley was once a port bustling with industry now more well and key is to be brought back to life as it would have been during the reign of community the seventh archeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn historian Ruth Goodman will be living the lines for the Bolivian funds for a full calendar year as fantastic all hand cause it's going to be an enormous challenge to get to grips with the skills and trance of the early 20th century here on the banks of the river tama farming was about far more than just livestock and crops farmers have to diversify into fishing oh wow mining master the industrial advances of the Edwardian age it was a time of inventors and entrepreneurs a great social change over the next 12 episodes the Tingler going back to an age that saw the dawn of our mud world at a time of new and exciting ventures on the Edwardian farm it's September and Alex Ruth and Peter must establish themselves in Edwardian Britain this means setting up home oh my goodness can't live a bit like this the arrival of their first livestock we will control their attics fear I'd sorter and fertilizing the fields to grow crops for this they must make deadly Quitline Wow there's no going back now hazardous but essential job oh here it is killing me the info [Music] the team are getting ready for their new adventure my dad called me pothead for a number of years that was kind the Edwardian age began with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 when her son Edward the seventh became King it was to last until the outbreak of the great war in 1914 so excited about our new adventure Peter very much so you think about it quite a bit exciting age isn't it age of the wireless there's an explosion in in daily newspapers as well and of course the motorcar means that people can get around that much quicker flight and like the difference between the rich and the poor - I mean at this point it's at its most extreme the social divides between aristocracy and and you know the next layers down it's an age of exuberance the salad days you might say before the the hell of the First World War I really do like the beer but I think it should go [Music] never realized how handsome you were Peter thank you very much that's fantastic I was really weird doesn't it really differrent time to step into a board in Britain [Music] then with the Tama the border between Devon and Cornwall the adventure begins who the team sailing from Plymouth 18 miles are River to their new home but small Welland it through the rest [Music] let's obviously it [Music] caught Erie [Music] huge waterwheels wrong oh yeah look at this place this is done to be fantastic what well first the shop me and Sonny yeah after you Ruth thanks ever so much this is more well and key at its height this was one of the busiest ports in Britain shipping locally mined copper ore to South Wales for smelting Antony powers will be their land agent for the year journey very much so yes thank you well absolutely yes and you've arrived exactly the right way on the river cuz it's the river that's that's so important for this place it was a way of getting out all the minerals and mining around here because it's really this is a hugely important mining district ships are going up and down here carrying all sorts of goods copper tin arsenic blade limestone all sorts of things going up and down this really heavy a really heavy stuff yes yes apart from all the mining what else was going on on this site you've got a farm of course I mean Rita to feed the the industrial workforce that was in the area and then we got market gardening as well just just coming in really coming on with a full steam and in the Edwardian period and they're growing cherries strawberries daffodils right I'm sort of cash crops really actually fantastic and we be expected to turn our hands to a little bit bit I think you would I think you would I think it's the time where people are there maybe their traditional forms of earning a living at maybe getting it slightly slightly bit dodgy and so they having to look around for other things as well but with all these other industries aside our core industry is going to be the farm for us so I think if you and I better go off and have a look at that and we're looking to see how to do there but we'll have a look [Music] this is where the team will experience Edwardian domestic life a little bit basic yeah it was quite a reasonable sized family here I think probably you got a family of two parents and six children room you spend most of your time living and working in it's a pretty small range isn't it it's very small there's no hot water tank on it at all no I think you must have been must been heating water on on the topping pans there yeah that's small and I've got a sink you have got a sink you have can you hum got water no there's no running water down here okay so it's back to carrying buckets I'm afraid so I got my work cut out then I'm nine you have yeah [Music] the team are taking charge is more well and far originally built to feed the people that worked and live to the port Wow Peter look at this election of vehicles [Music] God look at this this waterwheel once powered the farms machinery big isn't it it's clear that farming in Devon will be different from anything they've experienced before so they'll need a local knowledge they're calling on someone with a lifetime's farming experience Mr Francis mud the mud family have farmed the land here in Devon for generations this is gonna be our farm for the year then the most pressing concern is working outlet chested Road do you think it to make a good arable field mr. March oh yeah this won't keep that really for that sort of thing that tell any crop in you from corn potatoes kale right mangles anything you know like you know right we were thinking of putting in a grain either a barley or a notes and maybe a crop of potatoes I see you want one to thrash and once a mash to be better to till oats really because you can feed your horses and that results and what was left over you give your cattle and things like that so we're looking for some oats then there's our cereal crop yeah Peter and I are both thinking about potatoes because it was a bit of a cash crop in the period so what about potatoes oh yeah 8l v potato said they would grow well here like you know and provided you kept yeah you got to keep your loin hot in Devon Edwardian farmers applied alkaline quit lyin to their fields this neutralized the acidity of the soil caused by the granite bedrock of neighboring Dartmoor I mean if we decided to kind of shortcut this and and and not lime the fields what would happen to the cross we have a half a crop you wait you were never very good crop how much lime and do you think we'll need for this field well you always say you will put it about two tons of the a cord on it right well we're probably looking at up to about 10 tonne here if we go for the whole field but I know anywhere between five hundred six ton maybe if we do two-thirds half you give you all that and you should have good luck for your crops and everything else like you know that okay then we'll get to it then find ourselves some lime Peter yeah this is a huge challenge to successfully grow crops Alex and Peter must find a way of making 10 tons of quicklime fertilizer at the cottage Ruth's already busy Edwardian we're scrubbing the floor he's quite precise instead of just blushing water everywhere you work square by square so each square his scrubbed wet and dried off rinsed and re scrubbed and dried off before you move on to the next way this was done look at the filth coming up what it means is that I can maintain me and my clothes reasonably clean because it means I'm not swimming about kneeling down in a whole load of water all the time there's lots of references to many farm housewives doing this twice a day don't think I'm gonna be that house proud once I'll do plenty right nice that done wish we put this over this way here this will do fine when it's quite and always move it [Music] haha oh pretty stuff yeah I'm really pleased with this it's a really nice cottage Edwardian dresser you know made out of pine and stained and pretending to be out of oak yeah I'm quite excited about this you know what's in here Edwardian provisions Wow looks like you're not gonna have to make many products the onions mom life this is starting to look like my mother's cupboard at home a lot of familiar designs I'm just amazed at how many companies are still in business or browse oh look at national I mean there were loads of branded products in the Victorian period but it's just gone crazy by the Edwardian there's just so many more of them and and they're beginning to sort of target them at different groups of people aren't you're getting some advertising going aiming at the working-class things like the sunlight soap being aimed at everybody and some things that are really being aimed at the middle classes in the long journey for you guys so this is gonna be the first of our livestock on the farm these are my chickens I've brought over and they're like Sussex is the breed they're gonna mix in with these buff Orpingtons for a while but you know I really fancy getting together a nice industrial sort of poultry concern on an Edwardian scale and now we're gonna have to look out for some cows some pigs and some sheep and get this farm properly stocked [Music] this is time for you it's looking nice that is enough we have struck upon the most fantastic location we've got everything we've got the river we've got the coast we've got a fantastic farm we've got a fantastic mining heritage and the Market Garden heritage there's going to be so much to do so much to keep us busy it's quite an opportunity really a place that is so abandoned the chance to bring it back to turn the clock back and make a place live and breathe and Hum busy with people in life again [Music] I think that myself Alex and Ruth have a burning ambition inside us and perhaps we do bite off a little more than we can chew but I just hope that I'll be able to learn new skills do right by the animals and try my hardest [Music] until the range is up and running they can't cook we'll have hot water but there's a problem oh I can't live with it like this Ruth turns to their land agent Antony for advice I'm having a nightmare with it I've given it a really really good key well as best as I can it is club solid absolutely Solly so this you mean he's cleaning for a start yes I clean the chimney in there last year and had to get on the roof and knock a plug about this wide out down through the chimney as jackdaws twigs and also a blockage in the chimney maybe sending the smoke back into the room Oh Alex yep good how's it going with our little volunteer yeah he's he's looking right and ready for it to sweep it alex has a cunning plan one of the traditional ways with which to clean your chimney out was with chicken and what you do get him here and you literally stuff him down the chimney and what he does is he tries to flap up the chimney to fly up the chimney and in doing so this Klaus scratch the inside of the flue and bring down all the soot with him but I got to be honest I really can't bear to do it to the little fella because he's so gorgeous so I'm just gonna let him get about his business and we're gonna go for plan B what my mom with Club a lack of volunteers yeah Plan B involves Holly rather than a chicken to clean the chimney okay okay ready start hauling pull it up here we go this is a really common method of cleaning chimneys goes back to the medieval period stuff a holly bush down there's loads coming down just as you pull it up I don't pull him off I know yeah you can put it back down now then Peter okay pulling away is the man with the muscles how's it going work the treats I think we've doubled the size of the chimney [Music] at the farm the most pressing concern is neutralizing the acidic soil with quicklime 10 tons of it quicklime was a wonder material of the Edwardian age not only was it used in farming but it was the basis of cement and plaster it's made by heating limestone essentially chalk to over 900 degrees in a kill our first bit of lime something almost every Edwardian town that these are the raw materials for our line burn we've got the limestone here and the cold all brought in by barge most effective way to bring it in so now we've got the raw materials beaten we just have to find ourselves a kiln so he's our lime kiln in Antony's brought the boys to the kiln was it more well a little key that is one of two and they actually probably were being used until the Edwardian period limestone brought up from quarries on from orest and on the outskirts of Plymouth all built over now and and coal from South Wales and to make quicklime which is what you need for your fields you basically burn layers of limestone with coal and it converts the limestone into this stuff called quicklime the lump line quite small pieces which you can then pull out from the bottom and that's what you then spread on your fields mr. mudge reckons we need approximately 10 tonnes of lump time to go on our fields what do we need to measure it and find out exactly how much this is gonna I think we should because we could end up with with heaps of it all over the place and goodness knows all gonna do it rather than a little bit extra yes yes at the cottage it's the moment of truth [Music] that said it's Krakow baby crackle you see the smiley died he died right that's a good sign I had one already that's how it's supposed to be on the continent by the Edwardian period people who are abandoning coal cooking like nobody's business moving over to the new gas they here we hung on to ranges a lot longer so they were still manufacturing them right up until the end of the 1930s I wonder if you can see it go not much even if I have a look in this inspection yeah you can zooming up there look at their drawer on that measuring the kiln is proving to be a mathematical challenge 5 times 5 is 25 yeah times pi pi was PI 3 point making okay 75 times that by the depth now we're gonna work out the deck if you hold one end and abseil down so 20 times 75 that's 2 times 750 1,500 it was cubic feet how many tons is that no that's over 50 tons of quicklime they need just 10 it's highly caustic stuff Peter a ton of it is bad enough and you want 50 tons of it wait okay okay [Music] it's the end of the first week on the Edwardian farm and already the challenges are mounting up we're next to one of the world's biggest granite deposits which means the entirety of the soil around here is going to be acidic so we gonna have to do something to combat that we understand any chance of growing anything in it we're gonna need a whole load of lime quicklime mcdu off the line right next to set lime kilns well I I think those are a little bit too big is the worm turning no first clapped eyes on these lime kilns right he was like we gotta burn burn you burn his eyes lit up I'm like Peter what's what's the tonnage where there's a critical mass you see so you can't say if we only 3/4 full we're looking at 45 ton of lime to 10 tons of coal 12 feet of wood well I was gonna say I could do with some lime but I don't think I need that much so you're you're sort of backing out Peter here I I think we probably ended up doing a smaller kill just because the amount of Ryan we actually need in Edwardian times there were thousands of lime kilns across Britain now there's just a handful so finding a smaller kiln that's still working isn't going to be easy until they get some line terrible projects on hold so the farmers turned their attention to long stock [Music] quantico's gone local farmer Matthew Cole is delivering an Edwardian breed of sheep that's particular to this region theta theta theta theta theta theta make my lovely looking animals yeah yeah and these are white faced our most violent these sheep have been honest on these hills for four centuries they look quite small yeah they are they are hill sheep right you know they've evolved on Dartmoor which is you know a large granite outcrop the wind blows and the rain comes down and yeah these girls have evolved to cope with that as a result their body size in that big but you know they made good use of the rough foraging you know what's available to them ooh they've evolved for the area and all they bred just for their meats or these would probably been one of the first jewel purpose animals now they that not only do they grow a good heavy fleece but the meat is also a very high quality they call angel me it's that angel my angel me it's not tasted great well there certainly is settling in thank you very much for food and thanks and someone's bringing him down and make Frankie Meg as well see there's a hard way yeah crucial to the success of those sheep Enterprise will be keeping the world fed over winter in Edwardian times this river is the only way to deliver heavy cargo into more well Oh deep in the team this is our first consignment of hay we'll need plenty to keep our cattle in our sheep fed throughout the winter unfortunately in the Edwardian period it came ready bailed so we've got a nice empty hayloft to get filled up and we should nearly be there for our winter feed today the only time our barge that's fully operational is this one the Shamrock skippered by Peter Allen Tara it's really funny isn't it you know you sort of look at the Salem barge with no engine can you fit all really out of date by the Edwardian period but that's just not true is it an awful lot of Salem barges well yes I think the barge skipper relied on three things wind power muscle power and tidal power probably a combination I mean apart from the railway which of course is several miles that one getting anything in or after this valley this is really the only way to do it particularly with any bulk cargo if you're talking of more well home people immediately think of copper ore yeah but you could have barges bringing in coal some of the coasting schooners that came up here you know I came as from as far as ways Russia with timber so interesting too isn't it it was an international link yeah this is not some little backwater listen this is really connected having taken delivery of the hay in must be stored in a dry place [Music] right you ready for this yeah all right here we go [Music] it seemed a lot coming off the boat but now we've got it here doesn't seem that much this isn't gonna last first oh is it Peter throughout the winter and this hayloft is desperately small so we're gonna have to see firstly if we can source ourselves some hay locally and secondly have to find some way of storing it outside Alex is consulting their Edwardian farming manual on how to store hay outside it recommends building a hayrick so we managed to acquire the most up-to-date version of the book of the farm to help us through the year and I'm just looking at some of the hay ricks or haystacks as it's called here I'm gonna quite interested in that the shape of this one which is very much what we're trying to achieve to keep the hay dry it advises that the RIC is but rains not the only obstacle they have to overcome there's also a vermin the solution is to build it off the ground and stattle stones the design of this stone and this goes back hundreds of years is so designed essentially so that rats they can't after here to get into your corn and of course they just can't get over the edge okay so it stops vermin at least mammals anyway getting into your corn the boys have bought some more hay from a local farm they need to build the rig before the wet weather sets in well we've better start getting this on the Rick if the hay gets damp these if it gets saturated and we can't dry it out it's quite simple rots it loses all of its nutritional value so it's it's it's next to useless so that's a disaster this is gonna be like the best part of a week's worth if not more yeah but it's gonna feed our livestock for how long several months it's gonna be worth it in the end Eric's as well as hey the livestock will also need grain in Devon farmers would have used granite troughs to keep the feed of the ground and prevent it being contaminated animal export in Edwardian times they were found inmates have done more prison Peters come to see stainless Indian paper as a quote anymore very well thank you first job is to choose decision tell me you didn't want it too large did you know not to like I mean what looking after doing we have to cut it down through there so we're going through old radar in there and down that side and fill it down Ian's using an Edwardian pneumatic crane to lift the granite block from the quarry it's a tense moment this crane hasn't been used in half a century [Applause] [Music] now the stones must be cut down to size this is one of the hardest rocks in the world and it's one of the most amazing building materials but there is a grain in it so you can't just chop it anyway it's going to be quite interesting to see how they do this granite is cut by drilling a series of holes by hand this is the Angela this is Andrew rising I thought they had to do it with like they had to drill walls around like that by hand how far does that have to go in you want to go down about three now four inches being awful inches it's a fair old way yeah imagine coming to work and I'm going to do that all day long yeah I know chap doing that all day long yeah I'd like a rod man of knows better I reckon you should give him a break it's time for Peter to try as hand at drilling granite [Music] finally get used to that is an absolute killer just doing that wine order with a cold hand as well with the professionals back on the job within an hour the holes are drilled now the stove can be split that's what we call the plug plugs and feather plugs and feather sois obviously as you drive the older it'll let the store know you just keep hitting them yet one off the other yeah this is the most critical part of the whole procedure a clean break is essential but they've got one chance to get it right with the granite block cut to size now they can hollow it out to make the trough it's a job that will take days do you reckon of sort of farmer would have been able to split his own granite stone now farmers we know in Boulder dirt all right for a mill gonna cave or not he's nice because with in granite [Music] it's mid-september Alex and Peter hope life story enough home to feed non-stop they must ensure it's kept drawing in winter hooking a farm there Edwardian or dispatch to rid rather like a cottage hello Kate good to see you again ventures she's paying and Bill delivers äj-- we've come to help I've impressed Alex is so much neater they thought it might be have a look at that good now Alex read about an ingenious way the awardees yeah the idea of that machine is that you can put read through it Tachi read it's dishes it together and it comes out in the continuous map I push the read through keeping at the same thickness all the way through instead of spending the week stacking a rake they would only spend a few hours which gave them time to do head you know still walling yeah so you know it was a labor saver as well maybe I'm actually feeding this through the same as you you would claw through a sewing machine okay I did sorry I've been just take my eye off the ball here a second and we've dropped the stitch well you you really have got a concentrate on what you know about mine otherwise if this comes undone on the Rick we we've been over a wet wet spot on the Rick so yeah if you could pay attention a bit more and I'm sorry we'll stop looking around there are inches new I record a patch it in the old traditional way employ you to doing it with this that's map making machine back and then stop and then Ruth's daughter Eve is visiting and helping to make the cottage more homely so we're making a rag rug or we're trying to make a rag rug to the floor it was a pretty hard in here you start the base there's a it's a sack hissing and sack and then it's whatever bits of old fabric you've got and you're better off with nice warm wool because that's gonna be warmer underfoot I mean they cost absolutely nothing rag rooks nobody's gonna miss an old sack and it just makes the whole kitchen feel warm and comfortable and homely and it's safe scrubbing the floor I'm getting so good stuff that actually feels like a rug now Rosa yeah well just carry on did he end the thatch making machine has produced enough massing to cover the rip right now the tricky part attaching it well with these pegs Alex we want to along this edge okay and even in there yeah I'm gonna twist them in the middle so they've become like a grip yeah double twist nice and soft on your hands then yeah points upward okay then it doesn't course water into the middle of the sit down or coming in like that I mean on that top string to try to catch that string the first one there yes going uphill yep drive them in with your hands I mean they're lovely and then then give them last time [Music] traditionally this rig would have been fetched by lashing bundles of straw to the roof process that would have taken six hours using the machine made maths takes just 40 minutes oh there we go one waterproof Rick well add you've done an excellent job I'm sure it'll be waterproof well let's hope just one little thing that I think you ought to be wary of when you uncover it and feed it to the animals in the winter right just be aware of the the spoor as to what spores that come out because it will give you a thing called farmer's run right and it will give you breathing problems in the in the future so right I would suggest it when you uncover it you do wear a mask other than that I'm sure it all stays nice and dry and the animals and appreciate it in the winter the hard work you put into it [Music] making the rag rug has proved a much bigger job than Ruth imagined the amount of fabrics used in the end is what is huge actually I think frankly it would it would equate to about three double blankets [Music] oh there we go me rag rug well it does eventually wear out a thing that's made from scraps and other people's rubbish will go on the compost heap and be useful yet again [Music] the use of settled into life on the farm but areolas and brown Matthew Cole has returned to more one with a present for good it's seeing a Maki and him who says this is silk Cyril yes fantastic that's what a ram should look like Peter yeah before five years old his horns are like the rings on a tree you see right always what's she gonna give us in terms of art the offspring his offspring are going to be your next crop if you like right in terms of lambs so you're looking for a good broad body right back through and you're looking for their backs through here you've got with your chops yeah got your two shoulders you mean what plenty of meat there yep and then you've got you too expensive legs your legs I'm at the back that really it's a sort of month that's that's the money end in order to tell the thickness of the skin on a sheet which tell you how hard he is you just just feel his ear and he's Philips tickety's you know that's just proper lettering proper thick the thickness of that ear basically that's gonna tell you how thick the skin is that's right and I'll give you a representation of how hard you know well he's gonna resist the weather well I think he's quite eager boy looks at my arms like okay let's get him out there you want control there Alex yeah I'd sort of just hold in there little rabbit ready to send him in okay then gunshot what Cyril there we are there's no missing is there [Music] there we go who notice and walk around behind them she stands still yeah it's game on doesn't look as if any of them are actually ready at the moment they might be a bit camera shy oh and my healer things ever so much to bring Cyril down I probably will keep you posted on on developments yeah well I look forward to see how it gets on you know be nice to see his offspring [Music] a weeks passed since PETA commissioned the granite trough he's returning to the quarry to see how they've got on is it taking a long time a lot of work Bike Week right week and a half hour old time yeah and after you're talking a lot of hours gone into it yeah as a work of art now Alex and Peter can deliver it to their flock of sheep yeah I think you've so what do you think of the trough then well have to admit in a person sorry I thought I saw Peter that's a birdbath in fact it's uh it's heavier than me so I'm already learning to respect it now we could just put the feed on the ground the dangers are putting hard feet on the ground is that they come into contact with their own droppings and the droppings can carry worms the worms get inside the stomach start eating the food away and then your your animals are basically they become emaciated and with winter sitting in they'll die so the trough is critical for hard feeding oh there we go fantastic [Music] at first I was really skeptical about Peters granite trough endeavors but I have to admit it it's the ideal trough to feed your animals from the field it's it's heavy weight so they're not going to knock it over it's gonna be there for decades so yeah all in all thing that was a good idea it's late September after a long search Alex and Peter have found a smaller Lyme kill that should produce the 10 tons of quicklime they need Colin Richards is a quicklime expert and will supervise the burn so this is it yeah this is it I think this is far more manageable in this kill limestone will be heated to 900 degrees easy to to fire so hopefully at the end of the four days here you'll have some lime to be able to use on your project fantastic Stafford Holmes helps restore the kill and will be in charge loading well these are certainly in much better condition these kilns than the ones we've got down in more well them well they should be having very carefully repaired when were these kilns in operation the last time they were burnt continuously was probably around the 1950s so this is limestone and we need to turn this into quick line that's right and how do we do that we apply heat to it basically and that involves with this kiln creating a fire at the bottom which we start with wood and we put a layer of coal and then layers of limestone layers the coal right up to the top of the kiln well if I suppose the fumes are toxic come on top that's right yes is something which you know you have to respect the whole process you know involves a lot of chemistry but the reality is it's a very caustic material it can burn your skin so we've got to be very sensible about the way we go about this it's Peters job to ensure the critical first layer of limestone is spread evenly [Applause] next a layer of coal then another layer of limestone will be 25 shovels Stafford's concerned that unless the amounts in each layer of precise a constant 900 degrees won't be maintained no Quitline will be produced so we're looking at quite a few layers here aren't we total of 15 layers of fuel and 15 layers of stone so every shovelful is counted in but the level of precision necessary means the loading is taking longer than the boys had hoped by early evening there's barely a ton loaded means out so we've got enough moonlight [Music] it's late we killed fairly hard for loading it by man is taking its toll becoming delirious a real insight into what it must have been like these things I mean they would have had trains delivering materials here I wouldn't be surprised these have to be stacked in this way it would have been with a shovel [Applause] after 18 hours of shovelling 12 tons of limestone and three tons of coal have been loaded there we go that's it all in finally it's time to like the kid remember yeah where do you want it just here yeah getting exciting here and it's starting to go [Music] gases produced by burning limestone include the deadly carbon monoxide Wow there's no battery it's as if somebody down below is stoking some hell fire yeah some hell fire some mysterious brew real is new during the 19th and early part of the century when there was a lot of rural poverty around people who are on the road would come and sort of sleep around the kilns and if the carbon monoxide rendered them unconscious and they turned over rolled into the furnace there was no way back they were roasted alive now they must taken in turns to keep watch on the line kill for three days and three nights [Music] you just really get a sense now what it would have been like to have been lime burning and these kilns over a hundred years ago but as they check the fire below it's clear all's not well we should see glowing cherry red limestone holding there they need to get as much air into the kiln as possible to make it burn hotter if the fire goes out now it would be disastrous back it more well and key wreaths cooking up a treat from the returned sheep's head stew this was gurus and things I'm about to - now the recipe I'm using comes from this fantastic little booklet called the best way the cheapest cookery book in the world it says after preparing the head in the usual way put it in a stew pan with the towel and cover with the water that whole sentence potala sheep's head in the usual way it really points out what a common dish this was for the less well-off I'm surprisingly the head of the Sheep is pretty much the cheapest cut on it so if you've got to buy meat or if you won I've got beasts and you need to sell most of them on this is pretty much the cheapest cut there is quite a lot of meat on it though funny enough in the Edwardian period people were doing this a little bit less than they had before ship technology and refrigeration technology began to make it possible for me to be brought halfway around the world and frozen lamb from Australia and New Zealand began to become the sheep meat of most ordinary Britons rather than our native homegrown shape because we're New Zealand lamb being cheaper you could actually have a lung a joint but the same sort of price as you might have something like a head this sort of idea of getting as much as possible after the really small amount of meat is such a theme through Edwardian cooking people are mostly living on really starchy solid things like large bowls of potato lots of bread lots of oatmeal which is cheap and fills you up because it's really really bland boring diet so a little bit of me even if it's something like a sheep's head just add so much flavor into these really really boring stodgy basics a two days the lime burners have been tending the kiln trying to get as much air into the fire as possible but Collins still concerned the worry is that if there's not enough air going in you can actually go out so we will have to shovel everything out and that yeah failure yeah it would be raking it out we had a big hole to put it in at the top yeah a little want to get it out at the bottom yeah it would all they can do is hope their efforts haven't been in vain there's one sure way to test whether this one stones being burnt or not and that's to add it to water and if it's been burned through it should slate even hasn't been written through it will just remain as a stone okay let's see it going them a lot going on there is that Wow there it goes look at that that's excellent lately the transformation from limestone to quick line to line cutting usually pop around and if the rest of the kilns like that they were in business it's the third day of the burn and all the limestone should have turned into quick lime now the dangerous part unloading the kiln for climb dust reacts violently with moisture so if it touches skin or as inhaled it will burn time for some Edwardian and health and safety as I might need to sweat and awful lot what's doing this because the heat the kill and just the physical activity I've made myself some protective gear so I have my hood people laughs but I think I shall have to last laughs even made myself some mittens long sleeve numbers open here I'm going all out for this can't see a thing last thing goggles I think goggles they're more like sheep there we go I'm ready [Music] [Laughter] joint teddy bear with all that gear then I suppose you should be the one that's right in at the that's dope oh yeah yeah the coalface the burn should have produced ten tons of Quitline all of which must be unloaded by hand it's true the mesh is used to separate the quality quit line from the spoil ah this is killing me probably quite literally so here we go it's the final process of the day these highly caustic substance going into our barrel and then we can get this back to the farm but it's an absolute joy to have got so far here we have it caustic line what we came for away with after three days of back-breaking work they've produced ten tons of quick lime now they must get it onto the field this is what it's all about this is why we did the lime burn to get this on the fields whoa long few days down there boy but it seems that this fellas as new to lime spreading as we are that's it ray [Music] in Edwardian Devon it was often part of a tenant farmers contract to line his fields to neutralize the acidic soil this really does kick start our arable project we're getting the fertilizer on this we'll start flaking we'll work it into the ground and then all of this line will invigorate the organic matter in the soil and create that fertility that we'll need to go our crops will stand there just easy easy easy light rains on the way so they've got to work fast to avoid disaster this is going to start slaking in the back of our our tip car which means the tip car might catch on fire or accounts to these wagons full of quick line-caught and rain like this would Johnny [Music] okay last one with seconds to spare yet they launched of field [Music] the exhausted boys have returned to the cottage it's a chance to catch up with roof over the sheep head stood remarkably well I have to say Ruth tasty I'm not so sure about that I'm not normally queasy about food but I gotta say well I did wonder about taking the head out and not telling you what was in it but then I thought I don't know that big tough boys that I was wrong so tell me about mr. lonely to be honest there wasn't that much to see after the loading other than an awful lot of smoke the stuff we're getting at the bottom seems to be top knot yeah we've got some pretty good lime actually so you please to have the cottage up and running now certainly looks a lot more homely than it did the first time we stepped in here yeah nice and warm as well that Felina that range is really kicking out yeah feel that there I feel that here what happened very good I sort of feel now you know a month under our belts it's all ready to start isn't it we've got all sorts of enterprises we could have start kicking off I mean one of the big things certainly in the Edwardian period was this market garden we've really got to get our heads around that and how we're going to approach that and in the coming months Cheers so we've got our Rick we've got all our hey there you know we are ready to start getting some more livestock in and where we're kind of prepped for winter almost well we've got the team all assembled so Edwardian Britain here we come yeah it's great to be back in the saddle well it's all here it's just a case of bringing it back to life next time on a Davidian farm time to branch out into new ventures market gardening egg production and a beef herd but to make it a success they must be up and running before the frost cuts then they can see in the winter with an Edwardian our [Music]

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 446,292

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: obIWqJlxniY

Length: 58min 48sec (3528 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 02 2020