How The Edwardians Made Cider From Their Apple Trees | Edwardian Farm | Absolute History

here in devon in the tranquil tamar valley is a port that once bustled with industry now more well key has been brought back to life as it would have been during the reign of king edward vii wow look at this place archaeologists alex langlands and peter ginn and historian ruth goodman are going back to the early 20th century to live the lives of edwardian farmers for a full calendar year they'll not just be farming but getting to grips with the rural industries that once brought wealth like fishing oh wow we got something and mining so far they've established themselves as an audience by setting up a home taking a rival of their first livestock and fertilizing the fields ready to grow crops with deadly quicklife [Music] now it's october time to branch out into new ventures like market gardening we've got one to go in there egg production and a beef bird but to make it a success they all need to be up and running before the frost comes then they can see in the winter with halloween [Music] in the edwardian age cheap imports of cereal crops from america meant it was no longer economically viable for british farmers to grow wheat to survive they diversified beef was one of the few things still guaranteed to provide a healthy profit so alex and peter have called on local farmer sarah burt to deliver a herd of cattle [Music] lovely looking breed well these are devons which are also known as red rubies so named after their jewel-like colour of their coat they are fantastic breed as you can see they're actually very quiet and does usually very easy to handle and they're immensely hardy as well they'll tolerate both very hot climates and very cold and wet which is just as well living around here and in the time of the edwardian times it would be very likely that they would have been used for milk as well as for meat so for novice stockman these are really ideal for us absolutely perfect and the great thing about this breed is that they are they almost completely look after themselves very economical the red ruby has been reared and bred in britain since pre-roman times what's going on there then sarah well that's called some bullying that heifer that you see riding the other cow yeah it's a sign that she's come in season that she's ready for mating herself right so she's mimicking the ball she is mimicking the ball and indeed we should get a ball here as soon as we possibly can right the cattle will be put out of pasture until the worst of the winter weather sets in i'm going to hurt the cows now if i step over here they can see out into the field to their new home look at that gorgeous [Music] it's not just the farm that they're stocking with animals the cottage needs a regular source of milk and ruth's got an edwardian solution most of your milk from your cows was going off to market one way or another commercial sort of farming and that often meant that there was next to no milk left in the countryside for families so many people kept a couple of goats in all the scruffy bits that of land and with all the scruffy bits of grazing that wouldn't be good enough for a cow they must be milked twice a day it's a job that's proving a challenge for the novice goat farmers what's she doing no she's nibbling my trousers the thing is i've seen i mean in terms of goats being milked i've seen these stands basically that you get there it's like a tabletop you walk the goat onto yeah and then you're milking them up there having done about two days worth of goat milking i can see exactly why those stands have been invented push so the milk goes into the hole [Laughter] [Music] [Music] your aim's worse than mine you do look funny like that either that is what i would call an uh compromising position peter we've got one word for you dignity that's better that's it yeah i see you relaxed lady [Music] in edwardian times the tamar valley was famed for its huge market gardening industry thousands of acres of fruit vegetables and flowers once grew here in the warm damp sheltered conditions thanks to the railways produce could be in london within 24 hours of being picked the government even produced advice for farmers who are looking to grow cash crops like strawberries board of agriculture and fisheries leaflet number 207 growing off strawberries and it's giving us information on the sort of money we expect to make on that which is really useful it says gross returns may be said to lie between 40 pounds and 60 pounds per acre that is good isn't it against stockholm that's certainly is wheat for the edwardian farmer growing strawberries was very profitable in today's money this would mean earning around 5 000 pounds per acre in this region it was clearly a lucrative crop to grow in the edwardian period was different in every part of the country and around here market gardening was the big thing you know the microclimate here is such that it's warm and wet the earliest part of the year yeah and we're on south facing slope here so these these strawberries are going to be ready and ripe long before anybody else is in the entire country so ready which means we're going to get a premium price for until them half a century ago now the team wants to bring them back to life but it's going to be a race against time the slopes must be cleared and replanted before the first frost if they're to get a crop next june first they're rescuing the few remaining strawberry plants tangled amongst the weeds we're sort of potting all these little tiny new plantlets whilst they're still attached to the parent plant so the plant sends out a runner grows a new little plantlet but while it's growing it's still fed by the main plant as it's starting to root instead of it rooting into the soil we want it to root into our little pots and once it's established then it no longer needs the parent plant and you can snip off the runner they really are ready aren't they if we left it much longer they'd have started rooting in the soil themselves and then lifting them would have damaged the roots yeah would have destroyed the plant you did such a great job in the rain no today this is the life having rescued the strawberry plants the next job is to take the terraces back to bare earth it's a chance for the farm's latest recruits to earn their heat right this one looks particularly overgrown here look at these tasty weeds you'll love it we're just going to uh stake out our goats essentially it's just got so overgrown and what we want them to do is do a little bit of hard work for us first just eat back all the plants so when it comes to turning it in in the mid-winter it's just a little bit easier machines don't clear land anywhere near as well as animals do they not nearly as good no while the goats get to work the boys are taking delivery of an important new resident to breed cattle they need a bull hi paul hi paul and local farmer paul hutchins is lending them his prized specimen oh here he is shelimo king david ii he's uh ruby red devon bull the duke of bedford he owned the majority of the land in this area and uh he believed that they were the best cattle for small farms right so in terms of sort of authenticity these are the the sorts of cows that the duke of bedford would have been promoting on these very farms here exactly he has got aristocratic lines being king david the second right okay so uh maybe he's a friend of our duke come on good boy come on yeah i'm on come on hey hey hey he's coming through coming through good boy goodbye hit your back with your girls need that gay oh god come on good boy come on come on out the hedge oh no i think he's gonna go i'm just keeping an eye on him you guys go in there i'll keep an eye on him [Music] come on david come on [Music] that's good they're saying just calm it now just calm it right there where's that food where's the food [Music] you didn't need us all right boys here we are through the gate come on now boy good boy david wow see that wasn't such a trauma [Music] although there was little money to be made from growing cereal crops in edwardian britain they were still cultivated on a small scale as animal feed in this part of devon the acidity of the soil makes it infertile a huge problem for farmers alex and peter have dealt with this by neutralizing it with quick line this scientific approach will ensure the soil is healthy enough to grow crops and in the edwardian age growing crops still relied on good old horsepower the farm has two shires and it will take their combined strength to drag the plow farmhand megan elliott's showing the boys the ropes right well this is our introduction really to the heavy horses here at the farm and uh it's a fantastic opportunity for myself and peter to get to grips with working with two horses two horse work we've done we've always had someone sort of holding our hands so this time we're we're hopefully gonna go alone and see if we can get these two to work together and of course they're working with two complete novices in peter and myself do you have any set commands that you use i do yeah to the left when you're driving them yeah um you need to say come by come by come by and then to go around to the right let's say come around come over a million shires worked the land and they were still used in farming as late as the 1950s it's just amazing to think that they've been selectively bred for that very purpose isn't it yeah it's amazing the power you know i mean 10 men can hold them down if they really wanted to go yeah if there's any hope of getting a good crop it will be vital for alex and peter to gain the trust of these equine engines see they want to walk on the ground i'm hooked up yeah i'm a little bit more nervous now [Music] it's going to be fun peter i don't know depends on your definition whoa they're used to being in the lanes pulling carts around so of course they're getting out here they've got no weight behind them and they've got this wide open space and they're a little bit they're a little bit excited they might be sensing my nervousness but i'm even more nervous now than i was about 10 minutes ago there are alex another go they'll be fine good luck right look at your hands now [Music] yep steady weighing up to a ton shire horses are capable of pulling double their body weight and could easily wrench a farmer's arm from it come on that's it good boy almost had a straight line there good boy princey it's quite nerve-wracking but there is a definite thrill to work in horses like this to be honest to me this is a much greater thrill than driving any internal combustion engines so come by come on come by good boy it's hard enough doing things with one horse but doing things for two horses just complicates the situation and then we've got to factor in the machinery such as the ploughing we've got to get straight lines because we don't get straight lines we can't weed between our crops and then when we come to harvest the crops we've got even more problems so we've got to get the basics right so we've got to get this stuff in the field right now absolutely on the money before we start powering up this field it's going to be quite a task next summer the odorian farmers will need to draw on extra labor to harvest the crops these workers were paid insider and although this was outlawed in 1887 ciders still remained a vital part of the rural economy and farms were judged on the quality of their scrumpy alex and peter are keen to follow in this tradition but first they need a decent crop of cider apples about a ton so they're checking out more well and keys cider orchards well we've certainly got some very large apple trees but they seem remarkably bereft of any apples no apples no apples no apples i mean these might be coming to the end of their days which might account for the total enough lack of apples should we see if we can find at least one can you see there's a little little red thing up in that tree i don't know it's either a robin red breast or a single cider apple so at least we know they are apple trees at the peak of the drink's popularity there were over 350 varieties of cider apple available all right here we are oh one handful it doesn't overly healthy does it i think we're gonna have to buy some apples in peter let me eat it man the only one we've got it's a real blow actually because we couldn't possibly face the summer without our regular head of cider could we no of course not alex and peter's apple harvest may have failed but ruth funny looking things aren't they she's got a crop of local apples that she wants to preserve so they can enjoy them over the winter they're called sweet larks and they're not that sweet but they're not sour they're not like a crab apple although they look small as a crab apple and the thing that's interesting about these though as well as being a local variety is the recipes that local people put them to these are pickled i've never come across people pickling apples anywhere else but around here it's a tradition you just peel them and then pickle them rather like you would a pickled onion but with a bit of sugar in them in with the vinegar as well i suppose you know along with your cheese i think old apple does sound quite nice doesn't it actually it's quite nice thwarted in their side apple quest alex and peter are taking drastic measures well i suppose being down in the west country we can't be without our cider and uh with the woeful harvest from our own orchards we've had to go out and purchase ourselves a ton of cider apples and we're just taking them up to the press so hopefully come spring we'll have some fantastic scrumpy of our own alex and peter are taking their apples down river to a cider press at cateal in cornwall navigating the winds and tides of the tamar needs an experienced touch the boys have called on boatman joshua preston he's been sailing down the tamar all his life i suppose the best way to move anything around these very very steep valleys is via the river via the river exactly yeah not from plymouth with dot dung limestone yeah and then produce of course from the market gardens up here straight down to davenport market basically every industry in this valley for market gardening the mining and farming was reliant on one river a highway at its peak almost a thousand vessels a year passed along the tamar at cateal they're met by cyber press manager chris groves here we go thank you so much joshua that's good yeah anytime i can help with that i think we'll take you up on that offer and we'll be here to help you cheers joshua thanks so much see you later we'll see you shortly cider is simply made by fermenting apple juice so the first job is to press the apples to extract the juice using a press this type of press dates as far back as the 1600s this is an absolute monster this it is yeah it's a bit of a beast of a press um yeah quite large then we've got the large beam at the top and the single screw so yeah be good to get it up and running well we've got the best part of uh about a tonne of apples okay brilliant yeah so what do you want to do with them well in the first processor we're gonna have to mill the apples so should we get them pulled yep let's get going milling the apples will turn them into what's known as pumice well it looks like the pony's got the meal working properly here you can see the two stones with the teeth in there to grind up the apples so it's now a case of just very very slowly starting to introduce the first few apples there we are just to get the pony used to the sensation of having something to pull against in devon apple thomas is traditionally bound in layers of straw to make a package or cheese ready to be pressed the word cheese originally referred to anything that was wrapped up and then what we're gradually going to do all right it's just to build up a layer radiating out from the um the center of the of the cheese right and what does this straw do it just contains it and it allows us to build the cheese up to it to a good height so we can fit all your apples in in one go so we're going to build this up in layers aren't we yes this is just going to be our our first base layer and then with the apples and that will hopefully get at least six layers going on this that's probably enough straw now we're ready to start putting on our first layer of apple promise we'll why both one is actually horrible to taste and it's hard to think how something so horrible to eat can turn into something so delightful on the palate ten months down the line but proper cider apples you see have the right mixture of sugars and of yeast and of tannins as well and it's that proper balance between the three which means that when this goes into the barrel after the press and starts to ferment it produces a sweet tasting cider a good scrumpty cider so we just plonk this in the middle a smooth layer of pumice is built up on the straw to ensure the pressure from the press will be evenly distributed so what we want to do with the straw is we just want to encourage it to break in the right place so if you just hold your hands um out flat and then you just fold it over like this and then you just use a bit of the pumice just to hold that down or push it into the pulp yeah that's it keep the edges as even as possible so that it's not too thin in places where it might leak out your side looks a lot neater than mine well i'm not sure about that we're almost there should we um start uh putting on the next layer of straw yeah i'll grab some straw roots pickle the sweet lark apples and now there must be a box to be stored for winter so i'm pouring the pickle onto my sweet logs so this was just two pints of vinegar then i boiled up with a pound of sugar and i poached the apples very gently in the vinegar as it was cooking and then as soon as the apples began to soften i'll whisk them out and let them cool and then i boiled the vinegar on for another half an hour so that it reduced somewhat so the liquor is quite sticky it should taste like like a sweet pickle sort of like solid chutney or something [Applause] [Music] six layers of thomas have been built now the cheeses are ready to be pressed the head block alone weighs half a ton allowing the screw to deliver several tons of pressure you can really see it coming out now peter look at the volume cider look at the color of it apples are 80 water so a ton will produce up to 100 gallons of cider it's really flowing being highly acidic cider is naturally germ free and many times in history it was safer to drink than water it really is remarkable isn't it how this straw is acting like a bag and holding all of the apple in i've never seen that before that's brilliant so simple all right the tommy bar yeah excellent it's quite a large one so over the next few days the pressure will be gradually increased to get the most out of the promise putting some serious pressure on it it would have been a sort of three or four day process right for a proper farmhouse scrumpy exactly yeah you have to be very patient with these things perfect here we go [Applause] the apple juice is poured into barrels where it will be left for over six months to ferment and mature to produce the siding excellent [Music] that you're taking over when we get to the tamar when we get to start going uphill we're still in cornwall in an age before domestic refrigeration the only way to store meat for more than a few days was to preserve it so yeah so you're cutting the skin in the cottage ruth and her daughter eve are preserving a leg using salt when you're salting a leg of pork you're trying to get it to preserve you're trying to get the salt into it before infection can get inside and one of the things that makes it easier makes it more reliable as a process is to take the bone out so salt obviously as it moves into the meat preserves the meat but if it moves too fast it can burn it salt sucks the moisture out of the flesh drying it out to preserve it ruth's using a mixture of different sized salt crystals to penetrate the meat at different speeds ensuring all the tissue is preserved and i shall be wanting all of that sugar she also adds molasses which helps draw out the moisture and some cloves for flavor the salt mix is always called a pickle i mean nowadays we tend to think pickle just means vinegar but the old word pickle meant anything that you preserved something in all right let's just put him into the salting trough okay and rub it firmly into the meat but you do want to make sure that you get the mix in every little tiny nook and cranny if you feel the finer salt is already sinking into the meat and you're left with the big crystals on the surface i mean it's only been on a minute and already changes are happening yeah it's getting in the way applying weight speeds up the drying process clunk so we should see dripping oh it is yeah they're tipping already it's dripping already excellent right bones can go in the stock pot okay trotter that's for tea joshua's returned to katil key to transport the cider back to the farm i don't think i've ever worked so hard for a pint of cider peter no well we're all looking forward to that the barrel of cider weighs getting on for a quarter of a ton so joshua's craning it into his boat using a barrel hitch once or not every boatman would have known steady guys precious cargo there look very precious cargo we're not talking about peter either the eagle has landed we've got the wind on us you know here the wind on the tamar is unpredictable so sailors often relied on their oars rather than their sails to navigate the river but they were at the mercy of the river's tides joshua i feel like it's uh it's it's our side of it that maybe we should be doing some of the hard work here so uh is it time for a little uh rowing tutorial i would think so yeah um just give the the or just a little twist as she comes out right [Music] so basically all passage on this river and all the industries that rely on it are dictated to by the tides exactly right you know you work the tide up and you work the tide out again right if conditions aren't right we don't sail [Music] and are these the remnants of market gardens back over my shoulder there yes these are old edwardian market gardens yep look at that peter paver up and away we go and we're bound for santiago do you know the rest of that one well oh fab it's huge good as well as the lag of pork ruth's also got a side of bacon from the slaughtered pig to preserve it for the winter she's using a different method of preservation smoking a technique that dates back to prehistoric times the winter coming on it's important to have quite big stocks of preserved food of one sort or another and of course smoking is a fabulous method brilliant that is a perfect fit it's gonna be fairly solid when you kill a pig a pig is a big beast you can't possibly eat it all fresh in the few days you've got before it starts to turn so you've got to sort of divide the beast up and you eat those things you can't preserve so the first things you eat are things like the liver and so forth and then everything else you sort of have to get into a sort of a keeping pattern a holding pattern some things you eat fairly quickly but a salted and smoked joint will keep for months and months and months there you go you'll flip your bacon it's going to do a number of slices this isn't it and is that hanging about this right that's perfect right in the middle lets the smoke get all rounded yeah now to start with i want the fire out here nowhere near the barrel i want it out the front because to start a fire you're going to get lots of flame coming off it and flame is no good for smoking meat because i don't want to cook the meat i want it to smoke and that means that the smoke around the meat has to be cold not hot so this little hot fire i'm already going to start damping down smoking the meat not only dries it it introduces the preservative formaldehyde into the flesh and wards off insects keeping it maggot free so it's a balancing act you don't want to put the fire out but on the other hand you don't want too much fire that's good temperature is it it's nice and cool in there it's cool good that's what we want i'll defy any bacteria to live in that it's been two weeks since alex and ruth rescued the strawberry plants from the abandoned market garden now these new plants must be separated from the mother plant but will they have taken from the time it was established in 1883 the royal sovereign strawberry became the breed of choice for market gardeners in the tamar valley these very very young plants i could force on in the greenhouse but to be honest if i'm to have a big commercial edwardian style market garden i'm going to have to buy in the best part of 300 plants because it was so critical really in terms of money making to have as many plants as possible for that very very small window in the early season really it was something of a gold rush for edwardian market gardeners if you could get your strawberries up to london before any other producer then you stood a chance of getting the best prices but of course this means that all your eggs are very much in the same basket and if it goes wrong you get pests in you get disease you get mildew and everything will come crashing down around you and all that year's worth of work will go to waste on the market garden slopes the goats have cleared the bigger weeds but now it's down to back-breaking manpower to clear the rest [Music] on slopes like these you can't get machinery in it's just too steep you try to get a horse to pull a plow up and down here a horse would struggle you wouldn't be able to get any traction and pull and you'd also tumble the soil down the hill much too quickly so it's back to the ancient hand methods nobody's ever under any illusions that market gardening is easy but when you just look at the size of ground to be covered all by hand with next and nothing to help it's quite a prospect [Music] with the market gardening endeavour underway and king david the prized bull getting to grips with his new herd of ruby reds alex is keen to set up another new edwardian enterprise chickens have always been a part of the uh the british farmyard scene but it's really in the edwardian period that they go from being a kind of hangar on around the farm yard to a proper business and an enterprise in their own right so me being a big fan of chickens i'm looking forward to having my own paltry keysight concern he's come across an edwardian photograph giving a clue about the chicken enterprise that was once here at moore welum i'm trying to think of a location for my poultry concern and in this photograph there's actually one here located just beyond these cottages here and there just behind it is the poultry concern so what i want to do is i want to go back into the edwardian period and i want to recreate this poultry concern here just alongside this cottage in the corner of a field he's found a couple of chicken huts very like the ones in the photograph they've been given a tip off that this old chicken hutch is uh is spare and free to be salvaged so uh just have a look at its condition i'm sure we can get a good chicken out of this ah peter this is looking good not bad is it looks fairly solid in pretty good shape actually just come round the end yeah look at these nest boxes no bone dry absolutely bone dry well not anymore but no but that's a good sign isn't it a fantastic sign having dismantled the huts the boys are taking them down to the keysight the same location the edwardian enterprise was in we're against it really it's already getting getting cold now and you know one of the things you'd want from your commercial poultry enterprise is for your birds to be laying into late autumn and early winter because that's where the real market for eggs would have been in the edwardian period so we've got to waste no time in getting this thing set up getting the birds in getting them happy and getting them laying ah okay so there's the nesting box she's doing spin round we're just [Music] straight on top yeah yeah [Music] right so your portrait concerned it looks a bit kind of eastern block circa 1953 or something it's not looking like the most industrious egg producing meat producing enterprise at the moment is it to expand the enterprise alex has ordered a consignment of new birds they look lovely be good to get some uh new blood into the flock [Music] thank you lovely oh here we go chickens welcome to your new home there you go let's get these fellas in the hutch we'll have to lock them in there for a good two or three days i think get them used to their home so you know where yes yep and you go boy go on and you can okay here we go he's a little bird as well him so he will definitely in the cottage the pork's been salting for over a week and most of the liquid has been drawn out of course on an edwardian farm the chances are that we wouldn't have kept this for our own consumption we'd have sold it a ham sold to a urban family could buy you an awful lot of bread and jam outside the bacon's been smoked for three days it too is ready to be stored for winter smoking away merrily so i'll just hang this up in the cottage now and as long as we keep the flies off it it should be pretty good for the last few weeks alex and peter have been practicing driving the two shires prince and tom together come on yeah tom come on okay whoa whoa princey alex is looking pretty good with the horses back up whoa stand good lads right now they're using the horses to pull a harrow to spread the heaps of lime fertilizer across the arable field come on boys that's it boys come on good lads good lads good boys come on good lad i have this really really bad thing that i do is i try and drive them like i'm trying to drive a mini metro you know and you're correcting yourself all the time and actually it's about picking a point on the horizon and aiming for that and if it's slightly off course bring them around more like an oil tanker or a battleship rather than a you know a quick change come on it's the most important thing to get to grips with and i you know i'm incredibly anxious about it because it's it's not something you learn overnight and it's maybe a bit arrogant of both peter and myself to think that we can but we've got to have a go at it we've really got to have a you know a really a stab at it and see if we um see if we can get close walk on walk on walk on good boys [Music] not all the line will be going on the field to the edwardian farmer it was a wonder product as cement lime wash even disinfectant but as quick lime it's highly caustic to make it safe it must be added to water or slaked to produce harmless lime putty it is having quite a violent reaction and the steam that is coming off this this is going to get up to roasting temperatures in the next few days so we just need to get enough water in there we've got two barrels worth this is going to serve us really well for any building projects we have on later in the year you can really feel the heat coming off this can't you yep this is sort of barbecue territory isn't it pretty much the line will be left for a few days to continue to slake thank the lord for diy stores peter good the slate lime putty must now be stored in a bowl in edwardian times barrels or casks transported produce across the british empire they played a vital role in british economic life so the barrel maker or cooper was a man of status once there were thousands of coopers in britain now there are just a handful peter's travelled to saint fagan's in cardiff to meet the only cooper left in wales hi andrew pleasure to meet you he's not using any form of template you haven't made any measurements at all this is all my eyes it's a lot going on and and i think it has to be passed on you have to physically do it to understand it aluminiums plastics other materials have come on board which have killed off so many aspects of the craft which is which is a shame yeah because once you lose the knowledge and the know-how you don't bring it back the barrel's strength will come from its curved shape so the straight wooden staves must be bent right so what do you do now what i got in my hand is called a swab right which is basically a bit of sacking on a piece of wood um but it's an ideal way of actually getting water into the inside of the cask and that water will eventually turn into steam because of the heat and that will go into the pores of the wood and over a period of time uh we will be able to make the timber hot enough and pliable now we can draw all the staves together the only thing holding the barrel together will be these iron hoops we'll start driving this hoop which is on the middle here yep down towards the bottom so uh let me say hold the driver like that right so make sure it protects your knuckles if you slips off the hoop just let it go okay okay and we walk around quietly okay the steam has softened the staves so they can be bent into the familiar curved barrel shape held in place by the hoops yet again i've had the pleasure to witness a craft that sort of takes years to learn and a lifetime to perfect [Music] i mean all of this process is done by eye but the final result is a work of art hey there sir well done [Music] back at the farm the chicken concern is up and running and the new birds are settling into life in their new home one of the ways in which a poultry concern could make a lot of money for you is if you could encourage your birds to lay eggs throughout the winter because traditionally birds when it gets colder and there's not much as much food around they tend to go off laying so i'm taking some tips here from the board of agriculture and fisheries and these are a fantastic set of leaflets published in 1915. so i'm just looking here at a leaflet that's actually entitled winter egg production what's going to be critical is that they've got something in their bellies which makes them think i've got plenty of food store i can carry on producing eggs the government issued leaflets to help farmers maximize profits here they suggest making a nutritious feed to sustain them through the winter greens wheat maize and bran are mixed with a less appetizing ingredient critical element to their diet if they are going to lay is shell or grit okay because otherwise if they haven't got access to enough shell what they start doing is they start eating their own eggs to get the shell and that is disaster the danger is if i feed my chickens this but they're still not happy for some reason and that could be because the huts aren't sheltered enough for because you know there's a fox running around every night you know if they're not happy all this feed will be a waste so now for the moment of truth to see if the chickens will take to my uh winter feed mix [Music] it's feed time and i've got a special little mix for you we are like that straight from the bucket [Music] hungry little birds i think i can safely say that's been a success [Music] peter's brought the barrel back to the farm ready to load with the lime putty this lime has done most of its slaking it's been a really violent reaction when we added the water you can see it has burnt all the wood timber that we put in here but this line will continue to slake and the longer you leave the lime the better quality it will be this is really really good stuff if i do say so myself [Music] this lime putty will last in this barrel for a thousand years if not longer [Applause] [Music] so this is one barrel of lime ready to store and the shape of this barrel means you can really steer it quite easily rock it one way or another it's late october and alex's chicken concern is finally paying off it seems the keysight chicken huts and the nutritious feed as a winning combination for egg production alex is keen to capitalize how can i help you well i wonder if you care to engage with me in an enterprise the hens are doing such a great job the team are getting more eggs than they can sell it's great this i mean a harvest already everything else will be known so far you know the market gardening bringing in the beef cattle we won't see the result for months and months and months this already a small income ruth's preserving the surplus eggs in lime and water this stops air getting taller so they'll stay fresh for longer the lime kills bacteria by having the lime in it i've got a sterile solution that's going to stay sterile however long the eggs are in it [Music] the eggs will be stored in the larder together with the rest of the preserved food it's important the larder stays dry a challenge when living in damp conditions next to a river ruth's found a solution in an edwardian household manual so the best way a book of household hints and recipes and it's got a piece a wholesome pantry a small box of unslated lime kept in the pantry will absorb all impurities and keep the air beautifully dry and sweet well that makes absolute sense unselect or quick lime is trying to draw all the water to it and that will draw it out of the atmosphere hopefully keep the door shut my pantry therefore will be a dry place instead of a damp place looks like we might actually have something to eat this winter the end of october will bring the first frosts of winter in the market garden the strawberries must be planted before the ground hardens if they're to get a crop next june in the hope of ensuring a bumper harvest alex has brought in hundreds of extra strawberry plants to supplement those rescued from the slopes hey these are strawberries yep we've got a fair few hundred here gosh we are just gonna have to weed like absolute heroes to prepare the ground for these i think we're gonna have to start casting the net a little further a little wider and see if we can find some some soft fruit growers in the valley market gardeners would employ dozens of workers not just to plant but also to weed and harvest throughout the year now we're looking for something that's really thick yeah so yeah that's right ron luke's family has been growing strawberries here in the tamar valley for generations and you said this is what your family is to do oh my family do a lot of these yes yes we sell them all the southwest of england we used to grow about half a million strawberry plants [Music] it's really labor intensive work very labor-intensive but of course if you get a good crop of strawberries it's very rewarding because it has a high cash crop isn't it yeah does bring in a lot of money so so it's worth having labor yes it is planting the strawberries is an exacting job the rose must be 18 inches apart and the plants firmly bedded into the soil my father used to come along when we were planting he'd do his tests here a one leaf test you used to call it you had to catch all one leaf and pull it and it fit the plant came back the ground you hadn't planted it properly you were in trouble no trying again [Music] here we go last one for me i think this is the biggest of the bunch there we are done so we've got what five to six months to wait yeah so it all depends on how early the spring is isn't it oh it's quite exciting really [Music] with their new enterprises up and running the team have earned a celebration it's october the 31st so tonight they're having a special halloween meal and alex has brought something for the table well it does give me great pleasure to eat my own chickens but whatever you do i'm sure it'll taste delicious i'll wait and see [Music] nice firm skin chicken was the sort of dish you had for special days without battery farming of course it took a lot more to raise the chicken for the table and therefore they cost more edwardian britain chicken was really a rich man's meat most ordinary people didn't have chicken on a regular basis for the edwardian farmer a dish like this would have stretched to several meals and then the whole chicken goes on top i want the whole chicken because obviously i'm trying to get maximum flavor out of them if you use a modern supermarket chicken to cook something like this it's pretty insipid it's not very exciting food [Music] but if you're using a bird that's been running around that's a bit older had time to develop a bit of flavor not only does this sort of cooking make it something delicious when it would be a bit stringy if it was roasted but it actually makes a dish that's really nice it's a set of stronger poultry flavours that modern techniques have sort of made us forget [Music] traditionally halloween marked the first day of winter hi thank you it's a heck of a nice out there they've invited an expert in english folklore professor this was the great festival that opened winter the most terrifying of all the seasons it's the one in which most people died here in west devon this is the season you start to feel dartmore stretching out its mighty claws towards you in the night this is the season when the wild geese come over and their voices in the voice the wind wailing about the moor you hear the gabriel hounds the witch towns the hounds of hell dark and with fiery eyes and tongues coming for you in the night and as you pass the abandoned mine shaft the more and hear the air trapped sobbing within you hear the voices the souls in hell rising in torment that's where you know christmas is on its way [Music] so what are we having tonight we're having one of alex's chickens what is actually [Music] it's the moment of truth for alex's chicken so i've got no idea what he's going to taste like if you'll just excuse fingers there chris excellent thank you it's um full of body uh but but also for the flavor right was that a compliment i think it might have bitten i could mean it was a bit stringy actually after dinner it's time for halloween [Music] this game is absolutely vile it's pure sadism the idea is to see if you can bite off one of the apples by getting your teeth right through and the reason why the candles are there is if you drag the uh apple down too much then the hot wax will spill over your face [Laughter] has he got it [Music] the reason why all these games tend to happen so much around halloween is staying cheerful in the face becoming dark and cold there's an enormous amount of laughter this evening and that's the greatest tradition of all [Music] next time on edwardian new technology and new ways manufacturing

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 270,770

Rating: 4.9107065 out of 5

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: dqx511UWtj4

Length: 58min 43sec (3523 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020