Surviving Winter On A Victorian Farm | Victorian Farm Full Series Part 1 | All Out History

here in shropshire is a farm that's frozen in time lost in victorian rural england now a unique project will bring it back to life as it would have been in the 1880s such an amazing piece of connection ruth goodman alex langlands and peter ginn are taking up the challenge of living as victorian farmers for a full calendar year from the depths of winter to the warmth of summer they'll wear the clothes eat the food and experience the day-to-day life of rural victorians [Music] they'll rear victorian breeds of animals they really are that's the first one you've actually delivered is it alex hello sweeties they'll grow crops fingers crossed i'll get it right and i won't look like too much of an idiot and get to grips with the crafts and skills of the age this was a time of agricultural revolution in britain but the industrialization of farming would wipe out centuries of traditional skills thankfully there are a select few who still keep them alive this is going to encourage the tree to fall in the direction we wanted to go that's certainly the theory with their help the team are about to turn back the clock to rediscover a lost world [Music] but first before winter sets in they must restore their dilapidated farm cottage i've never used anything like this so crops using only horsepower whilst dealing with the perennial problem of the british weather unfortunately it's just not working out for us today the problem is is it's just so wet and take charge of livestock learning shepherding skills the hard way a nightmare doesn't bode well for the year they'll be getting to grips with every aspect of life on the victorian farm [Music] it's the first of september ruth alex and peter arrive at their victorian farm this is the way to travel isn't it ruth goodman specializes in domestic history she'll run the cottage and be responsible for the dairy and poultry the victorian period is a really really interesting moment in history it's a time of most enormous social change there's new ways of feeding ourselves there's new ways of clothing ourselves there's new ways of housing ourselves there's new ways of transporting ourselves you know we all base our modern living on the things that came out of this great turmoil and experimentation what's in this one oh this is mostly cooked archaeologist alex langlands will be responsible for growing crops and rearing the animals it's about getting up first thing in the morning and coming in you know when the sun goes down it's about spending the time outside it's about eating fresh ingredients growing your own ingredients i mean it really is about going back to a way of life that i think many people today would love the opportunity to do peter ginn also an archaeologist is keen to get to grips with the steam and horsepower technology of the era we all know about the big events in history i want to know about the day-to-day living within that context there are massive changes in industry and also there are massive changes in agriculture because it's such a moment of change you've got the old and the new sitting right alongside each other so you've got ancient crafts that are almost unchanged for a millennia sitting right alongside a time of mass production their farm is on the acton-scott estate which stretches across one and a half thousand acres of shropshire countryside it's been home to thomas stackhouse acton's family since 12 55. mr acton is a victorian farming enthusiast and has spent his life collecting old agricultural tools and machinery his son rupert manages the estate and will be their land agent for the year ahead goodness just a bit daunted yeah you ring the bell first stop for the farmers is acton scott hall [Music] hello hello hello how are you very good indeed hi i'm i'm peter peter nice to meet you hello hello i'm alex yes excellent hello hello this is little florence hello florida she's rather shy in the victorian age this was a busy working farm with 15 acres of land it was abandoned 50 years ago but little has changed here for a century oh it's quite a sight isn't it i'm afraid so oh wow look at that these barns will be home to their cows horse and pigs needs a bit of a clean he's going to need a bit of a clean isn't it yeah home to 100 spiders although abandoned long ago amazingly the victorian water pump still works i spent many happy hours here as a child pumping water for the for the cattle days above the cow shed is the tool loft untouched for decades now be very very careful there's a good range of tools oh fantastic this one is a castrating knife i think that's definitely a boy job and it's it's you know it's a milking stool no other stool is that high i mean it's absolutely perfect isn't it all has three legs yeah exactly there's some horse medication up here as well you've thought of everything it's not still in there wow now the bottle still seals the one minute cure for gripes or threat in horses oh my gosh it's still sealed oh flipping egg wow there's so much here so much to take in this place is amazing it's almost like it was left yesterday yeah well okay a long slightly rusty yesterday time capsule that we've just uncovered with everything here we've just got to get it back in shape make it easier to get to the door the team will not just be farming but also living cooking and eating like rural victorians yes rupert has found them a small farm workers cottage uninhabited since the 1950s i believe one of these keys fits this door but i'm not quite sure which one it is oh there we go there we are wonderful oh wow fantastic in need of a bit of uh work i'm afraid i'll take it this can't have been lived in for quite a while no it hasn't been lived in for 50 years 50 years at the heart of the victorian cottage is the coal range this was the way most people cooked until the 1920s when gas and electricity began to replace coal it's not only essential for cooking but provides hot water and heats the house but this range is in a sorry state we're gonna have to get this sorted absolutely first thing yeah we're just not gonna do anything until we've got a decent range i mean the rest we can live without but we can't live without the range i'm worried about cooking on a coal range i've never done it before so that's gonna be quite an important thing for me because if i can't crack it we're going to eat horrible food all year which is not very nice so shall i show you upstairs show you where you'll be billeted although dilapidated the cottage is structurally sound no it's not too bad up here i think it's pretty good he says a good shot of the dead burst in the window itself right that's it moving in as soon as possible guiding the farmers through the year ahead is the celebrated book of the farm by henry stevens first published in 1844. this kind of book i mean it's it's absolutely priceless and it gives you a breakdown about essentially everything you would need to do throughout the year and it also gives you the science behind it as well all types of breeds i mean there's literally absolutely everything here what is most interesting about these publications though is their mixture of the old and the new it often refers to sort of ancient ways of doing things but without quite knowing the exact science behind it this was the bible for farmers coming to terms with the industrialization of farming in the 19th century it's also got the new as well some of the sort of cutting edge technology of the time and i'm just looking here at some of this um ploughing with a steam engine with these huge cumbersome steam engines but seem to be and it says here absolute cutting edge technology [Music] turning this theory into practice will be an enormous challenge one of the tasks i've been uh trusted with throughout the project is going to be sort of managing our arable concern it's it's really a part of the project where i just can't afford to fail and of course for farmers back in the late 19th century it's just not an option you know really really anxious about it but at the same time really excited the farm has three acres of arable land on some of it they hope to grow a cereal crop like wheat or barley at the moment the fields covered in grass so first it must be plowed to return it to bare earth guiding alex is britain's most award-winning plowman jim elliot hi jim oh yeah there are these lovely fellas then this is lion he's an eight-year-old shire right and uh this is prince he's a 13 year old irish draft and they work well together then yeah yeah they do so what do you think of the field then jim field looks fine um quite a bit of grass on but we should be able to plow it down and and put a bit of fertility into the soil you're confident yeah as long as there's no big stones good i'm glad you're confident two back prince chewbacca oh whoa whoa slowly now this really is your money maker and this is really important especially for a farm of our size you've really got to turn out a good cereal crop because that's really that's where you're going to get your cash during the 19th century the population of britain grew from 10 million to 40 million to feed the masses agriculture had to undergo a revolution by industrializing simple wooden plows used for centuries were superseded by high-tech iron machines leading the market were ransoms of ipswich in the 1840s they came up with this the yorkshire light so great was the design it was still being manufactured a century later fantastic bit of kit this is the ransom's plow and this is one of these mass-produced plows what you have in our in sort of earlier period early 19th century is you've still got your wooden plows and they're being made in local workshops but with ransoms mass-produced and they're being sent out to all over the country so you'll be using one of these north of scotland all the way down south of england these high-tech plows revolutionized arable farming the earth was plowed to a consistent depth improving the quality of the land and increasing the crop yield and in much the same way that you see a modern tractor come on prince got all sorts of gadgets on it you know hydraulics levers all sorts of it's very much the same here having to adjust everything just by very very small fractions of inches at the cottage ruth and peter are beginning the restoration let's get rid of these birds first [Music] the first job is to clean the bedroom it's in a pretty neglected state this room um the walls the plaster's there mostly but if we just start at the top and just take it as slowly as we can down this has been 50 years with dust 50 years of spiders 50 years of an insect and animal paradise so yeah it's absolutely filthy this is i think a much bigger job than i thought initially as they remove half a century of dust the state of the plaster becomes clear as i thought it was it's going to take quite a bit well if it needs to come off it needs to come off i think the more we look the more we're finding we're gonna have to do downstairs in the kitchen there's an even more pressing issue the range so this is henley cottage and this is our range i don't know what you think about it peter's called on paul arrowsmith an expert in victorian building yes could be repaired but it's a big job not worth it it's very small opening now do you need to do much cooking we need to do a fair bit of cooking yes all right i don't know i'm not sure if this is actually the original fireplace because we've obviously got this here on the adjacent wall is evidence of a fireplace bricked up long ago only the wooden lintel is visible it's a lot bigger area so i'm sure it goes back further so you can get a much bigger range in i suppose the only way to find out is actually to get rid of some of this stuff the old range will be discarded and a new bigger range installed here peter is hoping that beyond the rubble the chimney will still be intact [Music] any cottage hasn't been used for 50 years and moreover this is a bricked-up chimney um so this is all rubble that has been used to fill up this fireplace when it was abandoned and moved across to there to burn the range draws air from the room out through the chimney but if the chimney is blocked the air won't flow so the coal won't burn when they block this chimney up they've capped it with a stone so that we can still use the fireplace in the bedroom above at the moment that stone is lingering precariously up that chimney so they're trying to force it down so it doesn't fall on us while we're working upstairs in the bedroom paul's attempting to shift the offending stone it's coming for more of that please more of that that's good once the rubble's cleared the chimney is revealed in all its glory you can see the shape tapering as it goes up to draw the smoke up we've had a shoe come out of here and um a salt hole here i mean these houses would have been damp this is one of the few places you could keep your salt dry so it would still be granulated we're going to sweep the chimney with these drainage rods well as you can see this is just the beginning i think there's going to be tons and tons of debris coming down got all the birds nests out of there and you can see daylight just waiting for the range now [Music] in the fields alex's early optimisms turned to gloom and what we're finding at this end of the field is that we've got a lot of boulders here a lot of stones and what's happening is the sheer is hitting these stones and it's kicking the plow out if it's a bit wetter you see it could just roll it over the ground is just quite you know quite dry right and we have it rain overnight but i don't know if it's gone in but it's been dry for yeah two months almost that's going to create real problems here yeah it it'll the photo won't want to roll off smoothly it'll want to break in lumps that might be our worst concern but we'll have to give it a try i'm slowly losing confidence here jim no no there's not many all the many problems you're pointing out alex is coming to terms with the challenges that faced the victorian farmer failure of a wheat crop back in the victorian period would spell disaster for any farmer i mean it really would be a case of of going from sort of struggling to get by to being to being broke essentially and you might even find yourself and your family in the workhouse i've got to have a gun myself because obviously farmer of my stature would know how to plow back in the late 19th century so i'm a bit anxious here because if i this up then jim's got a lot of work to do to rectify it what i want you to do is keep the footer wheel up against this edge here walk on good boy right um keep the land wheel on the ground yeah you can put a little bit of pressure on the right-hand handle and that helps turn the fur better as long as this wheel doesn't come off the ground unless you'll lose your depth how's it doing jimmy you're doing fine yeah you're inside no no you don't have someone tell you if you're not i don't look at my handiwork it's fine we'll catch it on the way around yeah it's just mesmerizing watching it turn over steady enough good luck victorian farmers plowed an acre a day walking 11 miles from dawn till dusk but the work is back breaking after a couple of hours alex is exhausted [Music] a little bit more [Music] thank you and the dry stoney ground is adding to his woes totally written out there press down to the right my father used to say that um hard work never killed anyone it made them into gay queer shapes so i suppose a lifetime play one like that you know and out in all weathers as well you know [Music] at the cottage the chimney is clear and two flues have been built ready for the range to be fitted [Music] peter parker and steve powell are victorian range experts and have restored a hundred-year-old model we're just sizing up the oven to make sure that it actually fits within the the opening that's been made for us but there's a snag the fluids have already been put in um and they're they're too far forward which means that the oven is protruding in front of the brickwork which is going to make it a bit of a problem while adjustments are made to the flues peter and ruth set out to forage for fruit on the acton-scott estate [Music] this is real hunter-gatherer stuff isn't it yeah absolutely i mean this is this has been a staple of peoples throughout the ages thousands of years it's probably why it makes you feel so good isn't it i mean i always feel happy when i'm doing something like this it always lifts my spirit so if you think of the toil that's put into the fields yeah and then this is just like a bonus of a blessing isn't it your luxury in life yeah what are you what are your plans for slows mostly gin good to hear oh i think we've got danson's here this bounty of free fruit will only last days unless it's preserved a job that requires a kitchen and a range after a few alterations to the flues the range is fitted and ready to be blacked we're putting graphite onto the car styles to help protect protect it from rusting and it gives us a nice sheen and usually the housewives would do this the the young ladies of the house i'm saying that because we we don't want to get pressurized into doing this sort of thing at home do we still yeah true ruth's keen to try out the range as soon as possible but first she needs some fuel [Music] ruth and peter head to the nearby shropshire union canal to collect a cart load of coal building britain's canals was one of the biggest engineering projects the country has ever seen by the 1850s over 4 000 miles of waterways had been dug transporting 30 million tons of freight a year [Music] this shropshire narrowboat saturn was restored by tony luery in a group of enthusiasts and is the last of its kind [Music] wow what a boat beautiful boats the best just the best we've come to pick up some coal from you i'm just going to take it over yeah what sort is it the boat is a shropshire union boat built as a build as a fly boat fly boat non-stop bow meaning going day and night with changing the horses along the way these boats were the creme de la creme really so they were built smaller they were built slimmer and they went very well indeed so it's a very graceful boat do you want a hand with a coal i certainly do how many times have you won uh we've just had a range fitted in our cottage well you're gonna need most of this for the win today we're gonna need a fair bit yeah i mean this stuff changed the entire world didn't it it did and the canoes helped it really because yeah until the canals came along and travelling coal you know in bulk for long distances was impossibly expensive yeah as soon as the canals came suddenly you could deliver 20 tonnes at a time with relative ease and they just everything burgeoned then yeah steaming everything you know we're used to the idea of coal changing industry but it changes farming it changes food it changes laundry it changes the way you breathe in your house it changes everything but also just canals were one of the principal communication networks of britain and the industrial revolution but it also enabled farmers to move produce across britain yeah they're essentially linked farm so allow them to specialize yeah so they can now that's a really good point isn't it be able to choose you know which is most commercially viable is it better to be growing grain or is it better to be growing dairy and whether you've got a canal or a railway in your area is going to be one of the factors that suddenly makes you make that decision isn't it because it's the industrialisation of farming [Music] transportation opened up wider markets for farmers enabling them to specialize in one product like dairy crops or meat for the first time it created a national food economy it's late september the plowing has taken alex twice as long as he hoped but finally the job's done next he must decide what crop to sow [Music] in the cottage peters stripped the walls back to bear stone [Music] now he must learn how to plaster and ruth's about to light the range for the first time under the guidance of range fitters peter and steve all right good i'm glad you are going to show me this for you to give you a surprise okay let's hope you like it [Music] what do you think about that i swear it comes straight from the factory wouldn't you wow so let's hope it's going to work as well oh dear i thought it was going to do some nice cooking on it oh dear i've never used anything like this you look one excited lady i love it i don't know i love to sleep i just i terrified it's going to go horribly wrong and i'm going to be an idiot no i don't think you will be well we'll see ruth's collected kindling in wood to get the coal going now i'm getting excited now i'm a little bit worried as to where that will work first time here we go [Music] oh yes that's a bit more like it you're happy with that that looks good doesn't it i am a pyromaniac it's fire's lovely and hot now my kettle's nearly boiling cooking on coal is is so different um it's not something that i've done before and i know that it has the most enormous impact on what you can cook would smoke taste nice coal smoke however tastes foul it's sort of acidy and sulfurous in the old way of cooking on wood you would be almost encouraging smoke to come round your open food but on coal you really want to stop that you want no smoke whatsoever and you're trying to make sure that you've got as much separation between food and fuel coal revolutionized cooking and recipe books were rewritten for the new fuel roasting on a spit went out and oven roasting came in i don't know that i'm going to get it right for quite a while it's going to take me half the year to practice maybe by the end of the year i'll be quite good coal also revolutionized farming and nothing symbolizes the agricultural revolution more than this the threshing machine in the victorian age these steam-powered machines moved from farm to farm threshing wheat removing the valuable grain from the plant i'm just looking at our bible the book of the farm and once again henry stevens is quick to inform us about what we should be doing here as the incoming tenants there'd be certain jobs that we'd have to do and one of these is to get involved with the threshing it says here not unfrequently the incoming tenant undertakes for the outgoing the threshing and delivering of the crop to market on payment for the trouble so hopefully we'll be able to win ourselves a few quid today alex and peter have joined a local threshing team tom henderson operates the steam traction engine it should start to build up steam in about three quarters of an hour we should see the gauge move when we get up over 100 pounds and we've got enough to start threshing [Music] this new mechanized thrashing ended centuries of rural tradition until the 1830s the job of separating the grain from the stalks by hand employed thousands of unskilled men throughout the winter i've got here a uh head of wheat and uh it's only really was some force that i can release the wheat from the husk and when you think about this job timeless essentially since the first harvest of wheat to separate the grain from the rest of the plant these machines reduced threshing time from months to just days now a few men could do the work of thousands the unemployed were furious farms were attacked and machines smashed but by the 1880s the threshing machine was a generally accepted part of country life the threshing machine is an absolute beast uh that needs feeding so i'm just i'm just pitch forking up these sheets and they're being put inside it's reasonably light work i suppose i'm just getting into grips for this pitchfork i've been told i look quite amateurish when i do it for those lucky enough to get work threshing there were other advantages well we're cooking eggs and bacon and uh i've just got the fat hot on the shovel next job now is to put some bacon on excuse my clean hand but it does add to the flavor there we go that's rasher number two we usually get three on this is ideal could be non-stick [Music] lunch break over it's time to finish the threshing place at the end of the rick now it's quite precarious because i'm just i'm standing on metal struts with my hobnail boots on it's a bit slippy i feel my legs buckling [Music] with the threshing done the grain is weighed what's the news then mike have we done well very well yes about two and a half hundred wait for the days thrashing right which is about 125 kilograms okay so very successful most of the grain would have been sold to make flour some would have been kept to re-sow back in the ground for next year's crop yep you're right with that sure victorian varieties of wheat are very different to modern breeds today we've bred the species so that much of the goodness that goes into the straw actually goes into the head and wheat today actually very very short you know a couple of foot off the ground this would grow to about four or five foot off the ground so hopefully when we come out here in august we'll have a crop that we can just barely see over before the wheat is sown the clods of plowed earth must be broken up by harrowing this is the first time i've actually ever driven horses myself so it's absolutely thrilling this is great fun now i'm going to bring them around this is a difficult bit good boys you know really that i mean you know they're doing the stuff [Music] at the cottage peter's ready to start plastering he's read in a victorian manual that the old lime plaster removed from the walls can be recycled i'm just using this to pulverize the plaster into dust and i've done about a day of this it's quite a quite a laborious process and it's quite hard on the upper body but at night it's the it's the wrists i think it's the jarring motion it's great to be reusing materials like this it's also very labour intensive sand and water are added to make fresh lime plaster this is actually incredibly tough the consistency we're looking for is quite sloppy um again it sits the old adage a bit like porridge pretty much all the materials we use on this farm are a bit like porridge there's one other essential ingredient horse hair i'm just going to put this in and this should help the plaster bond when it's on the wall stop it falling off hopefully it's really good to experiment all these these old techniques but um god they're difficult and they do take time [Music] in the field alex must decide how densely to sow the wheat too dense and the shoots will compete with each other and die too sparse and the birds will eat it all alex is taking guidance from a highly scientific source an age-old poem it goes one for the rook one for the crow one to let rot one to let grow so according to that little poem there we should be anticipating losing some three quarters of what we're sowing today alex has called in local farmer brian davis and his daughter sharon to help to sow the wheat they're using a seed drill it's a real concern because really you wouldn't normally do this job in the rain and we're hoping this is just a shower and it's just going to pass but it's looking fairly ominous traditionally seed was sewn by hand broadcast problem with broadcast sowing is that the grain lands on the ground and it and it hits the ground at different heights and then when you harrow it over you'll get the seed because it's at different heights within the seed bed it'll grow at different times it'll be uneven it'll mature different periods the seed drill invented in 1701 by jethro tull was a major leap forward in the industrialization of farming this was the moment when farming became scientific brian has brought along a design from the 1880s the pinnacle of victorian technology the wheat in the hopper at the top it drops down the bottom into a little trough and the revolving cups there you can see those discs with the cups on you can just see them picking the wheat up and dropping them into these little yellow containers which then funnel them down into these tubes so they drop out in the drill so the seeds are all planted at the optimum depth increasing the chances of germination but with just two rows sewn alex's worst fears about the weather are realized unfortunately it's just not working out for us today the problem is is it's just so wet it's so damp the silt gets so heavy that it's just a nightmare for the horses to pull it's a bit of a nightmare really because it looks like we're not going to get it done today and if this weather's set in for a couple more days um you know we're going to really struggle to get the grain in the ground do you want to park it up under the trees then [Music] at the cottage peter and stonemason paul are preparing to plaster the kitchen so we've each got a churn brush and um yeah we're just going to brush it down it's yet another dusty job on the farm and after that we're going to get our stirrup pump i'm going to moisten it which will help the the plaster adhere to the wall this is our stirrup pump that we found in the tool shed it's pretty old paul and i have taken it apart and we've tried to fix the seals because originally more water would come up in your face and actually come out of the nozzle but i'm surprisingly dry and it's working very well so i think we've succeeded it's a remarkable improvement in the air quality in here it's time to apply peter's recycled plaster what you have to do is work it into the wall nice layer on because once it's on the wall we can spread it out really makes your forearms out doesn't it it does you do very well you're a good liar paul i'm learning an awful lot i'm also learning the process has actually taken an awful lot of time you can't hurry lime plaster and we've got a number of coats put on here and ruth's just got a range and she's quite keen to have a meal so i don't think we're going to be finished in time [Applause] [Music] it's mid-october after a week of rain the sun has returned so alex is back out with a seed drill planting the rest of the crop so so far so good um you know this is really turning out brilliantly two days ago it was absolutely bucketing down and now it's uh you know it's really dried off really crumbly surface good distribution took us a couple of rows to get to get it right but um so far it's looking really really good it's the last thing we need to do in here really i don't think we'll have to come in in spring and do any hoeing and it's the job done and it's a relief really um because you know it's the first thing to do in the agricultural year and it's one of the most important things you know hopefully now we're gonna get a good year we just really have to leave it to the weather and uh we'll be back here in august to um to harvest the crop and only then will we know just how successful things have gone in the cottage the sunny weathers helped the drying victorian plaster to dry after removing half a century of grime re-plastering and repainting it's returned to its victorian glory complete with a victorian brass bed lent by the actons i'm afraid it's still rather a building site the cottage will mainly be ruth's domain so she's taking advice dr nicola verdin is an expert on the role of the victorian farmer's wife if you read the farming manuals which were written by men so for example henry stevens book of the farm which was a very popular 19th century manual and went through several additions and they don't mention the cleaning of the farmhouse as a task they talk about the dairy and the poultry and the food processing and so on yeah the cleaning and the laundry work and so on which were big tasks and would have taken up a large amount of time these aren't mentioned just magically happened nicola helps ruth tackle a much-feared victorian pest for bed bug using turpentine and salt i always used to think the bed bugs were like you know like dust mites sort of things that lived in in mattresses but they're not they're they're they're nasty they get everywhere they get everywhere they live in any little tiny crack or space and lie dormant for months on end and then as soon as carbon oxide take your breath right you know since you're in the room and you're breathing yeah that reactivates and then they come out and get you and stuck pints of blood over over a couple of months which sounds really unpleasant tackling bed bugs was a twice yearly job others were daily this obviously would have been one of her first tasks of the day will be cleaning the bedrooms making the beds and so on um alongside the milking of the cow feeding the pigs feeding the pigs and the hens and any other small animals that are in the farm yard and making the breakfast obviously and making sure the men are all fed and watered emptying the chamber pots absolutely working all day basically very very little leisure time indeed it's late october in a few days the animals arrive and caring for them will be a full-time job by now peter hoped to have completed the cottage but there's still an awful lot to be done ruth can't wait to use the range so she's braving the building site with nicola to preserve the foraged fruit what we're doing now in the kitchen was actually one of the main roles of a farmer's wife yes that preservation of foodstuffs the food processing the preserving of seasonal food this really kept the farm and the family and the workforce ticking over so it was very important that a farmer married a woman who was a good cook and look how much fruit we gathered oh it's got loads and loads and loads of it they're using forage damsons and crab apples to make an indian version of pickle chutney i suppose we shouldn't be surprised really that so much indian food comes into english cookery after all there we were over there height of the empire height of the empire first the fruit is slowly cooked then a mixture of ginger turmeric cayenne pepper and cloves are added so where are we getting these recipes from well these particular ones are from eliza acton's recipe book um but you can find similar ones in almost every recipe book of the period and these were cheap enough for most farmers wives to have been able to afford at least one or two they seem to have been deeply common and you could buy them pre-prepared peter and alex also make the most of the autumn crop of fruit under the watchful eye of the estate's owner thomas stackhouse acton every year he makes cider using apples from the orchards there's quite a few on the ground these are side of apples aren't they these ones yes these these will do all of these ones yes it doesn't matter about these blemishes no it doesn't matter about those okay no ones which have gone black right well like like that one i suppose that one we don't want yeah right now that one looks a bit plastic eaten to the untrained eye pizza and avoid putting leaves in right okay with the windfall apples collected mr acton springs into action this is a packing pole and we use it to shake the apples off [Music] see why you're wearing a hard hat now yes standard gear mate the chutney has been simmering for three hours so the stewed damsons and crab apples are infused with the spices like all chutneys this improves with keeping i mean you can eat it straight away but it tastes much better after about three months you sort of lose that vinegary edge don't you so this will be really tasty right in the heart of winter yeah i'm sorting out the sealing of the jars which we're going to do with the bladders of pigs these are particularly good because they're so stretchy and watertight i should get several several lids out of each one i don't think i've ever actually stretched a pig's bladder before it's time for everything yeah well yeah so if i stretch that over certainly as it dries it will shrink and then we'll get a really tight seal on it it's not as bad to touch it so slimy it's a little bit yeah but it's only like wet rubber would be ruth and nicola are making another indian inspired recipe pickle lily so this is the the vinegar and the spices ruth stocks the larder with the preserves and pickles ready for winter as well as chutneys she's also made tomato ketchup another popular victorian relish i'm going to let the picker lily which was in this one here cool down before i put the lids on them [Music] actually i'm really relieved to have finally managed to be able to get some of this pickling and preserving done without the range that i just couldn't do anything and i've been watching all the fruits in the hedgerows you know beginning to go over i'm thinking ah you know i'm gonna move soon and we'll have nothing in here so it is a relief all right let's have these apples on the pier okay over it guys the fruits gathered from the orchard will be crushed using a victorian cider mill just that bag will never be enough i think you think this right okay that's enough to be starting with okay [Applause] now it's a case of getting the horse to do all the hard work how long have you been doing this for then we've been doing this for about 25 years i suppose right have you ever had a good really good vintage year well we haven't made a note of it we just keep drinking it steadily what consistency are we looking for here then um consistency of porridge right the boys are being helped by local farmer merle wilson peter's taken mr acton's usual job steadying the millstone but things aren't running smoothly you're getting a bit of a build up in here yeah every time there's stone there's one rotation yeah uh it settles right now if it's got good momentum and there's not too many apples it'll just carry on mr acton you were saying that this stone you think it might have been used for sharpening probably that's why it's got a flat on it it's got a slightly flat edge you wouldn't think a stone wheel could have a flat but i think that's what i think that's what's creating most of the problems he seems to be making a harder job of it than you miss tractor well he hasn't had so many years at it he's a lot to learn in the cottage ruth's ready to cook her first meal on the range i've got a leg of mutton here you can see by the size of it it is not a leg of lamb it is indeed a leg of mutton it makes so much more economic sense to eat adult sheep after you've had eight years of cropping them for their wool and mutton was ever such a popular traditional and common dish for the middle classes in fact sometimes they actually call mutton eaters as a sort of definition of people who were doing okay but not great so i'm going to take the bone out and boil it like that yeah i think that's done it just right i roll that up oh that doesn't look too bad tie it up neat i'm just gonna pop him in [Music] the pulverized apples are ready to be squeezed for juice using a cider press winding things up again are we peter not as much as you alex here's your first load of apples i don't know about you mel but my hands are utterly freezing in these apples thank you very much the pulp is loaded onto mats known as hairs this cider that we hopefully make is going to be kept going to be used for a hay harvest as a means of giving to our workers our labourers and quite often the quality of your cider would be something that attracts laborers to your farm to do the work and the farm would also keep back a batch for himself and he'd probably have some rotten stuff for people he didn't like like alex the is going up on your head the stack of hairs known as a cheese is put under immense pressure to squeeze every last drop of apple juice from them and we're just bringing the the beam down to press it great stuff just compressing the cheese and we're getting all the juice out all the apple juice there's a lovely color as well isn't it keep it going it's getting really hard now juice coming out pleased very pleased we've pressed this as much as we can now it won't go any further the juice is stored in casks where it'll be left for the next few months to ferment should start fermenting in five days you have to top it up regularly every day because um otherwise the air gets in and you get impurities in so we need to top it up with pond water or stream water basically water that hasn't come in contact with metals the last job of autumn's done just in time to greet the arrival of the first animals 10 shropshire use bred in the 1840s from local wild sheep they're famed for their excellent meat and wool but the boy's shepherding skills are put to the test almost immediately one of our newly arrived use split from the flock has come into this garden [Music] any any sign of her yes and no yes and no because sworn i saw her in here she's up there alex yep founder you get behind her easier said than done it's pretty thick up here oh no what a night there's a gate has she gone through this doesn't bode well for the year oh no oh i think all those sheep over there have seen her yeah she's in the field the runaway sheep has joined a nearby farms flock yeah these fences are pretty low well a 90 success rate there richard spencer a sheep farmer of 40 years experience has come to give some much-needed advice to the novice shepherds one thing you have to remember you guys when you're sort of getting settled down with this flock of sheep every shepherd knows as sheep is the only animal in god's creation looking for the quickest way to die you can do everything right oh yeah you can do everything right it can all go pear-shaped you can make loads of mistakes if mother nature's with you you'll come out smelling of rose it's just that's the way your mother nature and life start you just gotta accept it if the user to produce young they must be in tip-top health richard's checking out the field where they're to live well young man it's a good thick turf it'll carry the sheep come winter this will yes it'll take some weather you need a good turf to carry livestock in winter right if it gets wet and you haven't got a solid there's nothing to carry the weight of the sheep but this will be fine this will be fine this will and i've read about flushing which is where you put them into good pasture and then they're because of their improving condition they're more likely to conceive twins essentially is there any basis of fact oh absolutely it's fact fact all the way because very basically if the sheep is bursting with the energy so all this lovely lush grass she's going to shed more eggs she's going to have more lambs okay so we're doing a good thing here bringing them into this type of grass yes in a few days time once the ewes have settled into life on the fresh pasture it'll be time to introduce a ram hopefully come spring they'll produce plenty of young it's time to move into the cottage very kind of the actors to lend us these chairs yeah well whatever you do don't break them try not to and ruth's first meal cooked on the range is ready this smells absolutely delicious what do we have okay um boiled mutton you couldn't grab a plate because yes yes oh right in here shall i oh there we go oh are you okay fella can you help me oh no look you'll have to use the clung chair which isn't much better actually how do you think it's gone then so far uh it's more work than i thought it was going to be getting this all ready quite obviously yeah the building work on top of everything else well that's like modern builders you know they always come in yeah it was a couple of weeks you know six weeks later you're still waiting so you know it's starting to look good it's starting to come alive yeah the good news is is that we are ready for our animals just peter ruth and alex sleep elsewhere on the estate but with the bedroom finished ruth can't resist spending the night here i've got my chamber pot if i need it in the night and i've heated a brick on the range and wrapped it in the cloth and i'm hoping that this will warm the bed up a bit act like a hot water bottle [Music] and then i'm going to get in on my lovely feather mattress clean and stuffed earlier [Music] that feels rather nice actually better not actually be any bed bugs here in shropshire is a farm that's frozen in time lost in victorian rural england a unique project has brought it back to life as it would have been in the 1880s [Music] ruth goodman alex langlands and peter ginn are living the lives of victorian farmers for a full calendar year from the cold of winter to the warmth of summer turning the clock back to rediscover an age gone by a bunch they really are that's the first one you've actually delivered is the first lamb i've ever delivered they've been here for two months they've sewn a wheat crop using only horsepower a back-breaking job almost thoughted by the weather unfortunately it's just not working out for us today the problem is is it's just so wet restored their farm cottage complete with a coal-fired cooking range i've never used anything like this and lost their new flock of victorian sheep nightmare bode well for the year oh no now it's winter and if the livestock is to survive the team must winter proof the victorian farm [Music] it's november and the farmers work to protect the livestock from the freezing winter temperatures so peter needs to build a pair of pigsties the biggest challenge so far we've had snow we've had rain and it's just so cold [Music] ruth will have some demanding household chores flipping hard work and alex must get to grips with their shireholes the tractor of the victorian farm how am i doing then you're doing very well a victorian farmer uses every available hour of sunlight seven days a week but if they want to enjoy a traditional victorian christmas they'll need to get everything done on time [Music] the yous have settled into life on the victorian farm but to real lambs they'll need a ram richard spencer has spent his life breeding shropshire sheep and he's providing the services of his prize ram frederick frederick is a 20 month old ram that's called a shielding and i'm rather pleased with him i'm taking him up to the used now he's not quite sure where he's going so he's not very happy but as soon as he smells the use he'll be going like a bullet from a gun i think he's seeing them come on if i get it wrong it's trouble oh boy he's seen them he's seen them he's seen them come boy look at that if you're waiting 20 months for this moment look at the arrogance look at the pride head up in the air i am and look at the back end that's what a structure is all about wool yes fine but meat back end wide plenty of width plenty of meat on that leg of lamb for the sunday roast definitely a lovely round that poised balance power everything everything where you want it yeah like that good sue farquhar is president of the shropshire sheep breeders association and has come to give the boys some advice on shepherding when should we expect lambing time lambing time if you put your ramen on guy fawkes day which is today you would expect to have your first lambs on all fools day april the first right okay one of the joys of spring that's it you've got to learn to be good shepherds and watch and look you know and you'll get to know how your sheep behave when they're happy when they're not happy get to know the characters yes and hopefully frederick will fit in well this is peter's shirt i don't know what he does to his clothes but every time they come off like this look at it ruth an expert on domestic history is tackling the laundry a mammoth four-day routine victorian laundry is about only using the chemicals that you have to use um rather than just like throwing loads in the wash and using the willy nilly instead just use the little bit on the bit you need the first stage of the process is to deal with stains oh yes i got ink stains look at that on my cuffs sir some of the things that were being used in the victorian period to get rid of stains were really really ancient recipes you can find reference to them hundreds of years back things like well the ink for example that's going to go in some milk it just softens it all up and then they come out in the ordinary wash as i do it that milk's changing into a sort of a gray color as it's taking the ink straight out after half an hour of satin there i'll just be able to throw it in the wash with everything else and it should come out fruit stains however a bit more of a pain fruit acids are particularly difficult and many victorian recipes recommend that you first of all use butter on them and then sit the whole thing in a mix of ammonia and washing soda i've got some glue on here i'm not quite sure how so this one i'm going to get off with alcohol this one is whiskey brandy any of the spirits will work laundry has always did her reputation with being drunkards maybe it's using the spirits a little too freely there we go this is dry cleaning really isn't it dissolved straight away soap after all is just a different sort of solvent it just dissolves grease whereas alcohol will dissolve a range of other things that's just peeling right off now excellent that's what i wanted to see the chemicals have only gone where there is a problem use less costs you less pollutes less [Music] among the most important animals for a small victorian farm are pigs they'll eat almost anything and are the fastest growing of all domestic animals but there's nowhere suitable to keep them on the farm they've inherited so the team must build pig styes a project like this on a victorian farm i imagine it would be all hands to the pump unfortunately it's only uh myself and alex to a certain extent so we've drafted in tom here to give us a hand alex's brother you might have noticed by the striking resemblance with the foundations complete the next job is laying the floor pigs must be kept warm over winter so the team are insulating it using a victorian technique you're happy yeah i'll put a bit more down there and tom's got a load of bottles to bring in well maybe one less now this layer of wine bottles are going to create an air gap underneath the floor and that'll act as a form of insulation be like in your house where you'll have um two walls with a gap of air in between it will just stop the cold coming up from the ground because pigs they like their creature comforts a bit like humans really and humans are called long pigs obviously we can't use victorian bottles because you know there just aren't that many of them around and they do cost a little bit in antique shops so we're just using wine bottles best way of recycling is reuse and this is reuse and the crew have happily been drinking hundreds and hundreds of bottles of wine they didn't need asking twice [Music] peter covers the recycled bottles with a state of the victorian material concrete pigs are very intelligent animals they're also scavengers and they're used to digging up things in the forest on the floors if you've got stone they'll quite often dig up the stones whereas concrete is a lot harder to get up you've done this before no no i haven't i've got all i've got all my fingers don't take your fingers off i can see this being a back breaking job of course a farmyard of animals will need feeding during the harsh winter months this is a real challenge for the victorian farmer according to henry stevens book of the farm mangle worsels are an excellent winter feed these root vegetables are rich in nutrients and should last the winter without rotting he writes about you can use both parts of the plant here now you can use the roots to feed the cows and the sheep yeah the green on top though the leaves you can use to feed to your animals but he says it's actually better as a green manure frost destroys mangle whistles so alex will need to find a way of storing them over the winter the second week of november and winter has arrived early on the acton-scott estate i snowed pretty heavily in the night and it's settled so the pigsty's are off for today alex has gone out to feed the animals make sure they're okay but as for the rest of us it's kind of a day indoors really [Music] didn't think we'd get snow this early in the year and it's really going to set it back if we're having to you know take days out like this [Music] ruth keeps warm in the laundry where the clothes have been soaking all the advice manuals say that you need to get up extra early on wash day so if you're normally getting up about sort of six it's at least two hours before that um i remember reading one of them that actually suggested that the laundry major get up at two in the morning on wash day two in the morning can you imagine most of the things i used stain removers from are from in this slot the chemicals will have softened it all off but they won't have actually removed it yet until i start doing the bashing [Music] this is dollying if you can see it's a washing machine this is what a washing machine is mimicking just swishing about so that it dislodges the dirt which hopefully has all been softened by the soaking we did before and it's flipping hard work [Applause] on a small farm like this we're doing the laundry probably once a week um the idea being that you should start on monday and have it all finished and dry and ironed and put away by the weekend and then start all over again [Applause] i have to keep this up basically until the clothes are clean until i've driven all the dirt out if you think how long your washing machine is on its washing cycle that will give you some idea of quite how long this is going to take me after an hour of back-breaking work the wash cycle is over and the clothes are ready to be rung out it might not look like it but this is the most amazing labor saving device this is a real product of the industrial revolution this machine mass production little domestic ones are new to victorian period and as the cast iron manufacturers produce more and more of them the price comes down and down and down and more and more people can afford one ruth has now spent two days in the laundry which is barely halfway through the process alex consults the book of the farm for advice on how to store mangle whistles over winter it recommends something called a tump [Music] i'm coming out to our tump or clamp and this is where we've stored all our root vegetables for our animals to overwinter and we've just covered them with a layer of thick layer of straw some of the straw that we threshed now the reason we do this is essentially to keep the frost off of them it doesn't matter if they get wet but if the frost gets to them they'll rot down and they will last all winter round now that is actually bone dry the organ grinders monkey ah the root slicer yep it's it moves really well peter's taking time out from the pig styes to get these victorian food processors up and running this root slicer is about to be used for the first time in over 50 years mr acton has said it had a good action right okay however it is missing one of these feeders which might be a problem it might be let's give it a go see what happens i just put what should i put one small one in to start with because again this is a machine that we haven't used before no idea where it comes you want a bucket underneath uh it's a good idea good idea that's assuming assuming that it comes out the bottom right it in position up to speed ready yeah oh yeah perfect chips who needs a deep fat fryer look at that the whole reason we're doing this breaking it down into smaller parts so that the animal can eat them a lot quicker and also of course so that they can digest them that much easier the more they digest the fatter they get and that's really better for us as farmers to supplement these carbohydrates it's important the animals have roughage provided by chaff cut up straw okay i think it's ready to go yeah it's going it's pulling itself in this is a victorian chaff cutter the teeth drag the straw through spinning blades to chop it up and it's growing absolutely everywhere peter mechanized farming it may be but the power comes from humans you can see how people would have lost their fingers i mean it's so exposed machinery you've got two blades whizzing in front of you you've got two giant rollers with teeth pulling the straw through there's a health and safety nightmare [Music] it took a lot shorter than i thought it would how did it feel moving was knackering back in the late 19th century machines like this um they're they really are top of the range and it's and it's innovation it's a new type of agriculture that's the thing the industrial revolution had brought an age of machinery that increased the efficiency of food production as a result farmers could now manage more animals and fatten them quicker which all meant increased profits [Music] i am finally ready for final note the way i like the word final final final final final rinse it's day three in the laundry for ruth and another six in the morning start this is a cube of blue it couldn't be more finest purest blue could it it's synthetic ultramarine ultramarine is a stone from afghanistan cost of flipping fortune but in the mid part of the 19th century chemists discovered a way of synthesizing it making it artificially so this is artificial blue and it'll dye the whole stuff as a slight slight tinge of blue which will counteract the yellowness of the soap and to the human eye it will look white they do look whiter don't they see that yellow tinge disappearing modern washing powders still contain blue to give a brilliant whiteness next is a boil wash to kill any bacteria followed by yet more mangling this is when you need a small child just a little pair of hands so helpful outside the pigsty walls are slowly taking shape the beauty of stonewalling is that you don't have to build in courses paul arrow smith a stone mason of 25 years experience is teaching peter the secret of building with stone but we're building the stone wall in the same same way you build a dry stone wall so all the stones touch so it's stone on stone the water just stops the wind from blowing through keeps the weather out but despite paul's tutelage peter is finding it difficult they've had a habit of building like a row of rotten teeth which is very hard to build off so they find it hard to get the next course of stone on of course unlike building with brick no two stones are the same and peter is struggling to find suitable shapes to fit his uneven wall at the moment fish out of water really 3d jigsaw puzzle 2d jigsaw eyes on ah so the moment i've i've just got this gap i've got to fill and i reckon wow one stone would be nice but you know we're not in a perfect world quite obviously but i get very tempted to take stones that are existing in the wall and move them you want one for there yes please it's gonna make me a stain oh yes master mason that work the stones are secured using victorian lime mortar and this is presenting its own problems but this mortar if it freezes it's useless it's like sand yes and our pigs could push it over if they so wish so hopefully if we can build in the the peak of the day when it's dry and a bit warmer and if we cover everything up at night the water will dry but it is the wrong time of year and people won't believe me if i if i tell them i'm building pig skies in the winter [Music] by half three after just seven hours of work it's time to stop building it's getting dark already so i'm gonna prep the walls for the night we're just laying sheep fleeces over them just to give them a bit of protection from the quite severe frosts that are coming in every night [Music] it's the fourth day of the laundry process the washing is dry time for ruth to iron the clothes i have to say i hate ironing it's so time consuming time-consumingness anybody makes any comments might be not looking anything less than utterly perfect at christmas that's gonna get hung drawn and quartered if the animals give you a sort of shape to the day and mean you have to you know have this daily routine in and out it's the laundry that separates out your week yeah saturday night sorting out all the clothes monday morning the horrendous wash day tuesday drying wednesday starching thursday ironing oh yes look at that lovely [Music] every morning peter and alex rise at dawn to feed the sheep by now if fred the ram has done his job all 10 yews should be pregnant but at the moment there's no way of being sure the book of the farm recommends a technique known as rattling this involves painting a red mark on the ram's breast when mating with ew it rubs off leaving a telltale mark on her back let's put a bit of this linseed oil in i think i'm going to have to use some of this pig fat as well try and mix that in yeah that's really coming together now what do you think of this peter how's that certainly red enough to apply the rattle they need to catch fred all 22 stones of him myself and alex has spent a lot of time thinking about this i mean it's last time i handled sheep i broke my finger and it's the experience i don't really want to repeat or i think it's quite an occupational hazard so the plan is get the sheep in the yard split fred our ram from them get him in there into here close the gate on him get him into this corner and then shut this gate on him so we crush him between these gates not hard but just enough so he can't move and then alex can stick the rattle on him that is the plan that's what we're hoping for he is really strong this guy he's an enormous beast thank you the round's quite big as well sheep cheep cheek [Music] there's the round the rams over there around's there it's right the back there [Music] just slowly [Music] hooray well that was a little bit easier than i anticipated now the difficult bit separating fred the ram from the use our idea is to push them into that end of the yard and then hopefully hopefully gate them in but um it's going to be difficult all right we've got him separated now this might take some time no no no [Music] on the victorian farm shepherding is men's work whereas the poultry are looked after by women these are our three turkeys we have wilfred and ina and lillian ian is on the menu for christmas so just keeping in mind yeah yeah you lot as well we'll eat you too if you like turkey in the victorian period was already taking over from goose as a more traditional bird it's bigger for a start so if you've got more people to feed it's a better choice and um the turkey industry was developing over in norfolk to a degree it hadn't really been before and with the railways many people in towns in particular were able to get turkeys much cheaper than they have been it's always a bit sad to lose your livestock because you get fond of them but i mean that's their purpose isn't it um and i do find it very comforting to know that they've had a good life [Music] time for coffee after a couple of failed attempts the boys have finally managed to shepherd all the sheep into a pen now they need to separate fred from the use if you were to hold here and i would go in i could maybe turn one round yeah and you could open you could stand at the gate here just that amount one at a time get the wrong one fortunately he's right at the end i know they're bloody strong come here darling off he goes wedged i don't know which one to start with yeah [Music] off you go right got him i got him go strong he's strong head in there he is strong though he's really strong we really want to put it in a place so that when he does get on top of her we can guarantee that he's mounted her very well and obviously that he's done the job painting the fourth bridge with a toothbrush [Music] with fred raring to go it's time to let nature take its course you can just give us a hand i just want to get this off him got his flock back is he gonna jump on one this weather [Music] with the cold of winter beginning to bite peter urgently needs to finish the pigsties it's another frosty morning on the farm but early christmas present from alex is keeping me really warm along with the fire and the frost really is slowing up our building work because it affects the mortar so badly but we're starting to get the roof on so hopefully by the 19th december when the pigs come we'll be putting on our last bit of stain and saying indigo it's your poor sign palace enjoy thomas stackhouse acton owner of the farm's estate is a victorian farming enthusiast he's insisted that every aspect of the styes be authentic even down to the nails every time mr acton has taken down a building on his land he has saved the nails can we get a nice straight one please peter i'll try these blacksmith cut nails were giving way to mass-produced wire nails by the 1880s these have gone up relatively fast although i have to say the way i've chosen to do it kneeling on the batons like this is absolutely killing my knees now with work on the pigsty is over for another day peter heads out of the fields to check on the use we're in luck it looks like um the rattles worked i mean a couple of the sheep have got marks on them and we'll be able to split them from the rest of the flock so we'll probably have two stages of lambing all that trouble to get that onto fred and it's worked it's worth the treat it's december tenues have rattle marks so come april they should produce lambs [Music] despite the harsh weather the walls of the pigsties are almost complete but there's still an awful lot to do before the pigs move in the turkeys on the other hand are coming on nicely ready for christmas but the farm's not complete without a working horse the tractor of the victorian farm in the 1800s over a million shire horses worked on farms across england but today they're an endangered breed and just a few thousand survive the team's been lent clumper by sharon davis a local farmer hello sharon hello hi how are you i'm well new wonderful yes i'm doing very well this is clumper it is yes but sharon isn't sure whether he's a purebred shire alex calls on john ward of the shirehole society for his verdict i'll just have a look over him and see he's got the size the shires geldings are all 17 hands plus high for working got the weight right here it must rain nearly a ton it needs a big horse to pull an egg weight so and the characteristic of the shower horse is that we get the feather right the nice silky hair on the leg we call the feather the colour babe grey and black are the colours so he comes with that criteria he's a he this is a bad he's a good baby so we've got the feathering the bay the the weight and the height is all good and you've got a very good collar many people think a horse pulls a wagon it doesn't it pushes into the collar then the wagon or whatever it is is attached to the aims here and so it actually pushes he doesn't pull so we're looking for a lot of strength in here though and of course in there right that's where the real strength comes from right the power in the in the hindquarters so all round this is a a pretty good shower it is it's a good specimen of the breed for a working horse that's great that's great near here the shire horse was bred in the 1800s as the ultimate workhorse leading landowners from the shires staffordshire derbyshire leicestershire shropshire interbred the finest car horses they could find to create the shire horse [Music] you're looking to breed a sort of sort of super horse which is is finely tuned for doing all of the kind of heavy draft work around the farm that's right all the work on the farm is done with was done with the shower horse right whether it's ploughing harrowing or drilling or harvesting it was their means of moving anything from a to b it was a shower horse that you did it so this is this is not only is this your sort of tractor this is also your land rover this is your basically your your farm vehicle was it absolutely [Music] with christmas three weeks away ruth begins preparations for the meal christmas puddings or plum puddings particularly british thing i don't find them anywhere else in the world really oh brandy can't have too much brandy in a christmas period christmas pudding is packed with luxurious ingredients like dried fruit spices and spirits which would have been costly to the victorian farmer a time of year and a dish which victorian p period people were willing to sort of save up for we still eat victorian christmas pudding one of those things we've hung on to as a tradition one final ingredient to go in this christmas buddy that's money traditionally it's a pair of silver sixpences that sound an awful lot to me so um ruth's rich mixture must be boiled without getting wet and that requires some victorian ingenuity i like this bit so it's a bit like magic take one good clean cloth wet or damp onion spread with flour and the instant i drop it into hot water a seal is made a completely watertight seal in goes the pudding once boiled ruth will hang the pudding in the pantry until the christmas feast [Music] this is sharon hi pleased to meet you nice to meet you to go forward it up cheer vlad sharon's been driving horses all her life so before leaving clumper with the boys she gives them a driving lesson and what about left to right then left and right we don't i don't have any actual voice commands for that it's just a case of pulling the reins whichever way you want to go and just to give a bit of incentive yeah you find if you over you go a bit too fast right if that's the case you just pull gently on the reins and steady steady yes and do you do you talk to him all the time or i tend to i mean people might think i'm mad but it just lets the horse know you're still there um it's just a little bit of contact isn't it words of love oh i don't know about that bit of pressure to the reins whoa okay ready for a go yes yes there we are right okay so remember to keep your hands nice and relaxed yep the overhand grip you still want a little haven't even started and he's already backseat driving terrible he's backseat drivers so i've got the right grip that's it and it's a g up gee up good boy that's it how am i doing then you're doing very well yes very well indeed yes working with horses is an essential skill for the victorian farmer so alex and peter need to get to grips with clumper as quickly as possible you guys know what these sheep think mad at the cottage ruth has spent the last few evenings secretly sewing in her bedroom i'm embroidering a pair of braces for peter for christmas and he obviously i need to do it when he's not looking so i've been doing it quietly upstairs um in the evening but that means doing it by oil lamp which is is just so difficult i mean light is so critical those of us who are used to having electric lights at the touch of a button we just forget how much daylight shapes what you can and can't do so in the winter when you're struggling and every job has to be fitted within the time scale you have to really prioritize what can i do when i can see it shapes your whole day and your whole work pattern and it's not just the light that's the problem i'm afraid i can't do much more than about an hour up here of a night no matter how hard i try just i just get so cold that i go so stiff my fingers get so numb that i just can't carry on [Music] unlike ruth's bedroom it's important the pig styles are warm and draught-free for the comfort loving pigs alex's brother tom who has worked as a 21st century tiler is using a victorian technique to seal the roof well i haven't used this tiling technique before which is bedding each one of these tiles on as it's going on you can see the benefits it's going to have for the uh for the pigs see these tiles going to be kept on to each other the cement goes off restricting any draught or any movement of the tiles inside peter seals the tiles with cement using a technique known as torching torching essentially is like your modern day fiberglass loft lagging to insulate all i'm doing is putting mortar on the insides between the battens and it the morse will curl in into the tile meet up with the mortar toms already put between the tiles and uh it will form a wind barrier it will form a key to lock them on so tiles won't come off it will keep it insulated warm draught free and keep the pigs very happy i think [Music] at the cottage ruth is preparing a rather gruesome dish for the christmas meal cow's tongue he's been boiling for ages now he's just now just he's nice and soft there he comes what i've got to do now is skin him [Music] just getting the skin neat as i can it's often used to pad out other things on the table there we are peels off nice once you've got the edges off makes a nice contrast to poultry stronger flavors on the table like that angle now the final touch to keep the tongue nice and upright ready for the table [Music] oh yes that looks ridiculous doesn't it come on come on iris come on that's it ruth is keen to get the dairy up and running to make cheese and butter but to do this they need milk so alex has brought in two new additions to the farm this one here forget me not she's in calf and she'll drop that in may so we've just got to make sure all of that goes smoothly drops the calf it's fine it's healthy and we can bring that on and of course we'll have a milker then as well so it's very important that we have a cow a milking cow because obviously there's an inordinate amount of dairy that we'd like to do the one thing it just takes is daily dedication you know coming in here two or three times a day at least cows are kept inside over winter so must be fed twice a day by the team alex has prepared their feed in the machine room what i've got in today's mix is some uh sliced roots but i've also got some uh some of the milled oats as well but the final ingredient would be some roughage because we've cleared out the hay loft and we've now got it stacked with hay what i'll do is probably just drop some hay down from these shoots here these short horn cows were popular with victorian farmers as they mature and fattened quicker than the older longhorned breeds of course this increased profits for the period these are sort of spot on they really are sort of stalwart of the um the british livestock industry in the 19th century we should check to see what henry stevens has got to say about it in our bible for the year the book of the farm according to the book of the farm short horns were bred to perfection by the colling brothers in the early 1800s and here henry stevens reveals the secret of their success what he likes to put it down to is what we call inbreeding okay so that's breeding related beasts that have that have distinctive desirable features okay so that you sort of you accentuate those features in in the offspring by the time they'd finished developing the beast we ended up with a cow which is both a good milker and very good for beef cattle as well so for us on the farm it's really the ideal cow it's what i'd like to call the sort of first real dual purpose cow it was an incredibly popular cow it was the first cow to make over 100 pounds but long before genetic engineering stevens questioned the safety of playing with nature according to the manner in which it is directed is possessed of great power for good or evil so it's quite interesting uh his comments there on inbreeding and obviously the dangers of inbreeding christmas is approaching and ian is being prepared for the festive lunch tough skin she's still nice and warm which does make the job a lot easier than trying to pluck a cold bird and she is in nice condition the skin's really good if you've reared a beast yourself and then gone through all the processes of preparing it and turning it to the pot you take time to taste things to notice flavors and textures and you just get more pleasure out of eating i've finished doing most of the plucking but you always get up these last tiny little fluffy bits that are really hard to pull out so the quickest way of doing it is just to singe it off with a flame the farmers all do their bit for christmas so alex heads out onto the estate in search of a tree so it's a bit of the old and a bit of the new for us this christmas as far as the old's concerned we're going to be getting in some holly and some ivy and some new traditional greenery with which to adorn the homestead but for the new we're getting in our christmas tree and this is a fad that really takes off in the victorian period in 1848 the illustrated london news printed this picture of the royal family gathered around a christmas tree a tradition brought from germany by prince albert of course when the british public gets to see this of course everyone wants a christmas tree here we go not far off there we go [Music] at the cottage inna is stuffed and ready to be roasted using state-of-the-art victorian technology i've got a marvelous new contraption to help me it's called a bottle jack and it's made of clockwork and that's going to turn the meat for me and then this screen around it is often called a hastner because it reflects the heat back and speeds up the cooking so it's a bottle jack and hastener like in a kebab shop when you you know you see that that that heated grill and then there's the the kebab twists in front of it that's how we always used to roast meat in front of a sheet of flame so here we go i'm going to wind up the bottle jack and then if i started off by giving the meat a little twist just to get it going and you should hear it click and then it'll turn back the other way there we go now all i've got to do is move it round and i should be able to come back to it not too often leave me space to do the rest of the cooking [Music] it's been a couple of months they've been cold they've been wet they've been snowy they've sometimes been sunny but we finally finished our pig styles and i think they look absolutely fabulous i'm actually genuinely really really excited such a sense of achievement really but before the pigs can move in the styes must be approved by the landlord of the acton-scott estate thomas acton good afternoon afternoon so you've built this pig stock at noon on the dot he arrives to inspect them to the recommendations of henry stevens he comes equipped with the victorian farming bible henry stevens book of the farm for a breeding style each apartment should not be less than six feet square lucky we made that one slightly bigger can we measure them we might want to measure them what do we got there two feet a bit nervous at the moment about five feet six and another foot there's seven so the stars are big enough but what about their living quarters and the floor consists of bottles in the floor i think it could be very comfortable for a pig so do you approve mr acton well i think it's uh it measures up to uh what henry stevens suggests yeah it looks very well built extremely solid and fits in well with the other buildings around it with the acton's seal of approval the final job is to lay a stone carved with thomas stackhouse acton's initials [Music] 106 years late but it's quite as heavy as it looks [Music] what do you think of the stone mr acton i think it's slightly tilted the pigsties or the stone [Music] the pigs have arrived but show little interest in their splendid new home come on one at a time might be a bit three of them well they're young they're like yeah peter may have mastered shepherding sheep but pigs are a different matter they really are come on home time you go you as well [Music] these are our sort of teenager tamworth pigs and they're our first addition to these pig styles they're really good for their bacon they're the most attractive things aren't they i mean as pigs go so necessary ginger because they are thank you yes yes can't possibly be more gorgeous than ginger can you no [Music] it's christmas eve ruth is putting the finishing touches to the decorations before tomorrow's meal nowadays many people put trees up weeks and weeks and weeks before christmas and you have this huge long run up but the victorians didn't christmas trees came in really much very much at the last minute often christmas eve itself although the christmas tree is new um bringing greens into the house was something that goes where it goes back so far you can't even find the beginnings of it anything that was green and looking lively you know just to brighten the place up [Music] as evening falls clumper transports the farmers to the acton-scott church for the christmas carol service it's a chance for alex to show off his new driving skills it's cold on my answers i'm gonna have to knit you some granny gloves yeah do you want to borrow mine no i'll be all right i'll be all right until we get to the church i mean i imagine the church back in the late 19th century would have been brimming with people i think acting scared something about something that 150 180 people used to live and now you're looking at yeah handful [Music] alex hasn't quite perfected that left turn yet in the 19th century the industrial revolution brought great change to the british countryside [Music] many rural people feared that their way of life was being eroded so christmas saw a resurgence in popularity as they sought to maintain a sense of tradition [Music] customs sometimes dating back to medieval times were reinvented and old carols revived often with new melodies put to old words [Music] happy christmas thank you very much it's christmas morning before the guests arrive it's time to exchange presents who's a lucky boy they are superb where i'm not just gonna say where are the lederhosens [Laughter] until the 1850s christmas presents were usually just given to children but with the creeping commercialism of the late 1800s adults too began exchanging gifts though often they were homemade feel like i'm two years old again yeah this looks suspiciously well for me it sums up christmas looks suspiciously book and i know you like it i do like books oh it is a book oh fantastic christmas carol charles dickens a christmas carol published in 1843 coincided with the inventions of the cracker the christmas card and the popularity of the christmas tree it just sort of captures the mood of everything everybody was thinking about christmas it just sort of like hits the crest of the wave and catapults the whole victorian ideas the victorian christmas in a nutshell family celebrations charity all in one [Music] christmas was all about feasting and getting together it's late afternoon and with the animals tended to the team settle down for christmas lunch joined by friends and neighbors and a very special guest landlord thomas acton's son rupert junior please come through alex we've prepared you a seat here at the end of the table thank you very much brought you a christmas card and a small gift oh oh isn't that lovely so what do you think of the free-range turkey tastes very happy very happy happy meat definitely happy meal that's how free range was it very yes [Music] i hope we've authentically recaptured the essence of the victorian christmas the love of the past the nostalgia the sentimentality as well as just bringing all your friends and your family together for a nice big feed up celebration and wind down let's have a christmas toast cheers [Music] [Applause] [Music] almost looks like apache it's a bit like pastrami and and palmer hands watch things that's lovely it's just like quite a dry steak what a fine way to go away being appreciated by people there we go anybody else please i'm glad you're doing this not me christmas pudding is uniquely british and central to the victorian christmas feast [Music] here we go watch out watch out oh yes now that one is [Music] can i help somebody do some christmas pudding hillary [Music] in the days before recorded music at the flick of a button people still found music very important to them and therefore went to quite big effort to have it around them they would visit music halls and concerts and they would also make their own music at home [Music] women's magazines always came with songs and sheet music in as part of the the magazine popular music people making their own music was a part of our tradition and in a way perhaps recorded music has sort of squashed a bit of the music out of us [Music] making your own entertainment wasn't just limited to music unlike the modern british family that would sit down to say something like zulu or mary poppins of a christmas afternoon what we're going to do is indulge in a bit of victorian parlor games and they were real fans of their parlor games the game we've opted to play is shadow buff so without further ado i will call down the first contestant can we have the first contestant please peter must guess who is standing behind the sheet of course it's made more difficult by some rather cunning disguises [Music] okay here we go peter raise the bucket looks vaguely egyptian it could be an obvious one no ruth i go ruth you going to go with ruth i was going to go with tom [Music] this is exciting i have to admit this compares really very favorably to sitting down over christmas afternoon and watching a movie [Laughter] okay we have our fifth contestant in place what fearsome beast lies behind the sheet peter do a little jig for us mystery guest what's your name don't tell him did you say paul i was gonna go paul paul is like that was a very good game although i think i lost quite heinously it was terribly hard to tell all these people apart good night oh somebody give me some more gin [Music] here in shropshire is a farm that's frozen in time lost in victorian rural england [Music] now a unique project has brought it back to life as it would have been in the 1880s a time that saw a revolution in british agriculture centuries-old skills were under threat from industrialized farming it was the crossroads between the old and the new well i'm just trying to keep this thing in a straight line for a full calendar year ruth goodman alex langlands and peter ginn are re-living the life of the victorian farmer [Music] [Laughter] [Music] four months into the project they've planted a wheat crop in a long abandoned field spent weeks restoring their cottage to its former glory and got to grips with a host of traditional breeds so all round this is a pretty good shower now it's january and the farm needs emergency repairs but with no diy shops the team is forced to go back to basics with the help of the blacksmith the basket maker and the woodsman the wheat crop comes under attack so it's time to master the art of pest control victorian style the reality of life without modern comfort starts to bite it's pretty cold and with spring around the corner the first baby animals are due to arrive we're gonna go for this yeah yes [Music] it's new year on the victorian farm ruth and peter are welcoming a very important new resident [Music] is a gloucestershire old spot a favorite breed of victorian farmers she's pregnant the team is hoping she'll produce a litter of piglets in a few weeks time enormous bucket of swill waiting for you lady if they can convince her to move in that is nothing as a pig who doesn't want to go good girl [Music] come on good girl good girl i think we might need a little bit of bribery and corruption oh always a mango when you fancy a mango yeah oh hallelujah there we go [Music] you're a gorgeous pig aren't you you're gonna give us lots of lovely little piglets yeah yeah delicious richard luttwich is president of the gloucestershire old spot society so how many do you think she's going to give us then i'd be quite happy if she had eight or nine uh she might have a few more she might have 10 or 12. oh gosh so what sort of things should we look out for so what can go wrong very little really i mean uh pigs are much easier than other farm animals it's like shelling peas just let her get on with it basically and hopefully everything will be all right peter built these pigsties himself with princess moved in they're finally complete she only just fits under that door slight design era though i think oh yes she's huge isn't she with all this new livestock around the farmyard's becoming a little chaotic [Music] come on you two out come on get away mind that duck ruth the real troublemakers are the pigs if the doors are open the pigs get out they either frighten the cows hello or they eat the eggs they get into the nests and eat the eggs so peter's set himself a major new challenge what we need to do is we need to devise a way of controlling our stock so we've got our farm yard we've got our stack yard and it makes sense to divide it in half so essentially what we need is a fence and then these guys can be free to run around without interfering with the cows and the ducks and what we're working on in the victorian countryside you couldn't necessarily buy a ready-made fence from a shop peter is going to have to make one from scratch he's called in expert damian goodburn one of the handful of people alive today who studied the craft of victorian woodsmen together they must track down the right tree to make the fence right well what we're looking for is some oak an oak tree which will provide the main gate post and then some smaller logs that can be split to make the post and rail fence in the 19th century estates could make big money from selling their timber so woodland like this would have been carefully managed what sort of thickness are we looking for well we want something that's manageable by hand not too big we're not trying to fail a valuable big tree that could be sewn up to make furniture or for boat building that kind of thing the victorian period if they allow a fairly straight one like this to grow big then it it it becomes something it's almost like money an investment almost money in the bank damien's very picky about his trees and there's this one here yeah a little bit bendy this one here is a tiny bit small a bit oval it's a bit sinuous how about that one there's another one there's one up here which would be a good tree to use because it'll never make a brilliant timber tree so with any luck we might be able to get it down so all in all this is our tree being very careful not to hit the ground the first stage is to square off the base of the tree with an axe ready for sawing okay we have problems we'll we'll use the axe to start it now that's all right you're going to need to go a little bit to your left slowly don't push the saw just let it glide itself in the atlantic a little bit like right yeah it is isn't it if i did this regularly i wouldn't be as fat as i am because uh you don't see many pictures of fat victorian woodsman the falling tree could easily get snagged in the dense branches of the forest so peter and damien try to make sure it falls into a gap to do this damien makes a triangular cut facing the path they want the tree to take and this is going to encourage the tree to fall in the direction we want it to go that's certainly the theory and i hope the theory is correct then it's back to sawing the other side to meet up with the cut how far now um still a bit more on your side then hang on hang on she's going get out [Music] that's what we were trying to avoid oh well that's what we were worried about and we didn't quite succeed in making it go where we wanted it to now what we've got to do is get it to go that way if we have the smaller racks then we'll cut the hinge on that side so the moment damian's just going to chip away and hopefully it will roll around the tree and fall down where we want it to go [Music] can you come here and give us a push [Music] oh god you're busted this is what we need a pole for now we've got any poles around here [Music] oh you bastard how much more does that need [Music] hear it moving now don't worry ginger beer required finally after a famous five-hour struggle [Music] back in october alex toiled for weeks to sew a wheat crop in the farm's long abandoned field [Music] but now the weeds have been conquered there's a new enemy to face of the feathered variety one of my worst fears has been realized here and we've obviously had the birds in here the last few days as i've been passing and there's been a group of pheasants on dispatch in particular and i think what they're doing is they're sort of tugging at the top of this the um the leaves here and then pulling out and having a nibble on the grain in the victorian countryside tenant farmers like alex often struggled to stop pheasants eating their crops the birds were raised for shooting parties and every single one was the landlord's property not to be touched [Music] if a tenant farmer killed one he could be arrested for poaching now alex finally has the chance to get his own back land agent rupert acton has invited him to come along on a pheasant shoot [Music] but first he's got to make some preparations victorian style one thing i've really noticed over the past couple of months it's been so wet that the ground is just like a morass there's mud everywhere and my boots have been getting soaking wet so what i've got to do is get them waterproof because we've got a big day coming up we've got the shoot alex is using a 19th century shoe polish recipe containing beeswax tar and tallow a form of beef or mutton fat now i've no idea as to what quantities should be putting in here but i'm going to do it by feel the first thing to go in is the beeswax which has melted down nicely i know that we're going to really want more tallow in that's having an interesting effect actually that's almost sort of turning like a like a paste in there already give that a bit of a stir we just do that now this is great because it's actually turning into a sort of dark tan boot polish here and i think it's wet enough or at least it's warm enough to start to apply to the boots the moment of truth let's get it on there that's going on really thick actually i can see the beeswax work it in i'm very excited about the shoot um in the late 19th century the shooting parties were getting bigger and bigger there's more game about so the friction between gamekeepers and tenant farmers was at its peak and it's perfectly understandable really you know if there's birds out there and you know they're eating your crops you're going to want to obviously find one for the pot in the forest peter and damian are dividing the tree into logs after the exhausting task of felling it now comes the real challenge well the chaps are gonna need uh some help lifting these logs out of the forest and who better to do it than clumper it's the first time he's ever had a go at this it's called tushing basically dragging or skidding a log out of the forest so so say it's his first time he's not too sure about the environment but uh let's see how he gets on one lock ready to touch we'll give him a little go deal come on okay you're against the tree this log weighs around 300 kilograms that's the equivalent of three baby elephants that's it good boy he's going well isn't he he is it's not as if it makes a difference to him uphill downhill no he actually quite likes sort of getting stuck into it come on last bit of hill come on boy only just makes these things look like matchsticks i struggle to walk at the pace the clumper touches uphill [Music] clumper is heading for the estate saw pit but the log will be cut up for use in the farmyard fence [Music] good boy come on keep coming keep coming keep coming and whoa he's done very well i'm quite surprised actually i thought there'd be more problems getting it out there in the out of the that steep slope right at the beginning was a bit difficult and the guys had to roll it but otherwise took it in his stride and it never ceases to amaze me how easily he takes the jobs forward he's even listening you see [Music] working outside all day is tough on the victorian farmer's body but in small villages there wasn't always access to off-the-shelf remedies for aches and pains at the cottage ruth's been looking into some homemade solutions i'm going to make a cream for chapped hands so i've got some lard here and i've been just softening it and then whisking it with a fork so it's light and fluffy so now i'm going to add the honey not so runny fairly runny and a little oatmeal the texture of the oatmeal will make it very slightly sort of scrubby when you when you're putting it on which will help to massage the whole cream into the skin now i need egg yolks and the last thing i need to put in is some rose water which is just distilled water and oil of roses and that adds not only a beautiful scent but also adds to its absorbability into the skin and whisk storage is not a problem because of all the fat in it i just have to pop it in a jar pop a lid on it'll keep three maybe four months with no problem [Music] so you've got to get all the calls right yes okay a few more wood the day of the pheasant shoot has arrived peter and alex are taking up their position as beaters flushing the birds out of the woods the sport of pheasant shooting as we now know it was invented in the late 19th century prince albert and his sons were big fans of shooting but they had a problem traditionally shooting parties tried to sneak up on the pheasants which meant most of the birds got away so a new technique evolved employing beaters to drive the game towards the guns with a series of calls we've all got to hold a line as we walk through this cops and make as much noise really as possible i can't hear you making much noise peter peter let's hear you calling for land agent rupert acton shooting runs in the family my great grandfather augustus wood acton uh lived here in the late 19th century and uh he shot uh about once a week and there would have been about four guns and and four or five beaters in the 19th century on this estate they were probably shot in the region of four five hundred game birds during the shooting season first one in there too much talking the swampy ground will give alex's waterproofing efforts a stern test i'm really impressed with the mix because i've got the uh job of making my way through the stream here so it was a godsend that i decided to do it but peter isn't quite so lucky should have waterproofs your boots peter no birds have been shot on this drive so the beaters must move on to a new wood i've been having trouble i do most winters with chapped lips as soon as the weather gets cold and wet my lips go all dry and start to crack and bleed so therefore i'm making some victorian lip salve um the recipes say four chapped lips specifically but quite interestingly most of them include alconet which doesn't do anything for chapped lips what it is is a dye it's a red dye so i'm hoping that this recipe is going to come out with cherry colored lip gloss alcanet is a common plant that often grows as a weed you can use any part of the plant to get some color but the root is where the majority of it is so this is just dried alkanet root so i've got some olive oil to pour in what i'm going to do is put the alconet in the oil and put it on the range just to warm through and hopefully the color then will infuse within the oil the other two ingredients are mutton fat and white wax the two have got to be melted together and the alkanet has done the most fantastic colouring job it's really done its business isn't it that's not red i don't know what is so that's my wax and mutton fat melted and that goes in with that lot and then just got to strain them to get all the bits out yeah look at the color on that the mixture will be kept in a cool place to set you couldn't buy anything that was more like a red lip gloss than this and there's nothing nasty in it is there the beaters have moved on to a new wood peter's encouraging the birds to fly away from him and towards the guns [Music] oh the technique of driving game quickly became very popular but with more birds to target the victorians needed to shoot faster traditionally loading a gun was a fiddly process with gunpowder and shot pushed down the barrel [Music] so gunsmiths came up with a cartridge containing everything in one simple package and a brand new weapon that could be split in two for easy loading reloading time was cut from minutes to seconds and many more birds could be shot let's see if we can stake a claim on these birds then a nice change from work yes yes with the pheasant shoot over the beaters have been rewarded for their hard work did that bird drop with it couldn't see i couldn't see i was too busy wondering why i haven't applied waterproof substance to my boots [Music] it's february with fewer pheasants around the crop has a chance to grow [Music] the farmyard fence is coming on well peter's been chopping the log ready for the saw pit this is why i never owned a skateboard as a child and princess the expectant sow is settling in nicely [Music] let's get them in this pen if we go down with the bucket to this pen and get them in the pen we'll have a closer look baby pigs are not the only thing the team is expecting call them too alex that's the way in november sheep farmer richard spencer lent the team his prize ram fred but though fred took a fancy to the use alex isn't quite sure if any of them are pregnant so richard's come back to find out if a sheep is in lamb if she's pregnant what is in the other nail should be wax and sticky right getting to the others requires an expert technique you're going to put your knee in the shoulder so she can't escape and you're going to put your hand under there find the teat and get some wax out and tell him she's in one right i'm stuck okay that's it now put your hand underneath find the teeth it's in there somewhere right nothing there you really want to put your hands gently to the top of the udder and gently just massage it down into the teeth find it richard i've got one you can do this alex think positive slows how far apart are these things usually richard well the normal distance really one on each side they come in pairs i'm not getting anything i'm wondering whether i should get you to teach me to turn them over sheep farmers often turn their sheep over to inspect them but with each u weighing up to 10 stone it can be a challenge you lock it tight onto your knee and you literally keeping it tight on your under you just rock backwards with your hand fingers firmly hooked under that flank and just rolls over on your knee onto her butt onto her rear it doesn't involve lots of physical stress on your for just using the principle of levers and the sheep's weight it's a bit of a sort of judo roll lift the head up into the air let it roll around your knee yes keep it going keep it going keep it going backwards lift your left drop it you've done it that's it yeah and all the rest will be easy after that well done oh oh it looks like attached on that man's face look at that he'll sleep well together now you can get the wax out of that one massage it gently from the order into the teeth yes let's see it fill in the teeth now you see the teeth full of wax and then i think it's full of wax and then yeah ah there you are ah there we go he's so happy there we are one happy campus let's try this one yeah we've got to drop there we go look at that there you go now then if you listen to that there better than sticky tape spot on wonderful stuff that is sticky wow yeah yeah yeah yeah there you are that is perfect that sheep is definitely inland right now that's it you're rolling go the wax is a clear sign that in a few weeks this sheep will be producing milk to feed her young now all alex has to do is check the rest of his flock young man well thank you very much i'll make a shepherd of you yet ensuring livestock was well fed over winter was absolutely crucial for the victorian farmer every day the team process food for the animals in machines such as this root slicer but ruth has hit a snag bucket's entirely the wrong shape so more time scraping off the floor there's so many jobs to do simply can't afford to have inefficient tools to make a better container ruth has asked someone with unique skills to come to the farm this uh this is oak which was filled just the other day and i'm going to turn this into a basket owen jones makes a type of basket specific to the lake district and the west midlands though once common his profession is now endangered in victorian times there have been hundreds possibly thousands of people making these baskets [Music] for many years i was the only person recently i've taught someone else there's now two of us in britain most baskets are made from willow what makes this basket special is that it uses local materials oak and hazel [Music] it's a coppiced hazel rod which is going to be the rim of the basket and i have to smooth it off ready for bending next owen prepares the ribs of the basket each oak log must be measured up and chopped into strips this is where we start to get a feel of of what the woods like drive it in it'll take owing five hours to make this basket in the 19th century oak basket makers got together in small workshops of two or three men collectively producing dozens of baskets each week as i'm splitting now working it down there is a potential problem that can start running off or running out to one side so i can i can control that by which which way i pull the throw either pull towards me or push against once the oak's been cut to length it's placed with the hazel inside a boiler when it's finished owens basket will make processing food by hand a much easier task but on the estate's home farm alex and peter have discovered a brand new way of making food for their flock okay engage okay engaging now throughout the 19th century the machinery of mass production was making its way onto farms this system of belts and pulleys is over 150 years old this is our oats bruiser our kibbler you can hear it engaging there ah that's the sound isn't it the kibbler grinds up wheat grain for the farm's animals to eat they've all been bruised they've been crushed so when they go through the digestive system of the animal they'll be absorbed more efficiently all this machinery is powered by the victorian farms driving engine clumper the shire horse gear that's it i find this absolutely fascinating because all you need is a horse some hay for winter keep him well fed and you've got energy you've got power you've got horsepower the term horsepower was coined by the engineer james watt [Music] he designed a steam engine and to market it he came up with a method to compare its power with that of a horse the result was a brand new measuring unit horsepower good lad every time clumper goes round once that wheel up there turns 52 times so if he works for a week this works for a year this truly is the birth of mechanized farming in the farmyard owen jones is ready to shape the rim of his basket throw it down initially on the ground that will take the moisture out of it take a bit of the heat out of it hopefully this will bend nicely i'll put the butt end in first be careful around the curve so it doesn't kink feels a little steamed enough pulling with my right hand and following my left hand yeah i'm happy with this one this uh this looks this looks pretty good next the oak is removed from the boiler it's actually a wonderful smell it's just fruity like a fruity smell it's the best part of the day this process is known as writhing this is quite hot in the hands if you sometimes you get to a point where your hands start burning and then you have to knock them on your on your knees and that cools them down the simplest way of doing it is this way and you're pulling it down it's a it's a feel thing this is really good stuff it's quite tough stuff i can i can leave it quite thick and bend it like that that'll make good strong baskets the material is now ready for the final stage starting to weave the basket now it's all woven there's no fixings no nails no pins it's all woven together these baskets would have been used throughout the 19th century on farms they're very important they would be used for broadcast sowing seed harvesting root crops such as potatoes feeding animals chopped turnips they gradually declined as mechanization took over for instance a wire basket was introduced and factors came along with the sea drills and there was less hand work on farms wow color that's fantastic so how long is something like this going to last then this basket can last for decades in fact i have uh repaired baskets occasionally it's repairing they've been 50 years old wow some of the strips go i can just weave them gosh talk about environmentally friendly something that you can use for 50 years and then get repaired and carry on using it yes and then you can use it kindling for your fire fantastic oh isn't it beautiful that is just a really really beautiful thing they give you many years of service and they're really strong in fact one of the tests at the end of it you have to be able to stand on it you sure yeah who needs a horse at the saw pit peter and damian have reached the last and most technically precise stage of the fence post that's about where we want to be about there one two three okay then just up and down just a few strokes to get it bedded in men employed to saw wood were called sawyers by the late 19th century saw pits like this were in decline industrial saw mills were taking over and hand sawing couldn't compete you come right up and right down slow it'll down several hours to cut off the sides of this log a mechanical sawmill could process hundreds in a day top of my arms on my shoulders they're really starting to ache the constant sweaty excursion of farm life means tending to personal hygiene is a high priority for the team with alex and peter out of the house ruth has the perfect opportunity [Music] i'm gonna have a bath people in this period felt that washing was seriously the underpinning thing about keeping yourself healthy despite the fact that it's actually really difficult in this sort of situation to do ruth's bath is a sawn off wooden barrel covered with a sheet it's almost like a drip tray that catches the water as you pour water over yourself and it's very very efficient on resources bathing in a room with no central heating is pretty cold a lot of people have the image of a victorian bath being a large tin affair that um you can fill up with water and be submerged in up to your neck but most people in the country who didn't have spare money managed in this sort of shallow tray with wiping yourself down soaping yourself all over and pouring water over you so somewhere between a shower and a scrub down [Music] peter and damian have been sawing for almost four hours as night falls the race is on to finish the gate post yeah definitely like to say very zen [Music] wedge always falls on the head this is our third side of our [Music] post just before bed ruth's trying out her homemade remedies so this is the hand cream i made earlier with rose water and lard and oatmeal and it definitely helps but i don't think anything would you know completely protect your hands from the amount of cold water and hard work and this lip gloss however is absolutely fantastic there's one more hygiene challenge that ruth must tend to i'm just making up some more sanitary towels back in the victorian period of course you couldn't just nip down the shops when you needed such supplies you have a bag which can be washed and then you stuff it with something absorbent so for example if there was a load of nice dry moss outside i might use that to stuff the bags with and you just pop whatever it is you're going to stuff inside the bag and there you go one sanitary pack and that sort of sorts out that monthly problem it's often these sort of intimate little details about people's personal lives that i find most fascinating history's full of all the big stuff but you know the details the day-to-day just how you manage often gets forgotten and left by the wayside [Music] march has arrived and the farm is showing the first signs of spring ruth's basket is being put to use fantastic hello pigs you ready don't have make life easier peter's gate post is finally in the ground [Music] and all ten ewes are pregnant lambing time is now imminent the boys have traveled to richard spencer's farm to get some much needed advice how are you going oh it's steady steady good to see you again good to see you again good to see you again yeah so you're gonna give us a crash course have you landed a sheet before never [Laughter] well there's one here we have a nose and two front feet you can tell me the front feet well i could pull this out as easy as pie does you've never done it before who's going to go first who wants to learn give it a go you can give it a go right alex the trick is if you're on your own which you often are working with livestock yep the with the the sheep is on the side everything's okay you get close in with your knees inside of a stomach so if she kicks and struggles she might do she's not going to kick you where it hurts and you don't look with your eyes you look with your fingertips so just head straight in yeah get straight in there there's plenty of lubricant provided by mother nature don't look with your eyes look with your fingertips right it's a very big lamb so while she's taking so long watching these help don't be afraid to pull yeah go on really give it some go for it got it yeah here it comes go go go go go go go go go both hands just don't mess about good little critical grip the unbelievable chord keep going both hands if you wish alex go go go go go go get him out and get the placenta off his head just head to the percent to clear it yeah use your fingers to squeeze his nose and clear the mips off his nose just get everything clear yep right put your finger and thumb middle finger and thumb on his ear and prick it really tight get the nails to rub together either side of his in nails into here oh yeah that's good that's a gas still not very strong grab some straw grab some straw that's it and scrub his chest in there no you're playing with it man you're scrubbing the floor really really rub it get the circulation going really stimulating it's like an aggressive mother sort of licking him to get him going yeah that's it that's the first one you've actually delivered is it alex that's the first lamb i've ever delivered that's fantastic you also check that there's milk there look it's important that's it perfect see if that worked as well got you oh absolutely wonderful absolutely wonderful now we've got this sheet with a healthy i'm all looking at it's sucking well just pin her up so that no other sheep comes along and takes time away from her anywhere you like up the wall side use the corner of the wall there to wedge the end of the hurdle again so it won't move away then just remember where the sheep puts the pressure when she pushes against it when you're working with sheep you have to think like a sheep and she's taking the nail picking out that's what i love about the shropshire sheep the lambs have got that wonderful to nasa that wonderful will to live as soon as they're out there and we struggled to get the breath first breath in the lung didn't we alex wonderful wonderful shoot the shots because they really want to get up and go [Applause] there's been a real barrage of emotions um but it's certainly given me confidence our own lamy but um there's still part of me that's very apprehensive very nervous because when we're away from here we're back on our farm we won't have richard we won't have the backups we'll be on our own and you know what if something goes wrong will we be able to cope with the first slams due in just a few days peter will soon have a chance to find out [Music] but before the lambs are born the sheep field needs urgent repairs there's a big hole in the hedge surrounding it which ruth has decided to fix using an ancient technique called wattle work i'm just driving some posts in along this gap in the hedge and then i'm gonna weave a load of hazel up and down the early spring or late winter is a time when you do as much of the sort of hedging and ditching as you possibly can there's not too much other agricultural work and there's no leaves on the wood to get in your way i expect the vegetation to sort of grow up around this bit so this should solve the gap for the next 20 30 40 50 years maybe if i'm lucky to test her repairs ruth's drafted in the farm's most consistent escape artists go on try and get through my fence now [Music] well it's only a very quick bit of emergency fence mending but i think that'll do [Music] the fence across the farm yard is far from complete to speed things up the boys are going to cut the rest of the logs by cleaving we're putting in wedges that's forcing the wood apart and there's no question about this being a thousand times quicker than sawing it's a rough and ready form of fencing it's got to be functional it doesn't necessarily have to be pretty if you like ours oh look at that it's just gone listen up yeah i think the key is putting the accent at the start and dictating how it's going to split i think the key is after we've done the job if only you were so smart before the job here back in the farm yard the quartered logs must be cut down by two feet how big is two i will use my victorian measuring stick this is a foot from elbow there we are to that knuckle there so if i mark that up there to there it's this mark here getting a nice rocking action down in here yeah use a lot more of your body weight with a saw like this [Music] so this is going in this hole just here okay it's still going look at all that water coming out the fence needs a gate and a gate needs hinges on the farm's estate there's only one man for the job john herbertson is the local blacksmith [Music] blacksmiths rather pride themselves on being the possessors of the king of crafts because if the blacksmith couldn't make the tools and the carpenter couldn't cut his wood the wheels on the carts wouldn't be shod and no one could do anything so the blacksmith would have been a man of some importance and his uh as his contribution would have been to drag everybody in to the village blacksmiths there'd be farmers there parking their forces to be shard carts to be mended and uh also in the winter of course it'd be the one warm place around by the late 19th century the village blacksmith's trade was declining competition from factories meant many of their products were being mass produced by machines at much lower cost items like hinges nails and wagon parts could be purchased ready made what i'm doing is rolling it up a bit like a swiss roll but unlike other rural craftsmen many blacksmiths survived into the 20th century they took on work for the railways and when automobiles began to appear some became mechanics [Music] hi john have you finished the hinges yes i have it's done now so the gate will open that way it's absolutely perfect thank you very much i'm very very impressed the fence is almost finished but before they can complete it the team have a new problem to tackle the wheat crop is once again under attack not from pheasants this time but from rabbits just like game birds rabbits were the property of the landowner for much of the 19th century it was illegal for tenant farmers to kill them so alex has decided to take matters into his own hands in the style of a notorious figure of the victorian countryside the poacher going out on the pheasant shoot was very much something we did with the land agent but um catching rabbits like this is is something that you you do as a poacher you know you certainly wouldn't want to let the land agent know about this doug and bob jones are a father and son team they've been catching rabbits in these hills for 50 years using ferrets nip this all what you do is you net up all of the holes and then you put the ferret in and we've got a jill which is a female ferret she runs around and of course she puts the fear of god in the rabbits they shoot along the burrows and they come out and these nets are designed in such a way that as the rabbit hits them it sort of traps them behind poaching was widespread in victorian britain and the authorities took a very serious line game laws throughout the 19th century were incredibly strict police were issued with stop and search powers and this is an enormous bone of contention amongst the working classes in practice the law meant that the police could stop a stop a farm labourer returning from work and ask him to turf out his pockets and obviously if they've got any traps or nets or even game they could be arrested but of course the police then at the time were using these powers just to stop random people and just to you know to check to see what they're up to what they're doing and of course this really upset a lot of farm labourers okay we're gonna drop the ferrets in right okay she's in so quiet now the ferret looks in every burrow until she finds a rabbit if there's none to be found she'll reappear just seen the ferret just stick its head out that's in here boxer box sure okay we'll move on to our next next one yeah with dozens of warrens in these hills there are plenty more to try it's a bit of a hit and miss affair really you don't really know where they are [Music] back at the cottage ruth is dealing with the leftover pheasant from alex's first hunting trip we had them roasted the other night but there's quite a lot of meat left on them i've got here a book about um how to cook with leftovers it's called the family save all and it's marvelously thrifty and it's it's full of really interesting recipes this recipe here is for pheasant um hashed pheasant waste not want not not only a victorian saying but such a victorian moral so many people going hungry and the idea of wasting good food appalled people if you were a person with not very much spare money and you lived in london for example there were any number of shops where you could buy food leftovers which would be collected from places like hotels or gentlemen's clubs places like that and for very very small amounts of money you could buy such leftovers and take them home and make a dinner out of them after stripping the bones ruth makes a stock in which to stew the leftover meat [Music] plenty of fox mac about here anyway so that's a good sign he doesn't hang about for nothing at the second rabbit warren hopes are running high see how she gets on quiet and quiet now please simple case whatever you want to do is just it's a start but they're hoping for many more rabbits there he is done good dog charlie good dog all right leave it leave it leave it with the warren exhausted the final total is six rabbits and they're quickly put to use back at the cottage what i'm gonna do is a pudding a rabbit pudding that's a very rural dish suet puddings were an absolute staple for many a victorian family particularly at the bottom end of the social scale they're cheap to make and they're very filling and they're easy to make nice you'd only need the tiniest touch of flavour and that goes right through them now my pieces of rabbit are to be browned that's just sort of lightly fried in a little bit of butter [Music] i'll just lay my pieces of rabbit and carefully now for the suet crust of my rabbit pudding i've got to make surprise pastry which is just flour a little water and some fat suet fat now you need about twice as much flour as fat this isn't posh cooking by any stretch of the imagination this is simple food quick to prepare keeps you going no matter what the weather in the sheep field one of the pregnant news is showing signs of distress the boys have decided they must intervene [Music] get it down right so we're going to go for this yeah yes we've got some feet there feel your fingers look away but is it in the right alignment it is yeah the head i can feel the jaw okay see these fingers where my fingers are because i can feel the jaw there so it's good it's very well presented all the way up right that's it lovely lovely see it right down then it's nose mutation that's it is it breathing yet is it really yep yep that's it get some hay on it give it a rub straw that gets circulation going yeah just pinch it's here there we go yeah that's that's moving it's alive it's like great there we go i'm inclined to get some water to her get her penned up get a pen and then um just sort of we'll just monitor over here well and to make sure this one gets at the um the teats yeah i think yeah yeah she's trying to stand up as well that's all good that's a great sign to be honest a great sign right i mean now she's sitting here and they're both doing fine i'm i'm really glad we did it yeah i think we made the right call i think i think we did look at that look at them look at that i think she's gonna try and stand up now so time for me to make my exit thank you peter that's quite something that really was quite something [Music] fantastic delicious this is your rabbit this is right i'm drooling over your dinner leftover pheasant leftover pheasants very nice it's a very gamey meal yeah well if you will keep going kitten things you have to eat them a great delight in eating the pheasant because he's eating our crop yeah rabbit's nice the farm's first lamb is doing well and a little while after she was born her mum gave birth for a second time shropshire sheep can often have twins or even triplets with the rest of the flock due to give birth soon the farm's population is set to explode just in time the boys have finally completed the farmyard fence having fell the tree sawn the gatepost cleaved the rails and hung the gate with the blacksmith's hinges it's now time to put their work to the test well we've finished our post and rail fence that divides up our farm yard john the blacksmith and ruth have come to inspect it and i'm going to add pigs alex going to let out the cows and hopefully never the twins shall meet come on then you two there you come there you go seems to be working really well i think it's fantastic i think it's i think i think for me it just completes the farmyard now like everything is done yeah they all look really sturdy these posts they look really good well they are all sturdy me in one

Channel: All Out History - Premium History Documentaries

Views: 675,919

Keywords: Victorian, Victorian Farm, Full Series, worlds worst jobs in history, 19th century villain, Clarksons farm, Farm, All Out History, AlloutHistory, Allouthistory, allouthistory, AllOutHistory

Id: FccBO3JO810

Length: 173min 12sec (10392 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 22 2022