The Astonishing World Of Victorian Printing Press | Victorian Farm | Absolute History

[Music] for the last 10 months in a unique project this once deserted farm has been brought back to life as it would have been in the 1880s [Music] ruth goodman peter ginn and alex langland's have been living the lives of victorian farmers from the depths of winter to the warmth of summer turning the clock back to rediscover an age gone by [Laughter] [Music] they've restored the farm under the watchful eye of their landlord thomas stackhouse acton i think it's slightly tilted and experienced life without modern conveniences bathing in a room with no central heating it's pretty cold successfully bred victorian breeds of poultry sheep little friends look at those cattle and pigs little curious and fluffy and cute and cuddly but the dreadful june weather devastated the hay harvest it's not cutting is it no it's not so wet as well i mean look peter's winging it out there for the victorian farmer this is a disaster leaving him no haystar to feed the animals over winter rain rain lane rain rain let's hope it doesn't affect the weekday now it's late summer and the year-long project is almost at an end but first the team faces their biggest challenge yet the wheat harvest only a bumper wheat crop can offset the failure of the hay harvest [Music] first they must make some urgent repairs to their cart water then get to grips with cutting-edge technology victorian style we've had a blockage and bryant is going around the machine to try and work out what it is but most importantly they need a break in the rain we've only got a very small window between now and when those clouds come over a failed wheat crop could mean the workhouse for a victorian farmer [Music] it's early july the wheat was planted back in september and has survived the harsh winter weather as well as attacks by pheasants and rabbits now it needs to ripen from green to the familiar golden color [Music] wow this is amazing this really is it's a bit of a dream come true this this is actually probably better than i expected but with harvest maybe four to six weeks away whether depending we've still got so many things that could go wrong we don't get the harvest right we cut it too late it's too dry you know if we cut it too soon it's too green it won't thresh fingers crossed i'll get it right and i won't look like too much of an idiot if it's harvested at the right time the wheat grain from the heads will be sold to make flour for bread but wheat must be dry before it can be cut if rain delays the harvest all it will be fit for is animal feed this acre of wheat would take our farmers a week of back-breaking work to harvest by hand but in the 1880s came this the horse-drawn reaper binder as its name suggests it not only cuts the wheat but binds it into sheaves too harvesting an acre in as little as an hour what a contraption is amazing isn't it it's like something out of a wallace and grommet movie isn't it all these gadgets and levers and wheels and cogs you've got the cutting face down there the blades go across so it takes the wheat up and spits out the other side bound somehow so this is the real labor saving device it means that we don't have to run around the field bunching all this stuff up and tying it ourself putting this victorian contraption back in action is going to be no mean feat so local farmer mr thomas and his son brian have offered to help now you've used one of these haven't you yeah my father had yes i've used one of these several years and with horses with horses oh yes 1936 when i started using one like and we went on into the 50s yes winding her down into her working position approximately keep going till then wheels is off the ground that's it yeah you're going down how lovely she's quite heavy isn't she yeah do you prefer working with horses or tractors right it's a lot easier with tractors was it it was it would get on the seat and ride all day so what's the next job then we're gonna put the knife in now alex will bring him around to us we'll pop him in yeah be very careful of that it's sharp right right so we're ready to cut now are we no we're going to get the string in gotta have the string in a thread into the knot strings in here yes and it's got to end up with alex's this ingenious knotter ties the cut wheat into bundles exactly yes invented in 1857 by an 18 year old wisconsin farmhand it was a revolutionary breakthrough have you done this job before peter or not uh no no i've never done this before while you're professional at it i think you seem to think you've got it it's completely under control so i think i might need to pass over to you alex okay alex just lift the axe and just get down in there you'll see coming through there now alec you can see that all this see that yeah right okay and it's basically like like a giant sewing machine this method isn't it this is the most complicated part of the whole procedure right a little bit more out you haven't got enough a little bit more there that's better right here all the time and peter is going to turn over manually just to change his looks okay yes oh no oh no no it's clear yeah it shouldn't be a problem there let's try it again then let's let's pull that it shouldn't make any difference when was this machine last used have you any idea we should try it then with uh do you think with a sheave yeah i should put a shine in it yeah basically oh yes ready yes she tied it yes and we have a shelf tied yes yes look excellent lovely look at that knotted upper lissy yeah yeah that's brilliant that is going to save us an enormous amount of time really good so is it good to see this working again after so many years oh yes it's very nice to see it working like the voice yes but i wouldn't like to go out and work with it all day now straw the stem of the wheat plant will be a byproduct of the harvest once the valuable grain is removed ruth is keen to put it to good use local craft expert anne dyer is visiting the farm to teach ruth straw platting hello hello meet you yes well thank you so much for coming i see you brought straw yes most of my female ancestors if you go back into the victorian period were straw platters the men were labourers and the women were stronger than your hands my dad oh i hope so i've started a bit because it's easier to plant once it's begun and you know it has to be kept slightly damp look how playable that is and that doesn't make it rot then just being wet all the time well think of the english weather yeah that is the point now you've got seven straws so you've got four on one side and three on the other and you're gonna keep moving one to the other side and whichever side you've got most on is the side you plant from so it's easy you can't lose yourself but i can oh you made it look so easy hang on ah well it's a few hundred miles of plaiting it uh that's right now keep them at right angles this is this is addictive you don't have to do this sitting down no a bag on one arm to put the finish plating and your bundle of damp straws under your arm and you can go walkabouts so you get these groups of young women behaving just like teenage gangs on street corners do today intimidating everybody who walks past and nobody could really shout at them because they were earning good money they were working when you've got your 50-yard bundle and you can sell it you've got money for the groceries now you know how to plat you know how to sew so you know everything you need everything i need my husband's hat oh my gosh so a hat is just like it's just a spiral a straw plait and then you'll sew it as you go so you're not molding it over anything you're just bending it in your hands and a skilled person would get a perfect shape i thought there was all sorts of clever machinery so how much of this do i have to make before i can make a hat hence how big the hat is of course but just a nice little small one probably about 15 yards 20 yards 15 yards for a small hat yeah and i've done three inches yes i really want to have a real proper go this we've got all this straw out in the field there's no excuse yes [Music] to carry the harvested wheat from the field the victorian farmers need a cart or dre but theirs has lane unused for decades and peter is unsure of the condition of its wheels so he's visiting mike wright the wheel right for advice how are you hello peter we've got a wheat harvest that we want to bring in and for that we're going to use our dre yeah but i've had a look at it and the wheels were a bit wobbly i was wondering if you could come as a wheel right and cast your expert eye over it yeah the thing is i know so little about wheel writing i'd love a quick sort of demonstration actually all right yes well obviously we start with the hub and work outwards to the spokes and the fellas which are the wooden rim around the side right the hub is made of elm because elm's got a very twisted grain and it it doesn't split easily when the spokes are driven into it right okay the spokes are made of oak for strength yeah so that all the power of the wheel the weight is just transferred down the grain yeah the rim of the wheel or fellowes as they're called fellows they're made of ash so there's three different woods you've got elm oak and ash ash is quite flexible isn't it that's the reason that it's used it takes the shocks of the road better than anything else once we've got that on i'm going to make sure all these tongues are engaged right and then tap them up gradually all the way around close all the joints well this looks pretty complete as a wheel but you don't use glue or nails so how do you hold it all together well we hold it together with the metal tire that goes around the outside right this is made smaller than the wheel okay and it's normally heated to red hot so that it expands sufficiently to go over the wheel and then cooled quickly so that it shrinks and pulls all the joints up tight and holds the whole wheel under tension and so this would be red hot as it was going on absolutely yeah and then it would start to cool yeah and draw these joints up tight and there we have a wheel yeah and you can see it's quite and that that tire really ties it all together isn't it that's right it's a very effective way of clamping up the whole wheel i have to say on our tray there's is a bit of a gap actually it's not as tight as this so it might be the tyre that's a problem that's it actually we need to lift it a bit more really but that'll do it this one the tire is a little bit loose so i think we need to take that one off and uh retire it yeah the last thing we want is our dry to fall apart as the year on the farm draws to a close ruth is keen to try something different in the victorian kitchen curries were really popular in victoria and britain all the recipe books are full of them indeed the first curry house was opened in london in 1811. this one calls for powdered ginger turmeric and cayenne pepper all of which were relatively cheap so now i've coated the chicken pieces in my curry powder my mix of spices they're to be browned or fried in butter along with lots of onion and garlic i'm just popping the chicken into the melted butter and i shall brown those off back on the stove and you find recipes in mrs beaton in mrs rundle eliza acton and also the family save all using leftovers using a huge variety of meats fish even curried eggs they're nice i like curry ducks berries are also one of the few times in which the victorian recipes include garlic it's only supposed to be the one clove so let's make the most of it i've got my stock pot here just got some chicken stock and just go straight in these are the onions that have been cooked through browned off in the rest of the butter and spices and they go into and then open my marrow and this is all going to stew down now for about 45 minutes to an hour and it'll reduce as it does so that the stock combining with the spices will make the sauce this is our dry tire just taking it around to the forge the metal tyre's been removed repaired and is ready to go back onto the wooden wheel hi mike hi peter well i've got the tyre all right so it'll drop over like that right you can see it's too small to go over at the moment yeah but when it's hot hopefully it'll be big enough to drop over so when it gets hot you'll expand it'll expand bigger in the wheel yeah and then it contracts and clamps yeah 100 years ago we would have been using the trusby chronicle not shocked to start plenty of sticks around the outside wigwam fashion right fill up all the gaps so that the wind can't get into it we're now going to light our fire feeling a bit nervous about the station that's uh there's nothing to it let the air get to it a bit more yet i have to say i'm starting to feel my eyes beginning to melt yeah i think it's getting hot it's time to move back a little bit i think yeah seriously the heat of this fire i cannot exaggerate how intense this heat is in an effort to retain my facial hair and i have had it burnt off before i'm just putting a bit of water on my face and my hands so that just gives me a little bit of extra protection against the fire when i go in with the tongs so i'll keep my eyelashes i'll keep my eyebrows i'll keep my beard and unlike mike i'll keep my hair you ready peter i'm ready we've got to go for it now grab one of these that's raking the fire off the top of the tire one on hang on already ready ready joint on the middle yeah okay all right pressure walls out lock it down with a hammer this side hang on wait wait do you want water just evenly applying water here this is just shrinking the tyre into place as you can see by the water boiling as soon as it hits the tyre it's still red hot there was actually so much of a gap around the outside i didn't think actually it was ever going to close up but it is starting to close up now it is it's after the water touches it it's still bone dry that was very very intense you happy with that mike yeah it feels fine um it's still quite warm to the touch yeah it is the water did work on my face so they know it's been replaced with a sheen of sweat right one wheel one cart jack this is the wheel we've retired and mike's very kindly helping me put it back on the tray that'll do wonderful and we just slip the wheel on and now the linchpin position wheel on wheel on yeah hopefully this means that uh we'll have a working drive for our wheat harvest right that's up thresher wheeled out there job done [Music] with both the dre and reaper binder up and running peter and alex head back to the cottage to plan the harvest with ruth over a curry smells very good curry always smells good yeah i'm looking forward to it i never thought this victorian farm would be sitting down to cover curry i was really popular good old victories they're quite cosmopolitan in their food i mean if you go through eliza acton's recipe book you can find food from about 20 different countries they're quite cosmopolitan in what they called the british empire well exactly what we're going to do about harvest them i mean even with the reaper binder we're going to need quite a lot of extra labor aren't we yes i suppose you want less than you would do if you were doing it entirely by hand but more than you would do if you're doing it with modern equipment yeah but then if we do have help we should really have a party to say thank you i have a shopper and equally it's it's uh the end of our our year here it would be nice to say thank you to people wouldn't that yeah i mean we can't afford to pay people much so how on earth are we gonna well i think we're gonna have to pay them at the party and the party's gotta consist of good food good beer and good music okay good food reasonably possible home brew so you're gonna have a crack of some beer then i think we should have a crack at some beer okay so how many victorian farm laborers are wandering around in the 21st century [Laughter] yeah they might be like no so how are we going to get them to come then do you think poster we could get a poster it was a very victorian thing to do i would advertise in print you know in print isn't it i mean there are adverts for everything everywhere first great age of advertising yeah so they say apparently farmers could read well yeah i might learn soon when you open your curry house it's all right now it's delicious very sort of english curry but to attract help with the harvest peter and alex are making beer victorian style the first job is to heat malted barley in water smells delicious doesn't it yeah that smells fantastic it's been like almond tea isn't it yeah milk drink hot milk drink hot water drink it tipsy just making it we need to keep that temperature at 150 degrees we need to do that for two hours the temperature is critical because if it's too much it kills the enzymes if it's too little the enzymes won't work but 150 degrees fahrenheit the enzymes will release sugars from the barley into the water grate the sugar water which is the wart basically this sugar is what the yeast feeds on and that reaction creates the alcohol back in the victorian period you were very much responsible for providing not only for the the sort of financial needs of your your labourers but also for their refreshments as well and if you brewed a good beer there's a very good chance you get all the best labourers that smells absolutely lovely it does and it's holding its temperature well or at least it has done now and it's been pushing three hours yeah it should be fine my big problem now is is straining it into the cauldron okay because you'd normally have a hole in the bottom and stuff at a straw right but obviously a wooden vessel leaked so we can use that i found this is that what i think it is topper roost chamber pot is it i hope you've given it a thorough cleaning let's go for it go for this just don't tell anyone if that has been used in anger i think you might want to give it a slightly more thorough sterilization begins nobody will ever know while the boys battle with a beer ruth heads off to a printer's shop in nearby blist hill good morning good morning and how can i help you um i've come to order a poster if possible please put up what sort of size we're looking at oh i don't know sort of poster size okay yeah yeah um it's for the farm for glebe farm glee palm yes um and we want some harvest help now the boys think that we might have trouble getting labour so they said we've got to make this poster really like really attractive they suggested we put something like you know that the best beer around was on that's certainly attract them in the best beer around here we have our cases of type this case here contains all the capital letters and this one here contains all those small letters so printers often call this the uppercase and the lowercase letter oh i see that's what it means so what we do is and we're going to set the word glebe farm here so we've picked up a g from the compartment and put it into our stick now what it is you hold the stick in your left hand and you work away from your body so we're going to put the next one is the owl so we're following it to each one out e b we're in the lower case here yeah right so that we've done the word glee we need to put spacing material in here so we're putting two pieces of paste space mature and then we're going to do the word farm capital f again that uppercase f a r m so they are we've now completed our time now it looks as if it's upside down but when you turn the stick around like that you can actually see that it is backwards all right and so you when you were doing that you were spelling it out in order you weren't trying to spell it backwards were you well that'd make it so much easier yeah this is where the poor old apprentice after got this wrong if we have a look at this this is a name of our shop this was done by an apprentice who simply started the wrong end of the stick or got the wrong end of the stick oh i see so that's where the stairing comes from getting the wrong end of the stick starting the wrong end the 19th century saw the first great age of advertising and almost all of it was in printed form as well as posters masses of printed leaflets junk mail flowed through the victorian postal system you're going to have to use all your strengths that's half a ton of pressure let's see how we've done with your first poster oh talk about half a ton of pressure look how that's come through there oh fantastic great right well i'll just get these stuck up around the village i think [Music] i suppose as victorians if we if we got good at brewing beer we could invest in the proper kit back at the cottage the malted barley is filtered from the water drop by drop [Music] this is tedious it is but we can always just tip it through the it's going to say the pillowcase genius idea let's innovate i'll knit this off wreath's bed pour it in there necessity is the mother of all invention that's good i think leave that at that hmm he seems to be waterproof [Laughter] i think put the hops in here we still gotta drain it though haven't we we still gotta drain the water out at some point i think at this rate we're going to be lucky if we've got any beer for harvest don't say that eventually the barley's filtered out next it's time to flavor the beer this is going to give it the bitterness and also the hoppy taste yep but we're going for the bittersweet aren't we we are summer beer and all that put in some honey brilliant some honey yeah well we've got so much of it at the moment honey is the only ingredient in the world that doesn't go off in its raw form this is our yeast so i'm just going to put this into the beer and i'll just stir the yeast into the wart and the water's sugar water and the yeast feeds off of that sugar and the result of that is alcohol so this is it this is now beer it is in the lap of the gods there's nothing more we can do for this [Music] hey piggies is the barley from our brew and one of the things victorian farmers would have done with it is feed it to the pigs because pigs pretty much eat anything and look at them they are really really tucking in i mean malted barley it's like maltesers it's like ovaltine it's a malt extract it's lovely and they're absolutely scoffing it with the piglets weaned it's time they were fattened for slaughter in just a few weeks the team will leave so merle wilson from a local farm has come to collect the pigs oh hi mel is anybody back hi how are you not so bad they're very good aren't they they are they're lovely absolutely lovely have you just weaned them yeah pretty much what are you going to do with them well i think i'm going to fatten some up see what they're like because we haven't had gloucester all spots before but i'm going to keep one female to breed from right right should we take them over yeah do you think they'll follow calm pigs so i suppose you'll miss these pigs will you immensely more more than you'll know i suppose yeah this is goodbye this is it really but that's way farming i know it is the way of farming if they've had a good life that's the main thing oh yeah well i better get behind them come on come on come on come on boys you got a long walk come on come on [Music] as well as the nurtured wheat crop the nearby hills of the long mind have their own natural harvest windberries this is a place where in the summer women and children came to pick a free harvest a free cash crop actually had quite a good commercial value i'm picking well locally they're called windbreeze um much of britain they're called bilbrays wimbre is a pretty much the same thing as american blueberries oddly many british people know american blueberries and don't know our own native version our native version is a little bit smaller but i think it tastes nicer in the 19th century this whole moorland was managed for grouse and they would burn sections of it year after year to take the big vegetation out and allow fresh young growth to come and that incidentally by the by is really good conditions for the wintry bushes to grow so you get this huge very harvest all over the tops of these hills you don't have to plant anything you don't have to weed anything you don't have to fertilize anything you don't need any machines it's just there free and what made it commercially viable as opposed to just you know local produce for local people is the railway down at the bottom which meant that great big baskets and crates full of windbreaks could be whisked off to london where you could get really good money from the restaurant trade as july ends the wheat is turning golden and will soon be ready to harvest the harvest will be the culmination of their year as victorian farmers it's been a fabulous year but it's going to be a wrench having to leave this farm and one thing i really have learned is that farming isn't a job farming is a lifestyle and it is totally engaging we'll be back in the uh the real world soon and i don't know how i'm going to react to having to go back to modern living i've enjoyed victorian farming so much so it's going to be quite a shock to the system but of course we've still got the wheat harvest to do and you know i'm very anxious about that what with the weather at the moment the wheat must be dry otherwise the reaper binder will jam but the prospects aren't good the summer's been one of the wettest for years despite anxieties about the weather the preparations for the harvest are going well the posters are up around the village so hopefully they'll get some much needed help the horse-drawn dre and reaper binder are set to go and ruth's beginning preparations for the harvest festival making winbury jam wimbers don't have very much pectin which is the thing that makes the jam set so i'm going to use some apple peel and apple cores to produce some pectin so all i've got to do is take all my corings and my peelings and let them simmer in some water and then the water will become the water that i make my jam with and hey presto a set will occur pectin is something which occurs naturally in lots of fruit and when you boil it up the liquid and the pectin react with the acids in the fruit and it turns into a jelly i'm gonna put all the peelings in a cloth just makes it easier with the straining afterwards [Music] i'll just pop that on the range and boil it for a couple of hours last of my wimbrese all the fruit on top of my nice pectiny water i need to weigh the sugar and was with most jam it's basically same amount of sugar as fruit earlier centuries sugar had been expensive and jam had been a luxury product but with slavery and new machines in the sugar refineries and better transport bringing the sugar back sugar had become a cheap mass ingredient in britain so bread and jam was something that many a person who couldn't afford a joint a mutton turned to the sheep have been one of the great success stories of this victorian farm the initial flock of 10 has grown to 26 back in april alex sewed them a nutritious pasture to graze using grasses developed in the victorian era but with a year on the farm drawing to a close it's time for them to be taken away by sheep farmer richard spencer so what do you think of some of these lambs then richard well you've got one or two outstanding specimens there there's one of those alarms it's an absolute beauty it's as good as anything i've read this year i'm very impressed with what you've done richard's also impressed by alex's to take photographs there see where flavors come through well those deep rooted plants they'll get down and pull the trace elements up your sheep couldn't wish for better and it's just what you need to sort of get these lambs to finish i'm very impressed alex i'm very impressed well done thank you very much richard's advised in closing the sheep in a small area and moving it every day [Music] this is a valuable feed for your sheep and if you put them on here they'll come in here hungry they'll eat it down then tomorrow they'll move on to the next piece and also with them being on continually fresh grazing which in effect it is there's no chance for a parasite problem to develop let's just have a look and see what the condition is like on the back so we're going to catch one of those lambs and we're going to see what it feels like and we'll see if it's ready for the butcher jolly good are you ready let's go for it oh that's one go on go go go go go where are you alex good grief young man youth youth and jews i'm a no match for age and treacherous dear goodness me he's a tough one isn't he you know that will do that will do i won't tell your mother right this is this is just about right you put your hands on there yep right across there where am i not yeah you can feel the meat it's about like that oh yeah yeah yeah but if you put your hands there yeah that is wonderful that is solid meeting there that is a very nice round lamb actually it's not wool it's firm flesh yeah i'm quite quite impressed with that you've got some absolutely wonderful lambs there there's always one or two that aren't as good as the others it's a fact of life i mean i would run to the later would i survive we'd stand up then as as victorian shepherds you would oh absolutely absolutely thank you ever so much richard absolute pleasure absolute pleasure and alex well done well done back at the farm ruth has been bitten by the straw platting bug this straw plastic has really turned out to be addictive i find myself doing it all the time and it's quite nice using our straw and look i've nearly finished it actually looks like a hat i'm so pleased with it i really i just when i started sewing it together i thought well you know if i just make a disc shape that'd be something but as i sort of worked it it just sort of happened and came together it's quite fetching on top of head i think really though if i want to be victorian i want to wear it with a big bow sort of tied around and then it should come under my chin which pushes the hat into a different shape and sort of sort of bit like that it's the first of august known as lamas day this was traditionally the start of the wheat harvest season if the next few days stay dry this will be the best time to reap the crop to celebrate lamas day alex and peter are ringing the church bells under the watch of warden edward jones well we've had a few practices and i think last night we were sort of almost there weren't we did very well last night yes we're going to get it right today yes we are indeed and you're going to ring the tennervale peter that's the heaviest bell half a ton weight wonderful rupert's on the treble the first bell and alex on the middle belt right so i'll set the pace with the treble bell and i'll try and keep it as slow as possible because i'm aware that your your bell is that is the heaviest and uh we have to try and keep up with each other that's right look two treble going treble gone [Applause] [Music] [Applause] really just trying to concentrate i'm getting a nice even ring all the while i'm watching rupert so that my sally's going just after his which it isn't at the moment [Music] making quite a racket in there aren't they they're doing a wonderful job professor ronald hutton is an expert in british rituals what exactly is it that they're doing well you ring the bells twice traditionally you ring the bells at lammus the loaf mass which is the first of august to announce the beginning of the harvest and then in this parish uh you'd ring the bells at the end of harvest to announce the fact it was over for everybody this is a relatively new custom it's part of the harvest festival which doesn't come in until the 1840s to the 1860s and that's to get over the commercialization of agriculture in the early 19th century more and more harvest hands are accepting extra cash instead of a harvest supper which makes sense but it doesn't lose in that sense of community so what happens instead is the entire parish gets together to have a general harvest celebration when everybody's finished reaping everybody pays a bit towards it and it restores that sense of an organic community and it works so well we're still doing [Applause] it how did we do that mr j well it wasn't too bad there's room for improvement [Music] it's harvest time the rain's held off and the wheat is dry enough to cut [Music] local farmer brian davis and his daughter sharon have come to drive the reaper binder powered by three horses it cuts and ties the wheat into sheaves doing the job of dozens of workers [Music] it's such an amazing piece of tonight it was just tremendous i was hoping it would work oh it was just so fast whoosh but with just one row done the reaper binder comes to a shuddering halt back back back back we've had a blockage and bryant is going around the machine to try and work out what it is and there's another problem brewing on the horizon rain a downpour now will threaten the whole harvest the problem here is we've only got a very small window between now and when those clouds come over we really don't want to get uh to caught in a thunderstorm we'll play back a bit alex so it's the landing that's locked up it's working right now so it was a blockage yeah blockage on the knife go weeds amongst the crop caused the jam but with a storm closing in they can't afford another hitch time for urgent action we were desperately keen to try and avoid this kind of harvesting this really is sort of early 19th century style harvesting all by hand but the reason we've had to do this is because we fertilize this patch along here and what we've really done is we've fertilized the weeds as well and one of the weeds that we've got in here is a field vetch and that is a real pain to farmers so what we're going to do is just clean ourselves a nice kind of suede through here if you like with the weeds cleared the reaper binder can cut without risk of jamming in less than an hour the job's done and only just in time well here comes the rain hopefully it won't be too much of a heavy shower but it doesn't look good does it this has been probably one of the most stressful things after the disaster of the hay crop because of the weather we just um you know this has just been so stressful that was pretty quick but i think stoking is going to take us a bit of time and the rain's coming give us a hand we can get everyone we can get there with intent you're going to help us stoke yeah we need to get really fast ruth's poster hasn't produced any harvest laborers yet so it's all hands on deck great we need one more it's really important that we up end and stoke all the wheat so that the wheat is up in the air where it can be dried if we left it down on the ground it would start to rot up like this it can dry out plenty of air around it and hopefully dry before any mold gets to it that was a badly stooped stoop wasn't it you'd make a good farmer you would it's now raining if this had happened before we couldn't have cut it i mean it's a miracle but not all the wheat is cut and stoked a small clump remains professor ronald hutton has returned to the farm to explain a strange victorian ritual [Music] late victorian scholars themselves thought that a spirit lived in the corn in which ancient peoples believed and of course as you cut more and more of the crop the spirit retreats since the last bit so that particular stand of crop is infused with this vital element that's actually quite dangerous and that's why you dare not approach too close you fling things from afar or you try and get it blindfolds that's the mystical interpretation that sounds very victorian but professor hutton believes that there's a much simpler explanation for the ritual harvesting a crop as you've discovered is really difficult work and so everyone's really elated you get to the end of it and you want to make a big thing of it i'd like to be the first to volunteer ruth [Laughter] i hope you don't need your ankles in the future there we go now we're all just going to pop down and you let us know when you finish turn ruth around a few times and give her the scythe and then take carver one oh it's like dancing it's just very nice it is very elegant three oh whoa whoa that's a stupid tape that was 12 o'clock you want six o'clock another stew it's no you're not with the last of the wheat cut it's time to celebrate [Music] [Applause] all over the british isles the last sheath is given a name uh the maiden the crone the baby the hair and shropshire is called the mayor don't know why that's its nickname and what you do is you shout i have her i have her i have her in a shropshire accent and we three guys shout uh what has the what has the what has thee and you shout amir revere revere you want to try that okay so i have her i have her well done that have heard that in the neighboring farm who won't have finished their harvesting and you will feel great at having shown them up so what do i do with this now then in shropshire you probably wouldn't have made it into a corn dolly they do that elsewhere right so you stick it up in your house as a trophy you can plat it you can put ribbons in it you can put flowers in it you do what makes you feel good about having done so well it's your achievement the farmers must now wait three weeks for the sheaves of wheat to dry out before they can be brought in from the field if they're stored damp they'll rot there's no clever victorian machine to do this job so plenty of extra labor will be needed fingers crossed ruth's poster works while they wait it's time for peter ruth and alex to move out of the farm where they've lived as victorians for the past year [Music] it's truly a a life enhancing experience maybe even a life-altering experience it's going to be very very hard to leave this place very hard indeed the final job on the victorian farm is to bring in the harvest in the wheat fields there's been an excellent response to ruth's poster and there's no shortage of help [Music] we've managed to enlist an army of victorian labourers to help us load our dre the only problem is peter and i've never done this before as with most things looks like the poster worked seem to want loads of people to give us a hand thanks thank you how's it going peter that's going very well like many hands make like work thank you very much i think we might just get it wrong we're just using the sort of time-honored implement of the rural scene the uh piko or pitchfork because it's more popularly known and quite literally all it does is just pitches stuff up to us before oh it lasted a bit of sunday ruth yeah eventually eventually the way we're stacking this tray is we're putting it stalk side out because that means the head of the grain is in the middle of the tray so if you lose any it's still on your tray with all the stouks loaded it's time for gleaning collecting any stray stalks of wheat left in the field for very poor families this was deeply important to their yearly economy if you were good at gleaning and you followed the fields from farm to farm you could get several months worth of bread corn for free [Music] the 19th century saw the birth of photography for the first time accurately illustrating everyday rural scenes like this today these images give us a window into a lost age photographer chris vile has come to the farm to take a picture of our harvest with a victorian plate camera hi chris thanks ever so much for coming along why would photographers be so interested in in harvesting this sort of everyday activity the majority of photographers work was undoubtedly taking portraits and but two things had changed a the materials have become much cheaper and more mass-produced but i think also photographers in the early days saw themselves often as artists and they're in that sort of romantic tradition and maybe as a as a reaction to the sort of increasing industrialization of the countryside that we're seeing and they wanted to capture that rural life right stand still for a few seconds last september the team threshed wheat removing grain to be sold to make bread now they're leaving a wheat crop to be threshed by the next tenants of the farm on the way to the farm yard there's a steep hill to negotiate a real test for the repaired wheel [Music] as we're going down the brow of the hill we're attaching a slipper which is going to break the cart so the cart isn't going to run away with the horses oh i feel as safe as ours is up here [Music] celebrating the end of harvest has been a custom across europe ever since history began [Music] it's a chance for the workers to be repaid with free-flowing beer and food accompanied by folk musician john kirkpatrick for the poor it's an opportunity to get decent food and beer mr acton and his son rupert have been the victorian farms landlords all year and have come along to join in the celebrations mr acton mr jackson how lovely to come join us well as you can see mr acton a harvest and here is the uh the last sheath as well it looks a healthy sample it does there's a little bit of a little bit of weed can we offer you a drink i didn't mean to slur that now the moment of truth time to taste peter's beer [Laughter] quite an acceptable flavor jolly good hmm that is nice peter all things considered and i think that's a a damn good home brew that you drinking the same beer as i am [Laughter] i think it's an opportunity as well to say a big thank you to everyone that helped us with the harvest today yeah a big thanks to everyone thank you very much cheers and i've got one last very sad duty to do i've got to give you that back that's very kind a very sad moment for me into the cottage well i'm sure the cottage is in a lot better state now than it was when you arrived you might have the key but we've changed the locks right yes me boys [Music] victorian harvest festivals were notoriously boozy and uproarious affairs it's not long before the drinking games [Music] start over and over and over and over and turn your hat over over and over and over [Applause] [Music] yes [Music] i don't know what's more tiring bringing in the harvest [Laughter] [Music] it's time to leave the victorian farm and say goodbye to a way of life from an age gone by we have poured our heart and soul into this project and that's the reason why it's going to be so hard to leave one thing that stood out has been bringing new life into the world and out of all that new life i think the pigs are those i've been closest to these little gloucester old spot piglets are now five days old yep as a historian an archaeologist i've spent an inordinate amount of time reading about the past and and excavating the past but this was an opportunity to do it for real and just to have the insights into day-to-day country life back in the 19th century how am i doing then you're doing very well i suppose if i had to pick out one thing that i've thoroughly enjoyed from this year it's going to have been working with the heavy horses such a massive thrill and to work with such graceful beasts and it's certainly something i'll be looking to do when i leave the farm we've been really lucky too to have a chance to get involved in all the sort of crafts of the countryside the things that you need to make and do to support life on a victorian farm i mean the basket making was just it was a joy to behold you do get a very real sense though of of how in the kind of modern age we really have lost touch with the countryside you know just all the different types of wood and trees and plants and grasses that to victorian farmers would have been second nature they're virtually alien to the kind of the the people of today there's a huge way to sadness about finishing doing all this but then i'm also really excited because it's thrown up so many ideas well this is the end of our victorian adventure i'm gonna really miss this place

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 160,706

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, absolute history, victorian farm, home brew, ruth goodman, bbc two series, farm series, alex landlands, peter ginn, letterpress printing, history of printing

Id: 1S7f5qO4RNs

Length: 58min 19sec (3499 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020