Edwardian Farm

- Season 1

(2010)

The trio establish their domicile, scrubbing a flagstone floor and cleaning out a clogged chimney. They build a hayrick to put up hay, hire a stonemason to make a trough, learn to thatch, make a rag rug and begin keeping chickens and sheep. Ruth cooks a sheep's head stew.

Alex and Peter milk goats and train the ploughhorses. They begin a market garden of strawberries. Ruth pickles apples, salts a ham, and smokes bacon. Alex and Peter press apples to cider, freighting first the apples, then the barrel on the river. They visit a cooper and make lime putty. They read government agricultural leaflets, collect eggs, make chicken stew, and celebrate Halloween in Edwardian style.

Ruth prepares for the arrival of the farm's pigs and works on the privy, while Alex and Peter compare ploughing with horses to ploughing with the world's oldest working tractor. Peter begins a trout hatchery. In order to repair the hedgerows, Alex takes a trip to a water-powered smithy for a billhook. Ruth makes sloe gin for Christmas and entertains with a gramophone.

As winter sets in, the three farm dwellers must look further afield to earn money. Peter and Alex fish for crabs while Ruth hires herself out for domestic work. Ruth rides a bicycle and tries period cleaning techniques, including early vacuum cleaners. They separate growing calves from their mothers. Peter finds out how leather is made. They celebrate Christmas modestly, as poor farmers might have, and listen to a Methodist Christmas message.

The continuing winter forces Alex and Peter down a copper mine, while Ruth makes lace. The copper mine is the King Edward Mine, Camborne, Cornwall, and the lace-making is at Honiton.

Six months into their year, Ruth, Alex and Peter explore the daily lives of Edwardian farmers. This episode has a slightly different format to the rest of the series; instead of covering a whole month's changes it uses a framing device of Ruth writing a letter describing the events of a single day on the farm.

Spring arrives with the lambs and the potato crop planted with manure. Daffodils are harvested and sent by train across the country.

April arrives and time is divided between the land and the sea.

Summer brings the tourists, so the farm provides strawberries and clotted cream.

It's June - and the team head up to Dartmoor to discover the ways in which Edwardian farmers took advantage of this unique and spectacular landscape to add to their income.

July brings the harvest, cherries and potatoes. Ruth goes salmon fishing on the River Tamar with a seine net. Peter and Alex pick cherries from tall ladders and Ruth prepares cherry preserves.

August brings to an end the year on the farm; weather dictates the harvest and the seaside brings much needed fertilizer.