How did a farm work in Britain 400 years ago? That’s the key question behind a 12-part documentary series I produced and directed for the BBC.
As a new agricultural year loomed in the fall of 2003, five specialists tried to turn back the clock to find out. They had to take over a remarkable farmhouse on the Welsh border, restored to what it would have been in 1620, the reign of King James I. For the previous 17 years, a historical group had worked to restore the site – the farmhouse and outbuildings . equipped with period materials, orchards planted with fruit trees of the time and planted with varieties of contemporary crops. Now, a team of archaeologists and historians have taken on the challenge of running it for a full calendar year (each program follows a month), using only tools and materials available in the 17th century.
It was my job to film them trying to turn theory into practice. From the beginning I knew what I didn’t want to do, which was to do another reality series, where the worries would be ‘could they survive without shampoo?’ What I did want to do were shows that would go as deep as possible into the social history of the time and highlight the experts struggling with the technology of the time rather than with each other.
Things didn’t just start. To plow the main field in September, we brought in a pair of English longhorn oxen, Arthur and Lancelot, from Yorkshire. They are one of the few working couples in the country. Although horses are much faster than oxen, they are more expensive to feed and maintain (they need horseshoes to begin with) and were not traditionally eaten in this country, so agricultural manuals at the time recommended against using them.
“If any surprise [injury] it comes to… an ox, and grows old… then it is man’s food… the horse, when it dies, is nothing more than carrion. And therefore I think, all things considered, the ox plow is much more profitable than the horse plow.” The Book of Husbandry William Fitzherbert 1534
As far as possible we try to follow contemporary agricultural texts. They were an excellent starting point, but often left out vital bits of information, probably considered obvious at the time. That’s where practice came in and history met reality. We built a replica of the plow according to the descriptions and illustrations of the time, but from the beginning the team had problems making it work.
The ground was quite hard and they couldn’t get the plow to bite, it just skimmed the surface. When they finally buried it, there was a loud crack as the plow buckled under the pressure. A few hasty repairs and they were back to work, finally producing their first glorious groove. It wasn’t long before they ran into more difficulties when stubble from the field got stuck between the coulter (the sharp iron pin that cuts the surface) and the plow share (the blade that splits the land). It was a preview of how the whole of the next year would turn out, an enthusiastic first try and then back to the drawing board. As he adjusted the blade and added more weight to the plow, his method seemed to click and the team’s faces broke into big smiles. Suddenly furrow upon furrow. They were clumsy, a little sketchy in places, and slow in coming (since an acre is the amount of land a team of oxen should be able to plow in a day, they were way behind), but they seemed successful.
The technique was perhaps the main slogan throughout the year. For most of the specialists, it was the first time that they had in their hands vintage tools. They had read about them and knew the theory, but putting them into practice was something else entirely, whether it was digging with one of the heavy wooden shovels, using a breast plow, or threshing grain with a flail. I can remember the magical moments when Stuart, Alex, Fonz, Ruth or Chloe stopped using brute force and let a tool do its job.
One of my favorites was when Peter ‘Fonz’ Ginn was trying to win the chaff from the wheat. He was using a replica winnowing basket, a bit like a large wicker plate raised on three sides. The idea is to spin the material around and give it a bang, allowing any breeze to blow through the light straw. Unfortunately, his grain began to fly all over the yard. Only after hours of practice, and with sore arms, did he make it. His action became light and fluid and easy and his satisfaction was obvious.
Doing everything manually, without modern machinery, we all painfully realized how much time it took just to complete the most mundane tasks, whether it be sowing wheat by hand, plucking pigeons, or building a dry stone wall. Winnowing was just one of a long series of processes required to make bread, and when Fonz dumped his now clean grain into a sack, we realized that a farmer 400 years ago had to be a highly talented jack of all trades to simply to survive.
It was not just the farmer who had to be versatile. I was surprised to learn of the vital importance of the farmer’s wife. Theirs was an essential association. Without a wife, running a farm was almost impossible. Records from the period show how a widowed farmer usually had another woman by his side in a very short time. It was a simple matter of time, work and economy. From managing the dairy, brewing, and managing the essential vegetable garden, the housewife was certainly no idle lady. Being the farm doctor was another of her roles. Since professional medicine was so expensive, she cared for home health with homemade ointments, pills, and concoctions made from herbs and plants from the garden.
And for you, Mr. Apothecary, alas, I do not look once every seven years in your store… but for myself, if I am ill… I take a kitchen doctor; I make my wife my doctor and my garden my apothecary. Robert Greene, A Joke for an Upstart Runner 1592.
Of course, nothing was wasted on a 17th century farm. The waste product of one process became the fuel for another. The ashes from the fire were used to make lye, the period equivalent of Persil, a household washing-up liquid for washing clothes. Any leftover food went to the pigs, the perfect ‘green’ disposal unit. Animal waste like today was scattered in the fields, even human waste was reused. Composted human feces in a toilet were used as fertilizer, and urine from one house was stored to produce ammonia, an excellent stain remover for clothes. In fact, urine was collected on a large scale; Urinals were placed outside pubs and the urine was used to make saltpeter, a vital ingredient in the manufacture of gunpowder, a flourishing industry at the time. At a time when ‘organic’ and ‘recycling’ are key environmental issues, it’s fascinating to step back and learn some lessons from our past.
We shot through torrential rain, blizzards and scorching sun, watching the farm change through the seasons. Away from our pampered urban lives, it became apparent how much the farmer, then and now, is ruled by the elements. Not only in the short term, but year after year, from the September plowing to the August harvest, the farmer’s life is marked by the natural cycle. For a farmer in 1620, planning, ingenuity, and aptitude were essential to survival. Looking at the hard work of our experts, we wonder how long any modern person would survive if he found himself in this environment. Although the Valley team came from the fields sweating, bruised, and exhausted, they felt an overwhelming sense of pride in what they had accomplished, a closeness to nature, and a very different degree of satisfaction for a job divorced from the land.