Victorian Farm on the BBC

The BBC is running a show called Victorian Farm right now, in which three people – two men and a woman – are spending a year living as tenant farmers on a large estate, with only the tools and methods that would have been available during the mid- to late-1800s at their disposal.

It’s the ultimate in self-sufficiency.

The farm was pretty run-down when they took it on; the house hadn’t been lived in for over 50 years, apart from by spiders. It had no working stove, the chimney was blocked up, the walls were crumbling… Outside it wasn’t much better; they needed to build their own pig sties, cut down trees (five hours to fell a single slim oak and another four to cut it up) and put up fences.

They had to plough the fields, sow their own crops (without chemicals or fertilisers), raise their own animals and make everything they need for day-to-day life themselves. And we’re not just talking pies and puddings here – they’re making their own waterproofing formula for their boots, salve for cracked lips, lotion for dry hands and sanitary towels from cotton pockets and pads of dry moss. Almost everything has some kind of animal fat in it, and at times it can be uncomfortable watching for a vegetarian. The sound of the skin peeling off a freshly-boiled cow tongue will stay with me long after the pictures have faded from my mind.

What strikes you most about the programme, though, is how the female of any species is more important than almost any male on the Victorian-era farm. The woman of the household may not have been out felling trees and putting her hands up a ewe’s backside to help with lambing, but she does spend four days every week – every week – doing the washing, and two of those days require a 4am (or preferably 2am) start. She does all of the cooking and all of the cleaning, on top of looking after the poultry animals and, in the latest episode, building a woven fence around one of the fields.

While the mens’ jobs are often one-offs (you only sow a field once or twice a year) hers are done week after week after week.

And in the animal kingdom, too, it’s the female of the species that keeps the farm in profit. You don’t need a field full of bulls, but you do want a big herd of cows, which can be fertilised by just one or two males. You don’t want a barn full of roosters, but you do want a decent flock of hens. You don’t need a dozen male sheep – one will do – but you do want as many females as you can afford to raise as they’ll each give birth to many more.

The show is a real eye opener, in many ways, and it’s a humbling experience to contrast modern-day efforts at self sufficiency with the mountainous tasks that our ancestors faced. In comparison to that, what we do today looks like little more than naive playing.

If you’re in the UK, you can find Victorian Farm on the BBC iPlayer (not available outside the UK), and the BBC has put a very long expiry date on each episode. Episode one expires in 22 days, so you have plenty of time to catch up.

Related posts:

1. Victorian Farm… finale
2. Your chance to live on the Victorian Farm
3. My Dream Farm on Channel 4
4. Edwardian Farm coming soon
5. Most-read posts on Blagger from Feb 2009

Tagged as: history, television, tv