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Tales from the Green Valley
2005 · TV series · documentary · 30 min episodes · 1 season
Follows historians and archaeologists as they recreate farm life from the age of the Stuarts. They wear the clothes, eat the food and use the tools, skills and technology of the 1620s.
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2 comments on Hacker News
Great show. If you liked it, Ruth Goodman and Peter Ginn has made several shows together along with another archeologist, Alex Langlands, which I think are even better.
Of these, I think my favourite is Victorian Farm (2009), where the gang has to bring a real Victorian-era farm back into working order and then live like the Victorian farmers did. Unlike the castle show, it benefits from the gang having to research and learn the old ways on their own, whereas the castle is a big project where they're being taught or directed by the crew who's already working there.
The other shows — Tudor Monastery Farm, Edwardian Farm, Wartime Farm, Tales from the Green Valley, etc. — are all thoroughly excellent.
A minor point, but Goodman is not an archeologist or historian, but she's very good!
I am pretty sure if you like primitive tech you would love the historical documentaries BBC did on this subject.
Primitive tech's presentation and focus on one technique per video is nice. But for comprehensiveness, you can't beat reenacting the 15th-16th century by living on a farm for a year like what BBC did in "Tales from the Green Valley", "Tudor Monastery Farms", and related series.
A lot of the exact techniques primitive tech covered is also covered by those series:
Fish traps: https://youtu.be/ZIbhoR1GBuI?t=302
Wattle and daub wall: https://youtu.be/Qn1h8DOQGEQ?t=589
Building roofs: https://youtu.be/jgjFsR-c0-Q?t=558
Smelting lead ores: https://youtu.be/ZIbhoR1GBuI?t=837
etc etc