Edwardian Farm (2010) s01e02 Episode Script
Episode 2
1 Here in Devon, in the tranquil Tamar Valley, is a port that once bustled with industry.
Now Morwellham Quay has been brought back to life as it would have been during the reign of King Edward Vll.
Wow! Look at this place.
Archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn, and historian Ruth Goodman, are going back to the early 20th century, to live the lives of Edwardian farmers for a full calendar year.
Wa-hay! Wa-hoo! They'll not just be farming, but getting to grips with the rural industries that once brought wealth to Devon.
Like fishing Oh, wow! We've got something! and mining.
So far, they've established themselves as Edwardians by setting up a home, taking arrival of their first livestock, and fertilising the fields, ready to grow crops with deadly quicklime.
(Ship's horn blares) Now it's October, time to branch out into new ventures like market gardening.
Got one to go in there.
egg production and a beef herd.
But to make it a success, they'll need to be up and running before the frost comes.
Then they can see in the winter with Halloween, Edwardian style.
To life! In the Edwardian age, cheap imports of cereal crops from America meant it was no longer economically viable for British farmers to grow wheat.
To survive, they diversified.
Beef was one of the few things still guaranteed to provide a healthy profit.
So Alex and Peter have called on local farmer, Sarah Birt, to deliver a herd of cattle.
They're a lovely looking breed.
These are Devons, which are also known as red rubies, so-named after their jewel like colour of their coat.
They are a fantastic breed, as you can see, they're actually very quiet and docile.
(Cow bellows) - Usually! Very easy to handle.
And they're immensely hardy as well, they'll tolerate both very hot climates and very cold and wet, which is just as well, living around here.
And in the time of the Edwardian times, it'd be very likely that they would have been used for milk as well as for meat.
So for novice stockmen, these will be ideal? Absolutely perfect.
And the great thing about this breed is they almost completely look after themselves.
Very economical.
The red ruby has been reared and bred in Britain since pre-Roman times.
What's going on there, then, Sarah? That's called bulling, that heifer that you see riding the other cow is a sign that she's come in season, that she's ready for mating herself.
Right, so she's mimicking the bull.
She is mimicking the bull, and indeed, we should get a bull here as soon as we possibly can.
The cattle will be put out to pasture until the worst of the winter weather sets in.
Gonna herd the cows now.
If I step over here, they can see out into the field, to their new home.
Look at that, gorgeous.
It's not just the farm that they're stocking with animals.
The cottage needs a regular source of milk, and Ruth's got an Edwardian solution.
Most of your milk from your cows was going off to market, one way or another, commercial sort of farming.
And that often meant that there was next to no milk left in the countryside for families.
So many people kept a couple of goats in all the scruffy bits of land, and with all the scruffy bits of grazing that wouldn't be good enough for a cow.
They must be milked twice a day.
It's a job that's proving a challenge for the novice goat farmers.
Oh, oh! - (Ruth laughs) Picking you up! - What's she doing? No, she's nibbling my trousers.
And the thing is, I've seen, I mean in terms of goats being milked, I've seen these stands, that you get, it's like a tabletop.
You walk the goat on to it.
And then you're milking them up there.
Having done about two days' worth of goat milking, I can see exactly why those stands have been invented.
Push so the milk goes into the teat.
All over my arm.
- Whoops! - She's in it.
- Your aim seems to be a little off.
- Sorry! - Do you want me to give it a go? - Yeah, if you like.
Right.
Your aim's worse than mine! You do look funny like that.
(Ruth laughs) Peter, that is what I would call a compromising position.
(Ruth laughs) Peter, I've got one word for you.
Dignity.
- That's better.
- That's it! That's it, you relax, lady.
In Edwardian times, the Tamar valley was famed for its huge market gardening industry.
Thousands of acres of fruit, vegetables and flowers once grew here in the warm, damp, sheltered conditions.
Thanks to the railways, produce could be in London within 24 hours of being picked.
The government even produced advice for farmers who were looking to grow cash crops, like strawberries.
"Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, leaflet number 207.
Growing of strawberries.
" And it's giving us information on the sort of money we expect to make on that, which is really useful.
"Gross returns may be said to lie between £40 and £60 per acre.
" That is good, isn't it? Against stock, or arable, that's Certainly against wheat.
For the Edwardian farmer, growing strawberries was very profitable.
In today's money, this would mean earning around £5,000 per acre.
In this region, it was clearly a lucrative crop to grow.
I mean, farming in the Edwardian period was different in every part of the country.
Round here, market gardening was the big thing.
Yeah, the microclimate here is such that it's warm and wet in the earliest part of the year.
And we're on a south-facing slope here, so these strawberries will be ready and ripe long before anybody else's in the entire country's are ready.
Which means we're gonna get a premium price for them.
Morwellham Quay's market gardens grew strawberries until abandoned half a century ago.
Now the team want to bring them back to life, but it's going to be a race against time.
The slopes must be cleared and replanted before the first frost if they're to get a crop next June.
First, they're rescuing the few remaining strawberry plants tangled amongst the weeds.
We're sort of potting all these little tiny new plantlets, whilst they're still attached to the parent plants.
So the plant sends out a runner, grows a new little plantlet, but while it's growing, it's still fed by the main plant.
As it's starting to root, instead of it rooting into the soil, we want it to root into our little pots.
And once it's established, then it no longer needs the parent plant, and you can snip off the runner.
They really are ready, aren't they? If we left it much longer, they'd have started rooting in the soil themselves, and then lifting them would have damaged the roots.
Yeah, would have destroyed the plant.
- Wouldn't be such a great job in the rain.
- No.
Today, this is the life.
Having rescued the strawberry plants, the next job is to take the terraces back to bare earth.
It's a chance for the farm's latest recruits to earn their keep.
Right.
This one looks particularly overgrown here.
Look at these tasty weeds! You'll love it! We're just going to stake out our goats.
Essentially, it's just got so overgrown.
And what we're wanting to do is do a little bit of hard work for us first, eat back all the plants, so when it comes to turning it in, in the midwinter, it's just a little bit easier.
Machines don't clear land anywhere near as well as animals.
Not nearly as good.
While the goats get to work, the boys are taking delivery of an important new resident.
To breed cattle, they need a bull.
- Hello, Paul! - Hi, Paul.
And local farmer, Paul Hutchings, is lending them his prized specimen.
Well, here he is.
King David II.
He's a ruby red Devon bull.
The Duke of Bedford, he owned the majority of the land in this area, and he believed that they were the best cattle for small farms.
So in terms of sort of authenticity, these are the sorts of cows the Duke of Bedford was promoting on these very farms? Exactly.
He has got aristocratic lines, being King David II.
Right.
Maybe he's a friend of our Duke.
Come on! Good boy.
Come on.
Come on.
- Hey, hey, hey! - He's coming through.
- Coming through.
- Good boy.
Good boy.
- Get you back with your girls, David.
- Need that gate open.
Do you want me to go ahead to the gate? All they need to do is to put the bull with the cows and let nature take its course.
Come on! Simple.
Yeah, I know! Come on.
Good boy.
Come on.
Come on, out the hedge! Oh, no! (Bellows) I'm just keeping an eye on him.
You guys go in there, I'll keep an eye on him.
- Go on, boy! - Come on, David.
Come on.
That's good.
Best to just calm it now, just calm it right down.
Where's the food? - Well done, Peter.
- Cheers.
You didn't need us there! - All right, boys.
- Here we are.
Hey up! Through the gate, come on, then, boy.
- Good boy, David.
- Wow! See? That wasn't such a trauma.
Although there was little money to be made from growing cereal crops in Edwardian Britain, they were still cultivated on a small scale as animal feed.
In this part of Devon, the acidity of the soil makes it infertile, a huge problem for farmers.
Alex and Peter have dealt with this by neutralising it with quicklime.
This scientific approach will ensure the soil is healthy enough to grow crops.
And in the Edwardian age, growing crops still relied on good old horsepower.
The farm has two shires, Prince and Tom.
And it will take their combined strength to drag the plough.
Farmhand Megan Elliot's showing the boys the ropes.
This is our introduction, really, to the heavy horses here at the farm.
It's a fantastic opportunity for myself and Peter to get to grips with working with two horses.
Two-horse work we've done, we've always had someone sort of holding our hands, so this time we'll hopefully sort of go it alone and see if we can get these two to work together.
And, of course, they're working with two complete novices in Peter and myself.
Do you have any set commands that you use? I do, yeah.
To come to the left, when you're driving them.
You need to say, "Come by".
Come by.
And then to go round to the right, I say, "Come around".
Come around, lads.
In the Edwardian era, over a million shires worked the land.
And they were still used in farming as late as the 1950s.
It's just amazing to think that they've been selectively bred for that very purpose, isn't it? Yeah.
It's amazing, the power, you know.
I mean, ten men couldn't hold them down if they really wanted to go.
If there's any hope of getting a good crop, it'll be vital for Alex and Peter to gain the trust of these equine engines.
That'll be the hardest part, Alex, keeping them - See, they want to walk on the grass! - I'm hooked up, I'm hooked up.
Whoa, whoa! Whoa! Yeah, I'm a little bit more nervous now.
They're all right.
It's gonna be fun, Peter.
Depends on your definition of fun! Whoa! They're used to being in the lanes, pulling carts around, they're getting out here, they've got no weight behind them, and they've got this wide open space.
They're a little bit excited.
They might be sensing my nervousness.
But I'm even more nervous now than I was about ten minutes ago.
Are you relaxed? Want to have a go? They'll be fine.
Good luck.
- Right.
- So keep your arms low.
Gee up! Steady.
Weighing up to a ton, shire horses are capable of pulling double their body weight, and could easily wrench a farmer's arm from its socket.
Come on.
That's it, good boy.
Almost had a straight line there.
(Clicks tongue) Good boy.
Princey.
It's quite a nerve-wracking, but there is a definite thrill to working horses like this.
To be honest, to me, this is a much greater thrill than driving any internal combustion engine, so come by, come on! Come by.
Good boy.
It's hard enough doing things with one horse.
But doing things with two horses complicates the situation.
Then we've gotta factor in machinery, such as ploughing.
And we've gotta get straight lines, or we can't weed between our crops, and then when we harvest the crops, we've got problems.
We've gotta get the basics right.
So we've gotta get this stuff in the field now absolutely on the money, before we start ploughing up this field.
It's gonna be quite a task.
Next summer, the Edwardian farmers will need to draw on extra labour to harvest the crops.
Once, these workers were paid in cider.
And although this was outlawed in 1887, cider still remained a vital part of the rural economy, and farms were judged on the quality of their scrumpy.
Alex and Peter are keen to follow in this tradition.
But first they need a decent crop of cider apples, about a ton, so they're checking out Morwellham Quay's cider orchard.
Well, we've certainly got some very large apple trees.
But they seem remarkably bereft of any apples.
No apples.
No apples.
No apples.
I mean, these might be coming to the end of their days.
Which might account for the total and utter lack of apples.
Shall we see if we can find at least one? Can you see, there's a little red thing up in that tree over there? It's either a robin redbreast or a single cider apple.
So at least we know they are apple trees! (Laughter) At the peak of the drink's popularity, there were over 350 varieties of cider apple available.
Right, here we are.
Our one apple! Doesn't look overly healthy, does it? I think we're gonna have to buy some apples in.
Don't eat it, man! It's the only one we've got! It's a real blow, actually, because we couldn't possibly face the summer without our regular hit of cider, could we? No, of course not.
Alex and Peter's apple harvest may have failed, but Ruth's had better luck.
They're funny looking things, aren't they? She's got a crop of local apples that she wants to preserve, so they can enjoy them over the winter.
They're called sweet larks.
They're not that sweet, but they're not sour like a crab apple, although they look as small as one.
And the thing that's interesting about these, though, as well as being a local variety, is the recipes that local people put them to.
These are pickled.
I've never come across people pickling apples anywhere else.
But round here it's a tradition, you just peel them, and then pickle them, rather like you would a pickled onion, but with a bit of sugar in with the vinegar as well.
I suppose, you know, along with your cheese pickled apple.
It does sound quite nice, doesn't it? Actually, it's quite nice.
Thwarted in their cider apple quest, Alex and Peter are taking drastic measures.
Well, I suppose being down in the West Country, we can't be without our cider, and with the woeful harvest from our own orchards, we've had to go out and purchase ourself a ton of cider apples, and we're just taking them up to the press.
So, hopefully, come spring, we'll have some fantastic scrumpy of our own.
Alex and Peter are taking their apples downriver, to a cider press at Cotehele in Cornwall.
Navigating the winds and tides of the Tamar needs an experienced touch, so the boys have called on boatman Joshua Preston.
He's been sailing down the Tamar all his life.
I suppose the best way to move anything around these very steep valleys is via the river.
Via the river, exactly.
Up from Plymouth, with dock dung, limestone.
And then produce, of course, from the market gardens up here, straight down to Devonport, and market.
Basically, every industry in this valley, from market gardening to the mining and farming, was reliant on this river.
Yeah, the highway.
At its peak, almost 1,000 vessels a year passed along the Tamar.
At Cotehele, they're met by cider press manager, Chris Groves.
Yeah, so this is it! Here we go.
Thanks ever so much, Joshua.
That was good, yeah, any time I can help with that.
- We'll take you up on that.
- I'll be here to help.
- Cheers, Joshua, thanks ever so much.
- Right, ho.
See you later.
Cider is simply made by fermenting apple juice, so the first job is to press the apples to extract the juice, using a press.
This type of press dates as far back as the 1600s.
- This is an absolute monster, this.
- It is, yes, it's a bit of a beast of a press.
A large thing, we've got the large beam at the top and a single screw, be good to get it up and running.
Well, we've got the best part of about a ton of apples.
So, what do you want us to do with them? The first process is to mill the apples, so - Shall we get them pulped? - Yeah.
Let's get going.
Milling the apples will turn them into what's known as pomace.
It looks like the pony's got the mill working properly here.
You can see the two stones with the teeth in there, to grind up the apples, so it's now a case of just very, very slowly starting to introduce the first few apples.
There we are.
Just to get the pony used to the sensation of having something to pull against.
In Devon, apple pomace is traditionally bound in layers of straw to make a package, or cheese, ready to be pressed.
The word "cheese" originally referred to anything that was wrapped up.
- And then what we're gradually gonna do - Oh, right, I see.
is just to build up a layer radiating out from the centre of the cheese.
Right, and what does this straw do? It just contains it, and it allows us to build the cheese up to a good height, so we can fit all your apples in in one go.
So we're gonna build this up in layers? Yes, this is just gonna be our first base layer, and then, with the apples and that, we'll hopefully get at least six layers going on this.
That's probably enough straw now.
We're ready to start putting on our first layer of apple pomace.
If I taste one That's actually horrible to taste, and it's hard to think how something so horrible to eat can turn into something so delightful on the palate, ten months down the line.
But proper cider apples, you see, have the right mixture of sugars, and of yeast, and of tannins as well.
And it's that proper balance between the three, which means that when this goes into the barrel after the press and starts to ferment, it produces a sweet-tasting cider, good scrumpy cider.
- So we just plonk this in the middle, do we? - Yeah, bring it around.
A smooth layer of pomace is built up on the straw to ensure the pressure from the press will be evenly distributed.
So what we want to do with the straw is we just want to encourage it to break in the right place.
So you just hold your hands out flat, and then you just fold it over like this.
And then you just use a bit of the pomace, just to hold that down, or push it into the pulp.
Yeah, that's it.
Keep the edges as even as possible so it's not too thin in places where it might leak out.
Your side looks a lot neater than mine.
Well, I'm not sure about that.
We're almost there.
Shall we start putting on the next layer of the straw? Yeah.
I'll grab some straw.
Ruth's pickled the sweet lark apples.
Now they must be bottled to be stored for winter.
I'm pouring the pickle onto my sweet larks.
This was just two pints of vinegar that I boiled up with a pound of sugar.
And I poached the apples very gently in the vinegar as it was cooking.
And then as soon as the apples began to soften, I whisked them out and let them cool.
And I boiled the vinegar on for another half an hour, so that it reduced somewhat, so the liquor is quite sticky.
Should taste like a sweet pickle, sort of like solid chutney or something.
Six layers of pomace have been built.
Now the cheeses are ready to be pressed.
The head block weighs half a ton, allowing the screw to deliver several tons of pressure.
Look, you can really see it coming out now, Peter.
Look at the volume of cider! Look at the colour of it.
Apples are 80% water, so a ton will produce up to 100 gallons of cider.
It's really flowing now, isn't it? Being highly acidic, cider is naturally germ free.
And at many times in history, it was safer to drink than water.
It really is remarkable, isn't it, how this straw's acting like a bag and holding all the apple in? - I've never seen that before.
It's brilliant.
- So simple.
- All right, the tommy bar.
- Yeah, excellent.
It's quite a large one.
Over the next few days, the pressure will be gradually increased to get the most out of the pomace.
Putting some serious pressure on it at that end.
It would have been a sort of three or four day process.
- For a proper farmhouse scrumpy.
- Exactly, yeah! You have to be very patient with these things.
Perfect.
Here we go.
The apple juice is poured into barrels, where it will be left for over six months to ferment and mature to produce the cider.
- Smells good.
- Excellent.
Look, you're taking over when we get to the Tamar.
What, when we get to start going uphill? We're still in Cornwall! In an age before domestic refrigeration, the only way to store meat for more than a few days was to preserve it.
So you cut in the skin In the cottage, Ruth and her daughter Eve are preserving a leg of pork using salt.
When you're salting a leg of pork, you're trying to get it to preserve, you're trying to get the salt into it before infection can get inside.
And one of the things that makes it easier, makes it more reliable as a process, is to take the bone out.
So salt, obviously, as it moves into the meat, preserves the meat.
But if it moves too fast, it can burn it.
Salt sucks the moisture out of the flesh, drying it out to preserve it.
Ruth's using a mixture of different-sized salt crystals to penetrate the meat at different speeds, ensuring all the tissue is preserved.
And I shall be wanting all that sugar.
She also adds molasses, which helps draw out the moisture, and some cloves for flavour.
The salt mix is always called a pickle.
I mean, nowadays, we tend to think pickle just means vinegar.
But the old world "pickle" meant anything that you preserved something in.
Right, let's just put him into the salting trough.
OK.
And rub it firmly into the meat.
But you do want to make sure that you get the mix in every little tiny nook and cranny.
If you feel, the finer salt is already sinking into the meat.
You're left with the big crystals on the surface.
I mean, it's only been on for a minute, and Changes are happening.
It's getting in the way! Applying weight speeds up the drying process.
Clunk.
So we should see dripping.
Oh! It is, there.
- Yeah, it's dripping already.
- Excellent.
Right.
Bones can go in the stockpot.
Trotter? - That's for tea.
- Urgh.
Boatman Joshua's returned to Cotehele Quay to transport the fermenting cider back to the farm.
I don't think I've ever worked so hard for a pint of cider, Peter! Well, we're all looking forward to that.
A barrel of cider weighs getting on for a quarter of a ton, so Joshua's craning it into his boat using a barrel hitch, once a knot every boatman would have known.
Steady, guys.
Steady.
Precious cargo there, look.
Very precious cargo.
I'm not talking about Peter, either.
The eagle has landed! We've got the wind on us, you know, here.
The wind on the Tamar is unpredictable, so sailors often relied on their oars, rather than their sails, to navigate the river.
- That's dropped.
- Yeah.
But they were at the mercy of the river's tides, only able to row with the tide, never against it.
Joshua, I feel like it's our cider, and that maybe we should be doing some of the hard work here, so is it time for a little rowing tutorial? I would think so, yeah.
Just give the oar just a little twist as she comes out.
- Right.
- Like so.
Right, let's have a go, then.
Let's have a go.
- Peter, there you go.
- Thank you.
I'll just stand by the tiller.
Go together, lads.
So basically, all the passage on this river, and all the industries that rely on it, are dictated to by the tides.
Exactly right, yeah, you work the tide up and you work the tide out again.
And if those conditions aren't right, we don't sail.
And are these the remnants of market gardens back over my shoulder there? Yes.
- These are old Edwardian market gardens? - Yeah.
Look at that, Peter.
Heave her up and away we go And we're bound for Santiago Do you know the rest of that one, Will? Afraid I don't.
Ah, fab.
It's huge, good.
As well as the leg of pork, Ruth's also got a side of bacon from the slaughtered pig.
To preserve it for the winter, she's using a different method of preservation - smoking, a technique that dates back to prehistoric times.
With winter coming on, it's important to have quite big stocks of preserved food.
And, of course, smoking is a fabulous method.
Brilliant, that is a perfect fit.
- It's gonna be fairly solid.
- And when you kill a pig - a pig is a big beast.
You can't possibly eat it all fresh in the few days you've got before it starts to turn.
So you've got to sort of divide the beast up.
And you eat those things you can't preserve, starting with things like the liver and so forth.
Then, everything else, you sort of have to get into a sort of keeping pattern, a holding pattern.
Some things you eat quickly.
But a salted and smoked joint will keep for months and months and months.
There you go, your flitch of bacon.
It's gonna do a number of slices this, isn't it? And is that hanging about right? - That's perfect, right in the middle.
- Lets the smoke get all around it.
To start with, I want the fire out here, nowhere near the barrel, I want it out the front.
Because to start a fire, you're gonna get lots of flame coming off.
And flame is no good for smoking meat.
I don't want to cook the meat, I want it to smoke.
And that means that the smoke around the meat has to be cold, not hot.
So this little hot fire, I'm already gonna start damping down.
Smoking the meat not only dries it, it introduces the preservative formaldehyde into the flesh, and wards off insects, keeping it maggot free.
So it's a balancing act.
You don't want to put the fire out but you don't want too much fire.
- That's a good temperature.
- Is it? It's nice and cool in there? Good.
I defy any bacteria to live in that! (Chuckles) It's been two weeks since Alex and Ruth rescued the strawberry plants from the abandoned market garden.
Now these new plants must be separated from the mother plant.
But will they have taken? From the time it was established in 1883, the royal sovereign strawberry became the breed of choice for market gardeners in the Tamar valley.
These very, very young plants I could force on in the greenhouse, but to be honest, if I'm to have a big, commercial, Edwardian-style market garden, I'm gonna have to buy in the best part of 300 plants.
Because it was so critical, really, in terms of moneymaking, to have as many plants as possible for that very, very small window in the early season.
It was something of a gold rush for Edwardian market gardeners.
If you could get your strawberries up to London before any other producer, then you stood a chance of getting the best prices.
But, of course, this means that all your eggs are very much in the same basket.
And if it goes wrong, you get pests in, you get disease, you get mildew, and everything will come crashing down around you, and all that year's worth of work will go to waste.
On the market garden slopes, the goats have cleared the bigger weeds.
But now it's down to back-breaking manpower to clear the rest.
On slopes like these, you can't get machinery in, it's just too steep.
If you try and get a horse to pull a plough up and down here, the horse would struggle and you wouldn't get any traction and pull.
And you'd also tumble the soil down the hill much too quickly, so it's back to the ancient hand methods.
Nobody's ever under any illusions that market gardening is easy.
I mean, just look at the size of ground to be covered, all by hand, with next to nothing to help.
It's quite a prospect.
With the market gardening endeavour underway, and King David, the prized bull, getting to grips with his new herd of ruby reds, Alex is keen to set up another new Edwardian enterprise.
Chickens had always been a part of the British farmyard scene, but it's really in the Edwardian period that they go from being a kind of hanger on around the farmyard to a proper business and an enterprise in their own right.
So me, being a big fan of chickens, I'm looking forward to having my own poultry quayside concern.
He's come across an Edwardian photograph, giving a clue about the chicken enterprise that was once here at Morwellham.
I'm trying to think of a location for my poultry concern, and in this photograph, there's actually one here located just beyond these cottages here.
And there, just behind it, is the poultry concern.
So what I want to do is, I want to go back in the Edwardian period, and I want to recreate this poultry concern here, just alongside this cottage.
In the corner of a field, he's found a couple of chicken huts, very like the ones in the photograph.
I've been given a tip off that this old chicken hutch is spare, and free to be salvaged.
So just have a look at its condition, I'm sure we can get a good chicken hut out of this.
- Ah, Peter! - This is looking good.
- Not bad, is it? - Looks fairly solid.
It's in pretty good shape.
Come round the end.
Look at these.
Nest boxes.
- They're bone dry.
- Absolutely bone dry.
- Well, not any more, but - No! But that's a good sign.
A fantastic sign.
Having dismantled the huts, the boys are taking them down to the quayside, the same location the Edwardian enterprise was in.
We're against it really, it's already getting cold now, and you know, one of the things you'd want from your commercial poultry enterprise is for your birds to be laying into late autumn and early winter, because that's where the real market for eggs would have been in the Edwardian period.
So we've got to waste no time in getting this thing set up, getting the birds in, getting them happy, and getting them laying.
Ooh! So there's the nesting box.
Do you want to spin round, I'll just prop it against here? Straight on top.
- Right.
- Is that your poultry concern? It looks a bit kind of Eastern Bloc circa 1953 or something.
It's not looking like the most industrious egg producing, meat producing enterprise at the moment, is it? No.
To expand the enterprise, Alex has ordered a consignment of new birds.
- They look good, don't they? - They look lovely! Be good to get some new blood into the flock.
Lovely.
Well, here we go, chickens.
Welcome to your new home.
There you go.
Let's get these fellas in the hutch.
We'll have to lock them in there for a good two or three days.
Get them used to their home, so they know where it is.
In you go, boy.
Go on, in you go.
- There we go.
- He's a little cock bird as well, but he will definitely Go on.
In the cottage, the pork's been salting for over a week and most of the liquid has been drawn out.
Well, of course, on an Edwardian farm, the chances are that we wouldn't have kept this for our own consumption, we'd have sold it.
A ham sold to an urban family could buy you an awful lot of bread and jam.
Outside, the bacon's been smoked for three days.
It, too, is ready to be stored for winter.
It's been smoking away merrily.
So I'll just hang this up in the cottage now.
And as long as we keep the flies off it, it should be pretty good.
For the last few weeks, Alex and Peter have been practising driving the two shires, Prince and Tom, together.
Come on, gee up, Tom, come on.
Whoa, whoa, Princey! Alex is looking pretty good with the horses at the moment.
Back up! Whoa! Stand.
Good lads.
Now they're using the horses to pull a harrow to spread the heaps of lime fertiliser across the arable fields.
Come on, boys.
That's it, boys.
Come on.
Good lads.
Good lads.
Good boys.
Come on.
Good lad.
I have this really, really bad thing that I do, is I try and drive them like I'm trying to drive a Mini Metro.
You're correcting yourself all the time.
Actually it's about picking a point on the horizon and aiming for that, and if you're slightly off course, bring them round, more like a tanker or a battleship, rather than a quick change.
Come on.
It's the most important thing to get to grips with, you know, I'm incredibly anxious about it, because it's not something you learn overnight, and it's maybe a bit arrogant of Peter and myself to think that we can, but we've gotta have a go at it, we've really gotta have a a stab at it, and see if we can get close.
Walk on.
Walk on.
Walk on.
Good boys.
Not all the lime will be going on the field.
To the Edwardian farmer, it was a wonder product, as cement, lime wash, even disinfectant.
But as quicklime, it's highly caustic.
To make it safe, it must be added to water, or slaked, to produce harmless lime putty.
It is having quite a violent reaction, and the steam coming off this, this is gonna get up to roasting temperatures in the next few days.
So we just need to get enough water in there, we've got two barrels' worth, this is gonna serve us well for any building projects we have later in the year.
You can really feel the heat coming off this, can't you? - This is sort of barbecue territory, isn't it? - Pretty much! The lime will be left for a few days to continue to slake.
Thank the Lord for DIY stores, Peter! (Chuckles) Good.
The slaked lime putty must now be stored in a barrel.
In Edwardian times, barrels, or casks, transported produce across the British Empire.
They played a vital role in British economic life, so the barrel maker, or cooper, was a man of status.
Once there were thousands of coopers in Britain.
Now there are just a handful.
Peter's travelled to St Fagans in Cardiff to meet the only cooper left in Wales.
Hi, Andrew.
Pleasure to meet you.
As with every barrel Andrew makes, he's not using any form of template.
You haven't made any measurements at all? This is all by eye? There's a lot going on.
And I think it has to be passed on, you have to physically do it to understand it.
Aluminiums, plastics, other materials have come on board, which have killed off so many aspects of the craft, which is a shame.
Because once you lose the knowledge and the know-how, you don't bring it back.
The barrel's strength will come from its curved shape.
So the straight wooden staves must be bent.
Right, so what are you doing now? What I've got in my hand is called a swab.
Which is basically a bit of sacking on a piece of wood.
But it's an ideal way of actually getting water into the inside of the cask.
That water will eventually turn to steam because of the heat, and that will go into the pores of the wood, and over a period of time, we will be able to make the timber hot enough and pliable so we can draw it - all the staves together.
The only thing holding the barrel together will be these iron hoops.
We'll start driving this hoop, which is on the middle here, down towards the bottom.
So, let's see, hold the driver like that.
Just want to make sure it protects your knuckles.
If it slips off the hoop, just let it go.
OK? Go on, then.
And we walk around quietly, OK? The steam has softened the staves so they can be bent into the familiar curved barrel shape, held in place by the hoops.
Yet again I've had the pleasure to witness a craft that sort of takes years to learn and a lifetime to perfect.
I mean, all of this process is done by eye.
But the final result is a work of art.
- There you go, sir.
- Well done.
Back at the farm, the chicken concern is up and running, and the new birds are settling into life in their new home.
One of the ways in which a poultry concern could make a lot of money for you is if you could encourage your birds to lay eggs throughout the winter.
Traditionally, birds, when it gets colder, and there's not as much food around, they tend to go off laying.
So I'm taking some tips here from the board of Agriculture and Fisheries.
And these are a fantastic set of leaflets, published in 1915.
So I'm just looking here at a leaflet that's actually entitled "Winter Egg Production.
" What's critical is they've something in their bellies which makes them think, "I've got plenty of food store, I can carry on producing eggs.
" The government issued leaflets to help farmers maximise profits.
Here they suggest making a nutritious feed to sustain them through the winter.
Greens, wheat, maize and bran are mixed with a less appetising ingredient.
Critical element to their diet if they are going to lay is shell, or grit, OK? Because if they haven't got access to enough shell, what they start doing is they start eating their own eggs to get the shell.
The danger is if I feed my chickens this, but they're still not happy for some reason.
And that could be because the huts aren't sheltered enough, or because, you know, there's a fox running round every night You know, if they're not happy, all this feed will be a waste.
So now for the moment of truth, to see if the chickens will take to my winter feed mix.
It's feed time and I've got a special little mix for you.
Here you are.
Ooh, you like that! Straight from the bucket.
Hungry little birds.
I think I can safely say that's been a success.
Peter's brought the barrel back to the farm, ready to load with the lime putty.
This lime has done most of its slaking.
There's been a really violent reaction when we added the water.
It has burned all the wood timber that we put in here.
But this lime will continue to slake.
And the longer you leave the lime, the better quality it will be.
This is really, really good stuff, if I do say so myself.
This lime putty will last, in this barrel, for 1,000 years if not longer.
So this is one barrel of lime ready to store.
And the shape of this barrel means you can really steer it quite easily.
And rock it one way or another.
It's late October and Alex's chicken concern is finally paying off.
It seems the quayside chicken huts and the nutritious feed is a winning combination for egg production.
Alex is keen to capitalise.
How can I help you? I wonder if you'd care to engage with me in an enterprise? The hens are doing such a great job, the team are getting more eggs than they can sell.
It's great this, a harvest already.
Everything else we've been doing so far, the market gardening, bringing in the beef cattle, we won't see the result for months and months and months.
This, already, a small income! Ruth's preserving the surplus eggs in lime and water.
This stops air getting to them, so they'll stay fresh for longer.
The lime kills bacteria.
By having the lime in it, I've got a sterile solution that's gonna stay sterile, however long the eggs are in it.
The eggs will be stored in the larder, together with the rest of the preserved food.
It's important the larder stays dry, a challenge when living in damp conditions next to a river.
Ruth's found a solution in an Edwardian household manual.
So "The Best Way: A Book Of Household Hints And Recipes.
" And it's got a piece: A Wholesome Pantry.
"A small box of unslaked lime kept in the pantry will absorb all impurities and keep the air beautifully dry and sweet.
" Well, that makes absolute sense.
Unslaked, or quicklime, is trying to draw all the water to it, and that will draw it out of the atmosphere, hopefully - keep the door shut.
My pantry, therefore, will be a dry place, instead of a damp place.
Looks like we might actually have something to eat this winter.
The end of October will bring the first frosts of winter.
In the market garden, the strawberries must be planted before the ground hardens if they're to get a crop next June.
In the hope of ensuring a bumper harvest, Alex has bought in hundreds of extra strawberry plants to supplement those rescued from the slopes.
Hey! These our strawberries? Yeah, we've got a fair few hundred here.
We're just gonna have to weed like absolute heroes to prepare the ground for these.
I think we're gonna have to start casting the net a little further and a little wider, and see if we can find some soft fruit growers in the valley.
Market gardeners would employ dozens of workers, not just to plant, but also to weed and harvest throughout the year.
So we're looking for something that's really thick, at this sort of Ron Luke's family's been growing strawberries in the Tamar Valley for generations.
And you say this is what your family used to do? My family used to do a lot of these, yes.
We used to sell them all over the southwest of England.
We used to grow about half a million strawberry plants.
- It's really labour intensive work, isn't it? - Very labour intensive.
But if you get a good crop of strawberries, it's rewarding.
- It's a high cash crop, isn't it? - Yes.
- It does bring in a lot of money.
- So it's worth having the labour.
Planting the strawberries is an exacting job.
The rows must be 18 inches apart and the plants firmly bedded into the soil.
In he goes.
My father used to come along when we were planting, he'd do his test.
A one-leaf test, he used to call it.
He used to catch one leaf and pull it, and if the plant came out, you hadn't planted it properly! You were in trouble! No.
Try that one again.
But all this hard work could come to nothing.
They'll need a mild winter and warm spring in order to get the profitable early crop they're after.
Here we go, last one for me.
Think this is the biggest of the bunch.
There we are.
Done! So we've got, what, five to six months to wait? Suppose it all depends on how early the spring is, doesn't it? Ooh, it's quite exciting really, isn't it? With their new enterprises up and running, the team have earned a celebration.
It's October 31 st, so tonight they're having a special Halloween meal, and Alex has brought something for the table.
It does give me great pleasure to eat my own chickens.
But whatever you do, I'm sure it'll taste delicious.
Well, we'll wait and see.
Nice firm skin.
Chicken was the sort of dish you had for special days.
Without battery farming, of course, it took a lot more to raise a chicken for the table.
And therefore they cost more.
In Edwardian Britain, chicken was really a rich man's meat.
Most ordinary people didn't have chicken on a regular basis.
For the Edwardian farmer, a dish like this would have stretched to several meals.
And then the whole chicken goes on top.
I want the whole chicken, cos obviously I'm trying to get maximum flavour out of him.
If you use a modern supermarket chicken to cook something like this, it's pretty insipid, it's not very exciting food.
But if you're using a bird that's been running around, it's a bit older, had time to develop a bit of flavour.
Not only does this sort of cooking make it something delicious, when it would be a bit stringy if it was roasted, it actually makes a dish that's really nice! It's a set of stronger poultry flavours that modern techniques have sort of made us forget.
(Owl hoots) Traditionally, Halloween marked the first day of winter.
- Hi! - Thank you.
It's a heck of a night out there! - Good evening.
- To help them feast and make merry, they've invited an expert in English folklore, Professor Ronald Hutton.
This was the great festival that opened winter, the most terrifying of all the seasons, when most people died.
Here in west Devon, this is the season you start to feel Dartmoor stretching out its mighty claws towards you in the night.
This is the season when the wild geese come over, and in their voices, and the voice of the wind wailing about the moor, you hear the Gabriel Hounds, the Wisht Hounds, the hounds of hell, dark and with fiery eyes and tongues, coming for you in the night.
And as you pass the abandoned mine shaft on the moor and hear the air trapped, sobbing within, you hear the voices of the souls in hell, writhing in torment.
And that's when you know Christmas in on its way! To life! Long may we have it.
You all right there, Peter? Ronald, would you like some cider? - So, what are we having tonight? - We're having one of Alex's chickens.
Well, his cock, actually! It's the moment of truth for Alex's chicken.
So I've got no idea what it's gonna taste like.
- If you'll just excuse fingers there, Chris.
- Excellent, thank you.
It's full of body, but also full of flavour.
Right.
Excellent.
Is that a compliment, then? I think it might have been.
I think he means it was a bit stringy, actually! After dinner, it's time for Halloween games.
My friend beer and my friend cider! Often these were about predicting the future, from who you may marry, to whether or not you'd make it through the winter.
This game is absolutely vile, it's pure sadism.
The idea is to see if you can bite off one of the apples by getting your teeth right through.
And the reason why the candles are there is if you drag the apple down too much, then the hot wax will spill all over your face and burn you horribly.
Undoable.
Ooh! Tip the wax on someone else! Has he got it? Yes! Bravo, well done! The reason why all these games tend to happen so much around Halloween is staying cheerful in the face of the coming dark and cold.
There's an enormous amount of laughter this evening.
And that's the greatest tradition of all.
Now Morwellham Quay has been brought back to life as it would have been during the reign of King Edward Vll.
Wow! Look at this place.
Archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn, and historian Ruth Goodman, are going back to the early 20th century, to live the lives of Edwardian farmers for a full calendar year.
Wa-hay! Wa-hoo! They'll not just be farming, but getting to grips with the rural industries that once brought wealth to Devon.
Like fishing Oh, wow! We've got something! and mining.
So far, they've established themselves as Edwardians by setting up a home, taking arrival of their first livestock, and fertilising the fields, ready to grow crops with deadly quicklime.
(Ship's horn blares) Now it's October, time to branch out into new ventures like market gardening.
Got one to go in there.
egg production and a beef herd.
But to make it a success, they'll need to be up and running before the frost comes.
Then they can see in the winter with Halloween, Edwardian style.
To life! In the Edwardian age, cheap imports of cereal crops from America meant it was no longer economically viable for British farmers to grow wheat.
To survive, they diversified.
Beef was one of the few things still guaranteed to provide a healthy profit.
So Alex and Peter have called on local farmer, Sarah Birt, to deliver a herd of cattle.
They're a lovely looking breed.
These are Devons, which are also known as red rubies, so-named after their jewel like colour of their coat.
They are a fantastic breed, as you can see, they're actually very quiet and docile.
(Cow bellows) - Usually! Very easy to handle.
And they're immensely hardy as well, they'll tolerate both very hot climates and very cold and wet, which is just as well, living around here.
And in the time of the Edwardian times, it'd be very likely that they would have been used for milk as well as for meat.
So for novice stockmen, these will be ideal? Absolutely perfect.
And the great thing about this breed is they almost completely look after themselves.
Very economical.
The red ruby has been reared and bred in Britain since pre-Roman times.
What's going on there, then, Sarah? That's called bulling, that heifer that you see riding the other cow is a sign that she's come in season, that she's ready for mating herself.
Right, so she's mimicking the bull.
She is mimicking the bull, and indeed, we should get a bull here as soon as we possibly can.
The cattle will be put out to pasture until the worst of the winter weather sets in.
Gonna herd the cows now.
If I step over here, they can see out into the field, to their new home.
Look at that, gorgeous.
It's not just the farm that they're stocking with animals.
The cottage needs a regular source of milk, and Ruth's got an Edwardian solution.
Most of your milk from your cows was going off to market, one way or another, commercial sort of farming.
And that often meant that there was next to no milk left in the countryside for families.
So many people kept a couple of goats in all the scruffy bits of land, and with all the scruffy bits of grazing that wouldn't be good enough for a cow.
They must be milked twice a day.
It's a job that's proving a challenge for the novice goat farmers.
Oh, oh! - (Ruth laughs) Picking you up! - What's she doing? No, she's nibbling my trousers.
And the thing is, I've seen, I mean in terms of goats being milked, I've seen these stands, that you get, it's like a tabletop.
You walk the goat on to it.
And then you're milking them up there.
Having done about two days' worth of goat milking, I can see exactly why those stands have been invented.
Push so the milk goes into the teat.
All over my arm.
- Whoops! - She's in it.
- Your aim seems to be a little off.
- Sorry! - Do you want me to give it a go? - Yeah, if you like.
Right.
Your aim's worse than mine! You do look funny like that.
(Ruth laughs) Peter, that is what I would call a compromising position.
(Ruth laughs) Peter, I've got one word for you.
Dignity.
- That's better.
- That's it! That's it, you relax, lady.
In Edwardian times, the Tamar valley was famed for its huge market gardening industry.
Thousands of acres of fruit, vegetables and flowers once grew here in the warm, damp, sheltered conditions.
Thanks to the railways, produce could be in London within 24 hours of being picked.
The government even produced advice for farmers who were looking to grow cash crops, like strawberries.
"Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, leaflet number 207.
Growing of strawberries.
" And it's giving us information on the sort of money we expect to make on that, which is really useful.
"Gross returns may be said to lie between £40 and £60 per acre.
" That is good, isn't it? Against stock, or arable, that's Certainly against wheat.
For the Edwardian farmer, growing strawberries was very profitable.
In today's money, this would mean earning around £5,000 per acre.
In this region, it was clearly a lucrative crop to grow.
I mean, farming in the Edwardian period was different in every part of the country.
Round here, market gardening was the big thing.
Yeah, the microclimate here is such that it's warm and wet in the earliest part of the year.
And we're on a south-facing slope here, so these strawberries will be ready and ripe long before anybody else's in the entire country's are ready.
Which means we're gonna get a premium price for them.
Morwellham Quay's market gardens grew strawberries until abandoned half a century ago.
Now the team want to bring them back to life, but it's going to be a race against time.
The slopes must be cleared and replanted before the first frost if they're to get a crop next June.
First, they're rescuing the few remaining strawberry plants tangled amongst the weeds.
We're sort of potting all these little tiny new plantlets, whilst they're still attached to the parent plants.
So the plant sends out a runner, grows a new little plantlet, but while it's growing, it's still fed by the main plant.
As it's starting to root, instead of it rooting into the soil, we want it to root into our little pots.
And once it's established, then it no longer needs the parent plant, and you can snip off the runner.
They really are ready, aren't they? If we left it much longer, they'd have started rooting in the soil themselves, and then lifting them would have damaged the roots.
Yeah, would have destroyed the plant.
- Wouldn't be such a great job in the rain.
- No.
Today, this is the life.
Having rescued the strawberry plants, the next job is to take the terraces back to bare earth.
It's a chance for the farm's latest recruits to earn their keep.
Right.
This one looks particularly overgrown here.
Look at these tasty weeds! You'll love it! We're just going to stake out our goats.
Essentially, it's just got so overgrown.
And what we're wanting to do is do a little bit of hard work for us first, eat back all the plants, so when it comes to turning it in, in the midwinter, it's just a little bit easier.
Machines don't clear land anywhere near as well as animals.
Not nearly as good.
While the goats get to work, the boys are taking delivery of an important new resident.
To breed cattle, they need a bull.
- Hello, Paul! - Hi, Paul.
And local farmer, Paul Hutchings, is lending them his prized specimen.
Well, here he is.
King David II.
He's a ruby red Devon bull.
The Duke of Bedford, he owned the majority of the land in this area, and he believed that they were the best cattle for small farms.
So in terms of sort of authenticity, these are the sorts of cows the Duke of Bedford was promoting on these very farms? Exactly.
He has got aristocratic lines, being King David II.
Right.
Maybe he's a friend of our Duke.
Come on! Good boy.
Come on.
Come on.
- Hey, hey, hey! - He's coming through.
- Coming through.
- Good boy.
Good boy.
- Get you back with your girls, David.
- Need that gate open.
Do you want me to go ahead to the gate? All they need to do is to put the bull with the cows and let nature take its course.
Come on! Simple.
Yeah, I know! Come on.
Good boy.
Come on.
Come on, out the hedge! Oh, no! (Bellows) I'm just keeping an eye on him.
You guys go in there, I'll keep an eye on him.
- Go on, boy! - Come on, David.
Come on.
That's good.
Best to just calm it now, just calm it right down.
Where's the food? - Well done, Peter.
- Cheers.
You didn't need us there! - All right, boys.
- Here we are.
Hey up! Through the gate, come on, then, boy.
- Good boy, David.
- Wow! See? That wasn't such a trauma.
Although there was little money to be made from growing cereal crops in Edwardian Britain, they were still cultivated on a small scale as animal feed.
In this part of Devon, the acidity of the soil makes it infertile, a huge problem for farmers.
Alex and Peter have dealt with this by neutralising it with quicklime.
This scientific approach will ensure the soil is healthy enough to grow crops.
And in the Edwardian age, growing crops still relied on good old horsepower.
The farm has two shires, Prince and Tom.
And it will take their combined strength to drag the plough.
Farmhand Megan Elliot's showing the boys the ropes.
This is our introduction, really, to the heavy horses here at the farm.
It's a fantastic opportunity for myself and Peter to get to grips with working with two horses.
Two-horse work we've done, we've always had someone sort of holding our hands, so this time we'll hopefully sort of go it alone and see if we can get these two to work together.
And, of course, they're working with two complete novices in Peter and myself.
Do you have any set commands that you use? I do, yeah.
To come to the left, when you're driving them.
You need to say, "Come by".
Come by.
And then to go round to the right, I say, "Come around".
Come around, lads.
In the Edwardian era, over a million shires worked the land.
And they were still used in farming as late as the 1950s.
It's just amazing to think that they've been selectively bred for that very purpose, isn't it? Yeah.
It's amazing, the power, you know.
I mean, ten men couldn't hold them down if they really wanted to go.
If there's any hope of getting a good crop, it'll be vital for Alex and Peter to gain the trust of these equine engines.
That'll be the hardest part, Alex, keeping them - See, they want to walk on the grass! - I'm hooked up, I'm hooked up.
Whoa, whoa! Whoa! Yeah, I'm a little bit more nervous now.
They're all right.
It's gonna be fun, Peter.
Depends on your definition of fun! Whoa! They're used to being in the lanes, pulling carts around, they're getting out here, they've got no weight behind them, and they've got this wide open space.
They're a little bit excited.
They might be sensing my nervousness.
But I'm even more nervous now than I was about ten minutes ago.
Are you relaxed? Want to have a go? They'll be fine.
Good luck.
- Right.
- So keep your arms low.
Gee up! Steady.
Weighing up to a ton, shire horses are capable of pulling double their body weight, and could easily wrench a farmer's arm from its socket.
Come on.
That's it, good boy.
Almost had a straight line there.
(Clicks tongue) Good boy.
Princey.
It's quite a nerve-wracking, but there is a definite thrill to working horses like this.
To be honest, to me, this is a much greater thrill than driving any internal combustion engine, so come by, come on! Come by.
Good boy.
It's hard enough doing things with one horse.
But doing things with two horses complicates the situation.
Then we've gotta factor in machinery, such as ploughing.
And we've gotta get straight lines, or we can't weed between our crops, and then when we harvest the crops, we've got problems.
We've gotta get the basics right.
So we've gotta get this stuff in the field now absolutely on the money, before we start ploughing up this field.
It's gonna be quite a task.
Next summer, the Edwardian farmers will need to draw on extra labour to harvest the crops.
Once, these workers were paid in cider.
And although this was outlawed in 1887, cider still remained a vital part of the rural economy, and farms were judged on the quality of their scrumpy.
Alex and Peter are keen to follow in this tradition.
But first they need a decent crop of cider apples, about a ton, so they're checking out Morwellham Quay's cider orchard.
Well, we've certainly got some very large apple trees.
But they seem remarkably bereft of any apples.
No apples.
No apples.
No apples.
I mean, these might be coming to the end of their days.
Which might account for the total and utter lack of apples.
Shall we see if we can find at least one? Can you see, there's a little red thing up in that tree over there? It's either a robin redbreast or a single cider apple.
So at least we know they are apple trees! (Laughter) At the peak of the drink's popularity, there were over 350 varieties of cider apple available.
Right, here we are.
Our one apple! Doesn't look overly healthy, does it? I think we're gonna have to buy some apples in.
Don't eat it, man! It's the only one we've got! It's a real blow, actually, because we couldn't possibly face the summer without our regular hit of cider, could we? No, of course not.
Alex and Peter's apple harvest may have failed, but Ruth's had better luck.
They're funny looking things, aren't they? She's got a crop of local apples that she wants to preserve, so they can enjoy them over the winter.
They're called sweet larks.
They're not that sweet, but they're not sour like a crab apple, although they look as small as one.
And the thing that's interesting about these, though, as well as being a local variety, is the recipes that local people put them to.
These are pickled.
I've never come across people pickling apples anywhere else.
But round here it's a tradition, you just peel them, and then pickle them, rather like you would a pickled onion, but with a bit of sugar in with the vinegar as well.
I suppose, you know, along with your cheese pickled apple.
It does sound quite nice, doesn't it? Actually, it's quite nice.
Thwarted in their cider apple quest, Alex and Peter are taking drastic measures.
Well, I suppose being down in the West Country, we can't be without our cider, and with the woeful harvest from our own orchards, we've had to go out and purchase ourself a ton of cider apples, and we're just taking them up to the press.
So, hopefully, come spring, we'll have some fantastic scrumpy of our own.
Alex and Peter are taking their apples downriver, to a cider press at Cotehele in Cornwall.
Navigating the winds and tides of the Tamar needs an experienced touch, so the boys have called on boatman Joshua Preston.
He's been sailing down the Tamar all his life.
I suppose the best way to move anything around these very steep valleys is via the river.
Via the river, exactly.
Up from Plymouth, with dock dung, limestone.
And then produce, of course, from the market gardens up here, straight down to Devonport, and market.
Basically, every industry in this valley, from market gardening to the mining and farming, was reliant on this river.
Yeah, the highway.
At its peak, almost 1,000 vessels a year passed along the Tamar.
At Cotehele, they're met by cider press manager, Chris Groves.
Yeah, so this is it! Here we go.
Thanks ever so much, Joshua.
That was good, yeah, any time I can help with that.
- We'll take you up on that.
- I'll be here to help.
- Cheers, Joshua, thanks ever so much.
- Right, ho.
See you later.
Cider is simply made by fermenting apple juice, so the first job is to press the apples to extract the juice, using a press.
This type of press dates as far back as the 1600s.
- This is an absolute monster, this.
- It is, yes, it's a bit of a beast of a press.
A large thing, we've got the large beam at the top and a single screw, be good to get it up and running.
Well, we've got the best part of about a ton of apples.
So, what do you want us to do with them? The first process is to mill the apples, so - Shall we get them pulped? - Yeah.
Let's get going.
Milling the apples will turn them into what's known as pomace.
It looks like the pony's got the mill working properly here.
You can see the two stones with the teeth in there, to grind up the apples, so it's now a case of just very, very slowly starting to introduce the first few apples.
There we are.
Just to get the pony used to the sensation of having something to pull against.
In Devon, apple pomace is traditionally bound in layers of straw to make a package, or cheese, ready to be pressed.
The word "cheese" originally referred to anything that was wrapped up.
- And then what we're gradually gonna do - Oh, right, I see.
is just to build up a layer radiating out from the centre of the cheese.
Right, and what does this straw do? It just contains it, and it allows us to build the cheese up to a good height, so we can fit all your apples in in one go.
So we're gonna build this up in layers? Yes, this is just gonna be our first base layer, and then, with the apples and that, we'll hopefully get at least six layers going on this.
That's probably enough straw now.
We're ready to start putting on our first layer of apple pomace.
If I taste one That's actually horrible to taste, and it's hard to think how something so horrible to eat can turn into something so delightful on the palate, ten months down the line.
But proper cider apples, you see, have the right mixture of sugars, and of yeast, and of tannins as well.
And it's that proper balance between the three, which means that when this goes into the barrel after the press and starts to ferment, it produces a sweet-tasting cider, good scrumpy cider.
- So we just plonk this in the middle, do we? - Yeah, bring it around.
A smooth layer of pomace is built up on the straw to ensure the pressure from the press will be evenly distributed.
So what we want to do with the straw is we just want to encourage it to break in the right place.
So you just hold your hands out flat, and then you just fold it over like this.
And then you just use a bit of the pomace, just to hold that down, or push it into the pulp.
Yeah, that's it.
Keep the edges as even as possible so it's not too thin in places where it might leak out.
Your side looks a lot neater than mine.
Well, I'm not sure about that.
We're almost there.
Shall we start putting on the next layer of the straw? Yeah.
I'll grab some straw.
Ruth's pickled the sweet lark apples.
Now they must be bottled to be stored for winter.
I'm pouring the pickle onto my sweet larks.
This was just two pints of vinegar that I boiled up with a pound of sugar.
And I poached the apples very gently in the vinegar as it was cooking.
And then as soon as the apples began to soften, I whisked them out and let them cool.
And I boiled the vinegar on for another half an hour, so that it reduced somewhat, so the liquor is quite sticky.
Should taste like a sweet pickle, sort of like solid chutney or something.
Six layers of pomace have been built.
Now the cheeses are ready to be pressed.
The head block weighs half a ton, allowing the screw to deliver several tons of pressure.
Look, you can really see it coming out now, Peter.
Look at the volume of cider! Look at the colour of it.
Apples are 80% water, so a ton will produce up to 100 gallons of cider.
It's really flowing now, isn't it? Being highly acidic, cider is naturally germ free.
And at many times in history, it was safer to drink than water.
It really is remarkable, isn't it, how this straw's acting like a bag and holding all the apple in? - I've never seen that before.
It's brilliant.
- So simple.
- All right, the tommy bar.
- Yeah, excellent.
It's quite a large one.
Over the next few days, the pressure will be gradually increased to get the most out of the pomace.
Putting some serious pressure on it at that end.
It would have been a sort of three or four day process.
- For a proper farmhouse scrumpy.
- Exactly, yeah! You have to be very patient with these things.
Perfect.
Here we go.
The apple juice is poured into barrels, where it will be left for over six months to ferment and mature to produce the cider.
- Smells good.
- Excellent.
Look, you're taking over when we get to the Tamar.
What, when we get to start going uphill? We're still in Cornwall! In an age before domestic refrigeration, the only way to store meat for more than a few days was to preserve it.
So you cut in the skin In the cottage, Ruth and her daughter Eve are preserving a leg of pork using salt.
When you're salting a leg of pork, you're trying to get it to preserve, you're trying to get the salt into it before infection can get inside.
And one of the things that makes it easier, makes it more reliable as a process, is to take the bone out.
So salt, obviously, as it moves into the meat, preserves the meat.
But if it moves too fast, it can burn it.
Salt sucks the moisture out of the flesh, drying it out to preserve it.
Ruth's using a mixture of different-sized salt crystals to penetrate the meat at different speeds, ensuring all the tissue is preserved.
And I shall be wanting all that sugar.
She also adds molasses, which helps draw out the moisture, and some cloves for flavour.
The salt mix is always called a pickle.
I mean, nowadays, we tend to think pickle just means vinegar.
But the old world "pickle" meant anything that you preserved something in.
Right, let's just put him into the salting trough.
OK.
And rub it firmly into the meat.
But you do want to make sure that you get the mix in every little tiny nook and cranny.
If you feel, the finer salt is already sinking into the meat.
You're left with the big crystals on the surface.
I mean, it's only been on for a minute, and Changes are happening.
It's getting in the way! Applying weight speeds up the drying process.
Clunk.
So we should see dripping.
Oh! It is, there.
- Yeah, it's dripping already.
- Excellent.
Right.
Bones can go in the stockpot.
Trotter? - That's for tea.
- Urgh.
Boatman Joshua's returned to Cotehele Quay to transport the fermenting cider back to the farm.
I don't think I've ever worked so hard for a pint of cider, Peter! Well, we're all looking forward to that.
A barrel of cider weighs getting on for a quarter of a ton, so Joshua's craning it into his boat using a barrel hitch, once a knot every boatman would have known.
Steady, guys.
Steady.
Precious cargo there, look.
Very precious cargo.
I'm not talking about Peter, either.
The eagle has landed! We've got the wind on us, you know, here.
The wind on the Tamar is unpredictable, so sailors often relied on their oars, rather than their sails, to navigate the river.
- That's dropped.
- Yeah.
But they were at the mercy of the river's tides, only able to row with the tide, never against it.
Joshua, I feel like it's our cider, and that maybe we should be doing some of the hard work here, so is it time for a little rowing tutorial? I would think so, yeah.
Just give the oar just a little twist as she comes out.
- Right.
- Like so.
Right, let's have a go, then.
Let's have a go.
- Peter, there you go.
- Thank you.
I'll just stand by the tiller.
Go together, lads.
So basically, all the passage on this river, and all the industries that rely on it, are dictated to by the tides.
Exactly right, yeah, you work the tide up and you work the tide out again.
And if those conditions aren't right, we don't sail.
And are these the remnants of market gardens back over my shoulder there? Yes.
- These are old Edwardian market gardens? - Yeah.
Look at that, Peter.
Heave her up and away we go And we're bound for Santiago Do you know the rest of that one, Will? Afraid I don't.
Ah, fab.
It's huge, good.
As well as the leg of pork, Ruth's also got a side of bacon from the slaughtered pig.
To preserve it for the winter, she's using a different method of preservation - smoking, a technique that dates back to prehistoric times.
With winter coming on, it's important to have quite big stocks of preserved food.
And, of course, smoking is a fabulous method.
Brilliant, that is a perfect fit.
- It's gonna be fairly solid.
- And when you kill a pig - a pig is a big beast.
You can't possibly eat it all fresh in the few days you've got before it starts to turn.
So you've got to sort of divide the beast up.
And you eat those things you can't preserve, starting with things like the liver and so forth.
Then, everything else, you sort of have to get into a sort of keeping pattern, a holding pattern.
Some things you eat quickly.
But a salted and smoked joint will keep for months and months and months.
There you go, your flitch of bacon.
It's gonna do a number of slices this, isn't it? And is that hanging about right? - That's perfect, right in the middle.
- Lets the smoke get all around it.
To start with, I want the fire out here, nowhere near the barrel, I want it out the front.
Because to start a fire, you're gonna get lots of flame coming off.
And flame is no good for smoking meat.
I don't want to cook the meat, I want it to smoke.
And that means that the smoke around the meat has to be cold, not hot.
So this little hot fire, I'm already gonna start damping down.
Smoking the meat not only dries it, it introduces the preservative formaldehyde into the flesh, and wards off insects, keeping it maggot free.
So it's a balancing act.
You don't want to put the fire out but you don't want too much fire.
- That's a good temperature.
- Is it? It's nice and cool in there? Good.
I defy any bacteria to live in that! (Chuckles) It's been two weeks since Alex and Ruth rescued the strawberry plants from the abandoned market garden.
Now these new plants must be separated from the mother plant.
But will they have taken? From the time it was established in 1883, the royal sovereign strawberry became the breed of choice for market gardeners in the Tamar valley.
These very, very young plants I could force on in the greenhouse, but to be honest, if I'm to have a big, commercial, Edwardian-style market garden, I'm gonna have to buy in the best part of 300 plants.
Because it was so critical, really, in terms of moneymaking, to have as many plants as possible for that very, very small window in the early season.
It was something of a gold rush for Edwardian market gardeners.
If you could get your strawberries up to London before any other producer, then you stood a chance of getting the best prices.
But, of course, this means that all your eggs are very much in the same basket.
And if it goes wrong, you get pests in, you get disease, you get mildew, and everything will come crashing down around you, and all that year's worth of work will go to waste.
On the market garden slopes, the goats have cleared the bigger weeds.
But now it's down to back-breaking manpower to clear the rest.
On slopes like these, you can't get machinery in, it's just too steep.
If you try and get a horse to pull a plough up and down here, the horse would struggle and you wouldn't get any traction and pull.
And you'd also tumble the soil down the hill much too quickly, so it's back to the ancient hand methods.
Nobody's ever under any illusions that market gardening is easy.
I mean, just look at the size of ground to be covered, all by hand, with next to nothing to help.
It's quite a prospect.
With the market gardening endeavour underway, and King David, the prized bull, getting to grips with his new herd of ruby reds, Alex is keen to set up another new Edwardian enterprise.
Chickens had always been a part of the British farmyard scene, but it's really in the Edwardian period that they go from being a kind of hanger on around the farmyard to a proper business and an enterprise in their own right.
So me, being a big fan of chickens, I'm looking forward to having my own poultry quayside concern.
He's come across an Edwardian photograph, giving a clue about the chicken enterprise that was once here at Morwellham.
I'm trying to think of a location for my poultry concern, and in this photograph, there's actually one here located just beyond these cottages here.
And there, just behind it, is the poultry concern.
So what I want to do is, I want to go back in the Edwardian period, and I want to recreate this poultry concern here, just alongside this cottage.
In the corner of a field, he's found a couple of chicken huts, very like the ones in the photograph.
I've been given a tip off that this old chicken hutch is spare, and free to be salvaged.
So just have a look at its condition, I'm sure we can get a good chicken hut out of this.
- Ah, Peter! - This is looking good.
- Not bad, is it? - Looks fairly solid.
It's in pretty good shape.
Come round the end.
Look at these.
Nest boxes.
- They're bone dry.
- Absolutely bone dry.
- Well, not any more, but - No! But that's a good sign.
A fantastic sign.
Having dismantled the huts, the boys are taking them down to the quayside, the same location the Edwardian enterprise was in.
We're against it really, it's already getting cold now, and you know, one of the things you'd want from your commercial poultry enterprise is for your birds to be laying into late autumn and early winter, because that's where the real market for eggs would have been in the Edwardian period.
So we've got to waste no time in getting this thing set up, getting the birds in, getting them happy, and getting them laying.
Ooh! So there's the nesting box.
Do you want to spin round, I'll just prop it against here? Straight on top.
- Right.
- Is that your poultry concern? It looks a bit kind of Eastern Bloc circa 1953 or something.
It's not looking like the most industrious egg producing, meat producing enterprise at the moment, is it? No.
To expand the enterprise, Alex has ordered a consignment of new birds.
- They look good, don't they? - They look lovely! Be good to get some new blood into the flock.
Lovely.
Well, here we go, chickens.
Welcome to your new home.
There you go.
Let's get these fellas in the hutch.
We'll have to lock them in there for a good two or three days.
Get them used to their home, so they know where it is.
In you go, boy.
Go on, in you go.
- There we go.
- He's a little cock bird as well, but he will definitely Go on.
In the cottage, the pork's been salting for over a week and most of the liquid has been drawn out.
Well, of course, on an Edwardian farm, the chances are that we wouldn't have kept this for our own consumption, we'd have sold it.
A ham sold to an urban family could buy you an awful lot of bread and jam.
Outside, the bacon's been smoked for three days.
It, too, is ready to be stored for winter.
It's been smoking away merrily.
So I'll just hang this up in the cottage now.
And as long as we keep the flies off it, it should be pretty good.
For the last few weeks, Alex and Peter have been practising driving the two shires, Prince and Tom, together.
Come on, gee up, Tom, come on.
Whoa, whoa, Princey! Alex is looking pretty good with the horses at the moment.
Back up! Whoa! Stand.
Good lads.
Now they're using the horses to pull a harrow to spread the heaps of lime fertiliser across the arable fields.
Come on, boys.
That's it, boys.
Come on.
Good lads.
Good lads.
Good boys.
Come on.
Good lad.
I have this really, really bad thing that I do, is I try and drive them like I'm trying to drive a Mini Metro.
You're correcting yourself all the time.
Actually it's about picking a point on the horizon and aiming for that, and if you're slightly off course, bring them round, more like a tanker or a battleship, rather than a quick change.
Come on.
It's the most important thing to get to grips with, you know, I'm incredibly anxious about it, because it's not something you learn overnight, and it's maybe a bit arrogant of Peter and myself to think that we can, but we've gotta have a go at it, we've really gotta have a a stab at it, and see if we can get close.
Walk on.
Walk on.
Walk on.
Good boys.
Not all the lime will be going on the field.
To the Edwardian farmer, it was a wonder product, as cement, lime wash, even disinfectant.
But as quicklime, it's highly caustic.
To make it safe, it must be added to water, or slaked, to produce harmless lime putty.
It is having quite a violent reaction, and the steam coming off this, this is gonna get up to roasting temperatures in the next few days.
So we just need to get enough water in there, we've got two barrels' worth, this is gonna serve us well for any building projects we have later in the year.
You can really feel the heat coming off this, can't you? - This is sort of barbecue territory, isn't it? - Pretty much! The lime will be left for a few days to continue to slake.
Thank the Lord for DIY stores, Peter! (Chuckles) Good.
The slaked lime putty must now be stored in a barrel.
In Edwardian times, barrels, or casks, transported produce across the British Empire.
They played a vital role in British economic life, so the barrel maker, or cooper, was a man of status.
Once there were thousands of coopers in Britain.
Now there are just a handful.
Peter's travelled to St Fagans in Cardiff to meet the only cooper left in Wales.
Hi, Andrew.
Pleasure to meet you.
As with every barrel Andrew makes, he's not using any form of template.
You haven't made any measurements at all? This is all by eye? There's a lot going on.
And I think it has to be passed on, you have to physically do it to understand it.
Aluminiums, plastics, other materials have come on board, which have killed off so many aspects of the craft, which is a shame.
Because once you lose the knowledge and the know-how, you don't bring it back.
The barrel's strength will come from its curved shape.
So the straight wooden staves must be bent.
Right, so what are you doing now? What I've got in my hand is called a swab.
Which is basically a bit of sacking on a piece of wood.
But it's an ideal way of actually getting water into the inside of the cask.
That water will eventually turn to steam because of the heat, and that will go into the pores of the wood, and over a period of time, we will be able to make the timber hot enough and pliable so we can draw it - all the staves together.
The only thing holding the barrel together will be these iron hoops.
We'll start driving this hoop, which is on the middle here, down towards the bottom.
So, let's see, hold the driver like that.
Just want to make sure it protects your knuckles.
If it slips off the hoop, just let it go.
OK? Go on, then.
And we walk around quietly, OK? The steam has softened the staves so they can be bent into the familiar curved barrel shape, held in place by the hoops.
Yet again I've had the pleasure to witness a craft that sort of takes years to learn and a lifetime to perfect.
I mean, all of this process is done by eye.
But the final result is a work of art.
- There you go, sir.
- Well done.
Back at the farm, the chicken concern is up and running, and the new birds are settling into life in their new home.
One of the ways in which a poultry concern could make a lot of money for you is if you could encourage your birds to lay eggs throughout the winter.
Traditionally, birds, when it gets colder, and there's not as much food around, they tend to go off laying.
So I'm taking some tips here from the board of Agriculture and Fisheries.
And these are a fantastic set of leaflets, published in 1915.
So I'm just looking here at a leaflet that's actually entitled "Winter Egg Production.
" What's critical is they've something in their bellies which makes them think, "I've got plenty of food store, I can carry on producing eggs.
" The government issued leaflets to help farmers maximise profits.
Here they suggest making a nutritious feed to sustain them through the winter.
Greens, wheat, maize and bran are mixed with a less appetising ingredient.
Critical element to their diet if they are going to lay is shell, or grit, OK? Because if they haven't got access to enough shell, what they start doing is they start eating their own eggs to get the shell.
The danger is if I feed my chickens this, but they're still not happy for some reason.
And that could be because the huts aren't sheltered enough, or because, you know, there's a fox running round every night You know, if they're not happy, all this feed will be a waste.
So now for the moment of truth, to see if the chickens will take to my winter feed mix.
It's feed time and I've got a special little mix for you.
Here you are.
Ooh, you like that! Straight from the bucket.
Hungry little birds.
I think I can safely say that's been a success.
Peter's brought the barrel back to the farm, ready to load with the lime putty.
This lime has done most of its slaking.
There's been a really violent reaction when we added the water.
It has burned all the wood timber that we put in here.
But this lime will continue to slake.
And the longer you leave the lime, the better quality it will be.
This is really, really good stuff, if I do say so myself.
This lime putty will last, in this barrel, for 1,000 years if not longer.
So this is one barrel of lime ready to store.
And the shape of this barrel means you can really steer it quite easily.
And rock it one way or another.
It's late October and Alex's chicken concern is finally paying off.
It seems the quayside chicken huts and the nutritious feed is a winning combination for egg production.
Alex is keen to capitalise.
How can I help you? I wonder if you'd care to engage with me in an enterprise? The hens are doing such a great job, the team are getting more eggs than they can sell.
It's great this, a harvest already.
Everything else we've been doing so far, the market gardening, bringing in the beef cattle, we won't see the result for months and months and months.
This, already, a small income! Ruth's preserving the surplus eggs in lime and water.
This stops air getting to them, so they'll stay fresh for longer.
The lime kills bacteria.
By having the lime in it, I've got a sterile solution that's gonna stay sterile, however long the eggs are in it.
The eggs will be stored in the larder, together with the rest of the preserved food.
It's important the larder stays dry, a challenge when living in damp conditions next to a river.
Ruth's found a solution in an Edwardian household manual.
So "The Best Way: A Book Of Household Hints And Recipes.
" And it's got a piece: A Wholesome Pantry.
"A small box of unslaked lime kept in the pantry will absorb all impurities and keep the air beautifully dry and sweet.
" Well, that makes absolute sense.
Unslaked, or quicklime, is trying to draw all the water to it, and that will draw it out of the atmosphere, hopefully - keep the door shut.
My pantry, therefore, will be a dry place, instead of a damp place.
Looks like we might actually have something to eat this winter.
The end of October will bring the first frosts of winter.
In the market garden, the strawberries must be planted before the ground hardens if they're to get a crop next June.
In the hope of ensuring a bumper harvest, Alex has bought in hundreds of extra strawberry plants to supplement those rescued from the slopes.
Hey! These our strawberries? Yeah, we've got a fair few hundred here.
We're just gonna have to weed like absolute heroes to prepare the ground for these.
I think we're gonna have to start casting the net a little further and a little wider, and see if we can find some soft fruit growers in the valley.
Market gardeners would employ dozens of workers, not just to plant, but also to weed and harvest throughout the year.
So we're looking for something that's really thick, at this sort of Ron Luke's family's been growing strawberries in the Tamar Valley for generations.
And you say this is what your family used to do? My family used to do a lot of these, yes.
We used to sell them all over the southwest of England.
We used to grow about half a million strawberry plants.
- It's really labour intensive work, isn't it? - Very labour intensive.
But if you get a good crop of strawberries, it's rewarding.
- It's a high cash crop, isn't it? - Yes.
- It does bring in a lot of money.
- So it's worth having the labour.
Planting the strawberries is an exacting job.
The rows must be 18 inches apart and the plants firmly bedded into the soil.
In he goes.
My father used to come along when we were planting, he'd do his test.
A one-leaf test, he used to call it.
He used to catch one leaf and pull it, and if the plant came out, you hadn't planted it properly! You were in trouble! No.
Try that one again.
But all this hard work could come to nothing.
They'll need a mild winter and warm spring in order to get the profitable early crop they're after.
Here we go, last one for me.
Think this is the biggest of the bunch.
There we are.
Done! So we've got, what, five to six months to wait? Suppose it all depends on how early the spring is, doesn't it? Ooh, it's quite exciting really, isn't it? With their new enterprises up and running, the team have earned a celebration.
It's October 31 st, so tonight they're having a special Halloween meal, and Alex has brought something for the table.
It does give me great pleasure to eat my own chickens.
But whatever you do, I'm sure it'll taste delicious.
Well, we'll wait and see.
Nice firm skin.
Chicken was the sort of dish you had for special days.
Without battery farming, of course, it took a lot more to raise a chicken for the table.
And therefore they cost more.
In Edwardian Britain, chicken was really a rich man's meat.
Most ordinary people didn't have chicken on a regular basis.
For the Edwardian farmer, a dish like this would have stretched to several meals.
And then the whole chicken goes on top.
I want the whole chicken, cos obviously I'm trying to get maximum flavour out of him.
If you use a modern supermarket chicken to cook something like this, it's pretty insipid, it's not very exciting food.
But if you're using a bird that's been running around, it's a bit older, had time to develop a bit of flavour.
Not only does this sort of cooking make it something delicious, when it would be a bit stringy if it was roasted, it actually makes a dish that's really nice! It's a set of stronger poultry flavours that modern techniques have sort of made us forget.
(Owl hoots) Traditionally, Halloween marked the first day of winter.
- Hi! - Thank you.
It's a heck of a night out there! - Good evening.
- To help them feast and make merry, they've invited an expert in English folklore, Professor Ronald Hutton.
This was the great festival that opened winter, the most terrifying of all the seasons, when most people died.
Here in west Devon, this is the season you start to feel Dartmoor stretching out its mighty claws towards you in the night.
This is the season when the wild geese come over, and in their voices, and the voice of the wind wailing about the moor, you hear the Gabriel Hounds, the Wisht Hounds, the hounds of hell, dark and with fiery eyes and tongues, coming for you in the night.
And as you pass the abandoned mine shaft on the moor and hear the air trapped, sobbing within, you hear the voices of the souls in hell, writhing in torment.
And that's when you know Christmas in on its way! To life! Long may we have it.
You all right there, Peter? Ronald, would you like some cider? - So, what are we having tonight? - We're having one of Alex's chickens.
Well, his cock, actually! It's the moment of truth for Alex's chicken.
So I've got no idea what it's gonna taste like.
- If you'll just excuse fingers there, Chris.
- Excellent, thank you.
It's full of body, but also full of flavour.
Right.
Excellent.
Is that a compliment, then? I think it might have been.
I think he means it was a bit stringy, actually! After dinner, it's time for Halloween games.
My friend beer and my friend cider! Often these were about predicting the future, from who you may marry, to whether or not you'd make it through the winter.
This game is absolutely vile, it's pure sadism.
The idea is to see if you can bite off one of the apples by getting your teeth right through.
And the reason why the candles are there is if you drag the apple down too much, then the hot wax will spill all over your face and burn you horribly.
Undoable.
Ooh! Tip the wax on someone else! Has he got it? Yes! Bravo, well done! The reason why all these games tend to happen so much around Halloween is staying cheerful in the face of the coming dark and cold.
There's an enormous amount of laughter this evening.
And that's the greatest tradition of all.