Those Victorians....

I'm watching Victorian farm and Victorian Farm Christmas that I taped from Knowledge network over Christmas.  A neighbour told me how good it was and they reran episodes on Christmas Day.  It's the day to day life of three people who went to live for a year on an educational farm in Shropshire, England, and then went back a year later to prepare for a Victorian Christmas at the farm.  They live how the Victorians lived without electricity or powered motors, doing things by hand or with the help of shire horses or donkeys.  And it is amazing the ingenuity they had.  I haven't watched the spring and summer episodes, just the fall and first two Christmas ones and they show them taking in the harvest with a horse drawn reaper and binder which goes at a steady clip around the field.  They have a session making bricks, hay, butter, flour, mincemeat, bread, soap, and beer, as well as long johns and paper blankets, and putting a metal tire on the wheels of a horse drawn carriage!  There are very healthy looking farm animals and the whole thing looks like a lot of fun if hard work.  I remember many things from my childhood in the English countryside.  I didn't live on a farm but spent most of my childhood on one.  Everything looks so lush and green.  Very different from our Okanagan dry valley.