Life In The 17th Century: Preserving A Pig For The Winter

How do you gauge gas mark 7 when you’re using a 17th-century bread oven? Why did people 400 years ago save up their urine to help with the laundry? Why did farmers in Britain traditionally plough with oxen and not horses? These are just some of the questions five historians and archaeologists asked themselves as they spent a whole year working a farm restored to how it would have been in the year 1620.

Tales from the Green Valley follows the five as they labour for a full agricultural year, getting to grips with period tools, skills, and technology from the age of the Stuarts, the reign of James I. Everything must be done by hand, from ploughing with a team of oxen using a replica period plough and thatching a cowshed using only authentic materials, to making their own washing liquid for laundry and harvesting the hay and wheat with scythes and sickles.

VIDEO HERE  (29:34 minutes)