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greatgoogamooga
04-19-2013, 04:14 PM
I'm sure a lot of people here have seen this before. The link below is to a PBS documentary from 2002 called "Frontier House," where 3 families attempted to replicate life on the frontier in 1883. For me it was fascinating and led me down the road of starting to acquire necessary materials, skills and knowledge to live without modern conveniences, if needed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-prRxB1ggg

Goog

Cast-Iron
04-19-2013, 04:29 PM
I don't think you can ever have too much education or redundancy in survival skills. But rather than abandoning all of your modern day conveniences, why not explore small scale renewable energy systems? Harnessing wind, water and sun is really a force multiplier, converting electrical energy into work. If memory serves me, a grown human's daily work output is rated somewhere around 1.5 to 2 kWh. An amount easily recovered with a rather small system. Imagine getting the work output of three of four adults but only having to feed and shelter one or two. Might free up enough of your day to pursue a hobby or two?

crashdive123
04-19-2013, 04:39 PM
I haven't watched the vid yet, but will when I have more time. Thanks for posting it.

greatgoogamooga
04-19-2013, 04:42 PM
there were 6 one hour episodes. Make popcorn :)

Goog

Solar Geek
04-19-2013, 05:51 PM
It was one of the best documentaries done. Thanks for posting I will watch again.

PineMartyn
04-19-2013, 06:34 PM
I watched this when it originally aired on PBS. I found it to be a very enlightening experiment.

I have also watched the YouTube version, which seems to be a copy of the DVD that was later sold to viewers who wanted to watch it again. Some scenes were edited out of this, including one particular bit of cheating that one family engaged in along with the strife this created with the other families and the producers. However, they did include most of the examples of their cheating and violating the spirit of the experiment.
It very worthwhile viewing in my estimation.

Hope this helps,
- Martin

hunter63
04-19-2013, 08:16 PM
Cool, but the moden isn't keeping up out here in the bonnies....will watch it when I get home.

There was another on one dealing with the early colonists and they're "company" that had financed the endeavor.....
and there inability to fill the order of timber cut to send back to England......
Have to look for that.

kyratshooter
04-19-2013, 11:28 PM
As a historian and reenactor these shows irritate me. They may seem very informatinve to a lay person but they are dreadfully organized and the legal controls on modern society prevent the replication of what happened in other centuries.

Frontier house
Victorian house
Colonial house

All were so badly researched as to be irrelivant in the historical context. Modern minds will not wrap around the thought processes of past eras.

Their "expert advisors" are bogus and the people are not sufficiently trained to promote success.

The intent is to produce conflict and failure for the viewing audience.

I answered a casting call for the Colonial scequence and was told I was not appropriate for their program due to having too much knowledge of the era and technology.

PineMartyn
04-20-2013, 08:27 AM
As a historian and reenactor these shows irritate me. They may seem very informatinve to a lay person but they are dreadfully organized and the legal controls on modern society prevent the replication of what happened in other centuries.
Frontier house
Victorian house
Colonial house
All were so badly researched as to be irrelivant in the historical context. Modern minds will not wrap around the thought processes of past eras.
Their "expert advisors" are bogus and the people are not sufficiently trained to promote success.
The intent is to produce conflict and failure for the viewing audience.
I answered a casting call for the Colonial scequence and was told I was not appropriate for their program due to having too much knowledge of the era and technology.

Since the point of the show was to put modern day people who had no specific knowledge of the period into a simulation of those times, it would have made little sense to put history buffs, experts, or re-enactors in there. Had they wanted to create the show you wanted, they could have just cast their own experts and consultants on the show. Part of the point of the show was precisely to illustrate how different life back then was and how ill-equipped nearly all of us would be at managing and even surviving such a circumstance. Had they taken people who were experts in the period and who routinely practiced old-fashioned homesteading practices, it would just make it all look so easy. Casting people who knew little to nothing of what to expect and lacked the requisite knowledge and skill sets was, in my view, exactly the right choice. The show did a fine job of disabusing the average person of the misapprehension that it was all lovely and romantic back then - a simpler time - and that he or she could easily accomplish what they did. The value of the show, for me, was precisely showing how hard it actually was back then, what we now take for granted, what we lack in the way of knowledge and skills, and the fortitude required by those early homesteaders.
As for the conflicts, I didn't see any evidence of any staging or artificiality in the conflicts. With respect to the legal obstacles, the law is the law. Laws shouldn't be ignored or suspended just because some TV producers want to simulate a time in history when the laws were different. Simulation is not duplication. As reality TV documentaries go, this was as fine a production as any I've ever seen.

Hope this helps,
- Martin

greatgoogamooga
04-20-2013, 08:42 AM
I finished watching it last night. I remembered a lot of it from 10 years ago when it first aired. Kyrat is correct in that they did have some modern limitations that inhibited the realism, such as the restrictions on hunting and trapping. By the same token the homesteaders did have to figure out things that they hadn't expected. Early on, one family complained about the location of his cabin compared to his water source. Later there was a cattle drive that went right through their properties and they had a week to build a fence to protect their crops. All of them lost weight and some thought it was malnutrition...they were actually finding their correct weight.

For me, the biggest issue I had with it was the focus on squabbling between the members. I suspect they put a little more emphasis on it because it would be boring showing people doing nothing but harvesting hay and feeding chickens every day.

backtobasics
05-27-2013, 08:40 PM
I just finished the 3rd one. I like it and will watch them all. Thanks for posting it.

Jimin
06-01-2013, 07:22 PM
I have seen all of these before (Manor House, Colonial House, Victorian House, Frontier House) and I think that they are all worth watching. They may not be completely "historically accurate" but they do provide a pretty good picture of what life would have been like in those periods.

finallyME
06-02-2013, 10:51 PM
I just finished all the shows. I found them very interesting. The biggest was how much work was required. They worked all summer, and then when winter started to hit, they still hadn't gotten enough firewood, or even hay. One of the woman said that it was basically signing up for 6 months hard labor.

downtoearth
03-21-2015, 11:27 AM
I thought the show was very interesting but living on a smallholding myself and trying to live off the land, I agree much time is spent in the kitchen preserving goodies and one is not always in the mood but when the harvest is ready, THE HARVEST IS READY! I also knew from personal experience they would need much much firewood to get thru the Winter.........

hunter63
03-21-2015, 04:00 PM
Hunter63 saying Hey and Welcome....
Yeah, lots of work, and you are bound to the land, the seasons and the weather.

hayshaker
03-22-2015, 08:57 AM
sad they did not show the many things one would really do on a homestead.
like butchering,smoking meat,kraut making,soap/candle making, putting meat by
and so on...there were no stores in the wilderness to just go an pick up supplies.

tundrabadger
03-22-2015, 11:10 AM
As a historian and reenactor these shows irritate me. They may seem very informatinve to a lay person but they are dreadfully organized and the legal controls on modern society prevent the replication of what happened in other centuries.

Frontier house
Victorian house
Colonial house

All were so badly researched as to be irrelivant in the historical context. Modern minds will not wrap around the thought processes of past eras.

Their "expert advisors" are bogus and the people are not sufficiently trained to promote success.

The intent is to produce conflict and failure for the viewing audience.
I answered a casting call for the Colonial scequence and was told I was not appropriate for their program due to having too much knowledge of the era and technology.

You might enjoy the BBC historical farm series a bit more....it's less "Big Brother in a vaguely historical setting" and more experimental archaeology, presented by actual historians and archaeologists. Now, I can't vouch for the accuracy of everything presented, while I have a degree in history I focused on North America for the most part, but I certainly found them educational.

Tales from the green valley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRj1YYnsBGk) was the first, and is available on youtube, bit of early installment weirdness but still very entertaining, the next one, victorian farm, doesn't seem to be available, but Edwardian Farm (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcBl4_2FJX4) is, as is my personal favourite, Wartime Farm (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUsU5s0ofYo).



That being said, there's some value in shows like Frontier House, in that they do show exactly how much hard work was needed to do things like homesteading in Montana. It's not a wholly accurate depiction, since the families in Frontier House were coming at it from a very different context, they didn't have skills that would have been commonplace at the time, and of course they weren't allowed to hunt, but for people who don't know the history, it would at least give some general idea. And, speaking as a historian myself, I'm always frustrated when I realize exactly how many people have no clue about history. If those people could gain even a tiny bit of education from a reality show like Frontier House, it's probably worth it.