Wartime Farm (BBC Full Series)

Wartime Farm is a historical documentary TV series in which the running of a farm in the Second World War is reenacted. It was made for the BBC by independent production company Lion Television in association with the Open University; it was filmed at Manor Farm Country Park close to Southampton and it began broadcasting on BBC Two on 6 September 2012. The farming team consists of historian Ruth Goodman, and archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn.

Episode Synopsis: Wartime Farm

Episode 1 - 8 (Autoplay)



YouTube Link:
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8
Wartime Farm Christmas

Tales From The Green Valley (BBC Full Series)

Tales from the Green Valley is a historical documentary TV series in 12 parts, first shown on BBC Two in autumn 2005 and it follows historians and archaeologists as they recreate farm life from the age of the Stuarts. They wear the clothes, eat the food and use the tools, skills and technology of the 1620s. The series recreates everyday life on a small farm in Wales in the 1620s, using authentic replica equipment and clothing, original recipes and reconstructed building techniques. Much use is made of period sources such as agricultural writers Gervase Markham and Thomas Tusser. The series features historians Stuart Peachey and Ruth Goodman, and archaeologists Alex Langlands, Peter Ginn and Chloe Spencer. IMDb Rating: 8,8.

Episode 1

September: Ploughing with oxen, baking in a hearth.



Episode 2

October: Gathering pears, thatching the cowshed roof with a bracken undercoat and a wheat thatch, period clothes and boots, driving pigs to forage.



Episode 3

November: Slaughtering and butchering a pig, building a daub and wattle wall, harvesting meddlars, salting a table, combing thatch and pegging it down, making hog's liver pudding.



Episode 4

December: Building a hovel (a woodshed), period clothing, peas, preparing for Christmas.



Episode 5

January: Preparing period medicines, wood gathering, and hedge laying.



Episode 6

February: A heavy fall of snow, rebuilding a lavatory, checking the sheep in preparation for lambing, musical instruments, preparing a meal of fish and bagged puddings for lent.



Episode 7

March: Preparing the garden for sowing, wheat threshing, brewing March beer, pig yokes, fun and games, egg and pear pie with stewed salt cod.



Episode 8

April: Spring cleaning, rebuilding a dry stone wall, a new baby calf.



Episode 9

May: Preparing a new field for spring sowing, making charcoal, and butter.



Episode 10

June: Washing and shearing sheep, cheese making, and mid-summer revels.



Episode 11

July: New harvest from the garden (beans and gooseberries), making hay, clothes washing.



Episode 12

August: Fattening geese, goose pie and carrot puree, wheat and straw harvest, reed lights.

Edwardian Farm (BBC Full Series)

Edwardian Farm is an historical documentary TV series in twelve parts, first shown on BBC Two from November 2010 to January 2011. It depicts a group of historians trying to run a farm like it was done during the Edwardian era (1900-1914). The farming team was historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn. IMDb Rating: 8,9.

Episode 1

The trio establish their domicile, scrubbing flagstone floor and cleaning out a clogged chimney. They put up hay, hire a stonemason to make a trough, learn to thatch, make rag rugs, begin keeping chickens and sheep. Ruth cooks a sheep's head stew.

Episode 2

Alex and Peter milk goats and train the plowhorses. They begin a market garden of strawberries. Ruth pickles apples, salts a ham, and smokes bacon. Alex and Peter press apples to cider (skrumpy), freighting first the apples, then the barrel on the river. They visit a cooper and make lime putty. They read government agricultural leaflets, collect eggs, make chicken stew, and celebrate Halloween Edwardian style.

Episode 3

Ruth prepares for the arrival of the farm's pigs and works on the privie, while Alex and Peter compare ploughing with horses to ploughing with the world's oldest working tractor. Peter begins a trout hatchery. In order to repair the hedgerows, Alex takes a trip to a water-powered blacksmithery for a billhook. Ruth makes sloe gin for Christmas and entertains with a grammophone.

Episode 4

As winter sets in, the three farm dwellers must look further afield to earn a crust. Peter and Alex fish for crabs while Ruth hires herself out for domestic work. Ruth rides a bicycle and tries period cleaning techniques, including early vacuums. They separate growing calves from their mothers. Alex finds out how leather is made. They celebrate Christmas modesty, as poor farmers might have, and listen to a Methodist Christmas message.

Episode 5

The continuing winter forces Alex and Peter down a tin mine, while Ruth makes lace. The tin mine is the King Edward Mine, Camborne, Cornwall, and the lace-making is at Honiton.

Episode 6

Six months into their year, Ruth, Alex and Peter explore the daily lives of the Edwardian Farmers. This episode has a slightly different format to the rest of the series; instead of covering a whole month's changes, it is subtitled A Day in the Life and uses a framing device of Ruth writing a letter describing the more mundane aspects of daily life on the farm.

Episode 7

Spring arrives with the lambs and the potato crop planted with manure. Daffodils are harvested and sent by train across the country.

Episode 8

April arrives and time is divided between the land and the sea.

Episode 9

Summer brings the tourists, so the farm provides strawberries and clotted cream.

Episode 10

June arrives so the sheep go up onto the moors of Dartmoor with Alex and Peter guiding, leaving Ruth to run the farm, mixing and spraying "Bordeaux" on the potato crop. Alex and Peter try their hands at sheep-shearing and dry-stone walling, and observe sheep-dogs at work. Ruth makes her own cheese and visits an early wool mill. Finally, they have an Edwardian picnic with a vintage auto and then go rambling and letterboxing on the moor.

Episode 11

July brings the harvest, cherries and potatoes. Ruth goes salmon fishing on the River Tamar with a seine net. Peter and Alex pick cherries from tall ladders and Ruth prepares cherry preserves. They try out Edwardian potato digging devices and employ child labor. The annual day holiday at Lynmouth is a welcome distraction.

Episode 12

August brings to an end the year on the farm, weather dictates the harvest and the seaside brings much needed fertilizer.

Victorian Farm (BBC Full Series)

Victorian Farm is a historical documentary TV series in six parts, first shown on BBC Two in January 2009, it recreates everyday life on a small farm in Shropshire in the mid-19th century, using authentic replica equipment and clothing, original recipes and reconstructed building techniques. IMDb Rating: 7,7.

Episode 1

The would-be farmers move into a disused cottage. This requires much renovation: replacing the coal-burning range, cleaning the chimney and refuelling from a narrowboat on a nearby canal; cleaning the bedroom by removing dead birds, disinfecting against bedbugs with turpentine and salt, restoring the lime plaster and redecorating.

In accordance with custom, they assist in the threshing of the previous year's crop of wheat, using a steam-powered thresher. A field is ploughed, harrowed and sown with the next year's crop using horse-drawn implements of the era. Apples are picked, milled and pressed to make cider while other fruits and berries are preserved as a spicy chutney. A flock of Shropshire ewes is acquired and the first meal is cooked and eaten - a leg of boiled mutton.

Episode 2

As winter draws on, animal fodder and shelter is provided. Mangelwurzels are stored in a clamp and then chipped with period machinery to feed the cows. A pigsty is built upon a foundation of bottles to provide insulation and three young Tamworth pigs and a pregnant Gloucestershire Old Spot sow are housed there upon completion.[17] A ram is added to the sheep flock and marked with raddle to ensure that he impregnates all the ewes so that they will lamb in the spring. A shire horse, named Clumper, is also added to the livestock and training in his use as a draught animal is performed.

Domestically, the weekly laundry is done in a Victorian style. Stain removal is first performed, for example, using milk to remove an ink stain. Then the clothes are hand-paddled, mangled and ironed over a period of several days. Christmas is celebrated with a church service; the Victorian novelty of a Christmas tree; a plum pudding and a roast turkey; and presents are exchanged such as some hand-made braces.

Episode 3

New Year arrives and the farm needs emergency repairs. So the team go back to DIY basics, with the help of the woodsman, the blacksmith and the basket maker. Ruth has a go at some traditional potions and remedies. When the wheat crop comes under attack, it is time for some pest control, Victorian style, as Alex and Peter join a pheasant hunt. Alex goes out catching rabbits with a team of Victorian poachers. And with spring around the corner, the first baby animals are ready to be born.

Episode 4

It is spring and there are lambs and pigs to be delivered - which means Alex and Peter need to master animal midwifery. A prized ewe is in danger and a lame horse may jeopardise vital work on the farm. The team witness the birth of many chicks and ducklings, along with 8 (originally 9) piglets from the pig Princess.

The team turns to Victorian science in a bid to save their struggling crops. If they succeed, they will have something to celebrate at the May Day fair. If they fail, all their hard work will have been in vain. It is make or break time on the Victorian Farm.

Episode 5

In this episode, the team embarks on a trip by steam train, Ruth begins a tough task in the dairy, Alex tries his hand at beekeeping, the sheep get sheared using the latest time-saving technology, and the lengthening summer days allow Alex and Peter to try out the new Victorian sport of cricket. It is also time for the hay harvest, weather permitting.

Ruth makes cheddar cheese in the dairy with her daughter, Eve Goodman, with milk from the cow Forget Me Not, using the rennet from a neighbour's male calf. The sheep shearing is a life saver because it turns out that the sheep have severe fly strike. It is Alex's birthday and Ruth makes him a cake and a picnic, while Peter buys him a book of apiary. The boys make a predator-proof cover for the landlord's raspberry patch.

Episode 6

It is the end of their year on the farm. They sell off the pigs and sheep they successfully bred and raised. Ruth learns straw plaiting and makes a hat and cooks a Victorian style curry. Everything is now focused on the wheat harvest. Peter and Alex get the dray and a reaping and binding machine repaired and brew beer for the harvest. The harvest is completed just before the rain comes with Ruth harvesting the last corn. Once the wheat is dried and stored they ring the church bells, enjoy a harvest festival and reflect upon their time on the farm. They hand over the key to their landlord and depart the farm.

YouTube Link:
Victorian Farm Christmas - Episode 1
Victorian Farm Christmas - Episode 2
Victorian Farm Christmas - Episode 3

Seeds Of Freedom

The story of seed has become one of loss, control, dependence and debt. It’s been written by those who want to make vast profit from our food system, no matter what the true cost.

It’s time to change the story.

Seeds Of Death

Understanding the deception behind GMO's.

The leaders of Big Agriculture (Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta,...) are determined that world's populations remain ignorant about the serious health and environmental risks of genetically modified crops and industrial agriculture. Deep layers of deception and corruption underlie both the science favoring GMOs and the corporations and governments supporting them.

This award-winning documentary, Seeds of Death, exposes the lies about GMOs and pulls back the curtains to witness our planet's future if Big Agriculture's new green revolution becomes our dominant food supply.

A question and answer fact sheet deconstructing Monsanto's GM claims and Big Agriculture's propaganda to accompany the film is available online: Seeds of Death
See also: The World According to Monsanto & A Silent Forest

Geoff Lawton: Permaculture Pioneer & Designer

Food forests are at the heart of Permaculture and fast becoming a hot topic in many areas of debate as people realise the their full potential. Let's face it, with our all consuming global problems, there aren't many natural solutions out there that can halt & reverse deforestation, stabilise the climate by returning carbon to the soil where it belongs, solve poverty & extreme hunger all in one hit are there?

Yet this is exactly what the food forest is capable of, and provided people understand it and are at the centre of the system, they can go on living off that land forever. Here is a video of Geoff Lawton showing a series of food forests that have been planted at Zaytuna farm over successive years.

Survival Food Forest With Chickens



Urban Permaculture

Many of you have been asking what Permaculture can do for you in the small Urban space? Well, one of my students, Angelo, has transformed his tiny Melbourne backyard into an amazing productive garden and documented every detail over the last 4 years. Find out how much food you could grow in the Micro space when you apply Permaculture design creatively. You will be amazed.

See also: Urban Permaculture At Its Best

Web Of Life (Full Movie)

Biodiversity: the essence of life.
This is a documentary on biodiversity with the brilliant Dr Vandana Shiva, who talks about the devastating 'gifts' of the the corporate agri-business, mass production system of genetically engineered seeds:

“We have an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. We have an epidemic of hunger and malnutrition. And, we have an epidemic of farmer suicides…I have grown up in an India where we have driven out mass consumption. In Indian philosophy, Ayurveda is the science of life. Veda means knowledge and ayur means life. And, central to the science of life is food. Sustainability and diversity are very intimately linked.We will continue to save seeds, exchange seeds, and breed seeds. We will NOT obey your brute laws of enslaving life on Earth and enslaving our farmers.”

Dutch subtitles

Part 2

Who Killed The Honey Bee (BBC)

Bees are dying in their millions. It is an ecological crisis that threatens to bring global agriculture to a standstill. Introduced by Martha Kearney, this documentary explores the reasons behind the decline of bee colonies across the globe, investigating what might be at the root of this devastation.

Honey bees are the number one insect pollinator on the planet, responsible for the production of over 90 crops. Apples, berries, cucumbers, nuts, cabbages and even cotton will struggle to be produced if bee colonies continue to decline at the current rate. Empty hives have been reported from as far afield as Taipei and Tennessee. In England, the matter has caused beekeepers to march on Parliament to call on the government to fund research into what they say is potentially a bigger threat to humanity than the current financial crisis.

Investigating the problem from a global perspective, the programme makers travel from the farm belt of California to the flatlands of East Anglia to the outback of Australia. They talk to the beekeepers whose livelihoods are threatened by colony collapse disorder, the scientists entrusted with solving the problem, and the Australian beekeepers who are making a fortune replacing the planet's dying bees. They also look at some of the possible reasons for the declining numbers - is it down to a bee plague, pesticides, malnutrition? Or is the answer something even more frightening?

Colony Collapse Disorder

Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or European honey bee colony abruptly disappear. While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture, the term colony collapse disorder was first applied to a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of Western honey bee colonies in North America in late 2006.[1] Colony collapse is significant economically because many agricultural crops worldwide are pollinated by bees; and ecologically, because of the major role that bees play in the reproduction of plant communities in the wild.

12 things to prevent Colony Collapse Disorder:

#1 General approach: use organic practices
#2 General approach: strengthen bee immune system instead of "attack and kill" what nature uses to remove weak bees
#3 Don't use insecticide (for mite control or any other insect problem) inside of hives - bees are insects!
#4 Allow bees to create their own cell size (typically smaller) - no more pre-made foundation or cells
#5 Genetics based on "survival of the fittest" is superior to genetics resulting from mass production where the weak are medicated
#6 Swarming is the natural way to good genetics
#7 Local bees have adapted to challenges in your area
#8 Stop moving hives
#9 Feed bees honey, not sugar water
#10 Feed bees polyculture blossoms, not monoculture
#11 Stop using insecticides on crops - bees are insects!
#12 Raise hives off the ground

Visit the discussion at Permies

A Local Food Movement

'A Local Food Movement' is a short documentary about the growing appeal of farmers markets and the importance of buying local food. It captures the spirit of what is happening. Why do we love to go to the farmers market more than the supermarket? Along with the abundance of local produce, fresh and in season, they say it is 10 times more likely that you will strike up a conversation with someone. It's a social event!

See how this revolution is unfolding in Saratoga Springs, NY.

Food Rules

Full lecture: Michael Pollan - Food Rules for Healthy People and Planet

Toby Hemenway: Redesigning Civilization With Permaculture

Toby Hemenway is a frequent teacher, consultant and lecturer on permaculture and ecological design throughout the U.S. and other countries. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Natural Home, Whole Earth Review and American Gardener. He is an adjunct professor in the School of Graduate Education at Portland State University, a Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University, and a biologist consultant for the Biomimicry Guild.

Modern agriculture, industry and finance all extract more than they give back, and the Earth is starting to show the strain. How did we get in this mess and what can we do to help our culture get back on track? The ecological design approach known as permaculture offers powerful tools for the design of regenerative, fair ways to provide food, energy, livelihood, and other needs while letting humans share the planet with the rest of nature. This presentation will give you insight into why our culture has become fundamentally unsustainable, and offers ecologically based solutions that can help create a just and sustainable society. This is the sequel to Toby's popular talk, "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and The Planet, but not Civilization."

This video, whose aim is to inspire people to start their own permaculture projects, shows how permaculture is practiced in four very different settings: a Hampshire back garden belonging to the editors of Permaculture Magazine, including fruit trees, vegetables, bees, chickens, and ducks; a City Challenge project in Bradford close to a housing estate with 10,000 residents, tackling the problems of unemployment, environmental awareness, and backyard food growing; a community co-op in Devon, which involves a café, allotments, and local composting scheme; and a small farm in the Forest of Dean where innovative marketing schemes ensure a close link between producer and consumer, including meat production, a vegetable box scheme, and locally produced charcoal.

Growing Change

Growing Change follows the filmmaker’s journey to understand why current food systems leave hundreds of millions of people in hunger. It’s a journey to understand how the world will feed itself in the future in the face of major environmental challenges.

Humanure Toilet

The fourth is an amazing piece of art. With some really smart engineering.

It seems that the secret to having no odor is to have a large pit and to vent the pit. It also helps to separate the pee. In all four, folks were encouraged to pee outside - way from the outhouses.

Sawdust is used in case there is any smell. A properly built outhouse can be better for the environment than a septic tank or a sewage treatment plant. I like these three designs much better than any of the humanure systems or composting toilets.

The Loveable Loo is demonstrated by loveable Lulu, who shows us the compost toilet and the garden that it can produce.



Build one yourself: Humanure Toilet

Manual: Instructions

One Million Gardens

Find out why the backyard gardener is the hero in the struggle to save the planet. Narrated by Dr.Vandana Shiva, this video offers a simple and practical solution to climate change and local food security. Opening your eyes to the impact of our dependence on cheap oil in our industrial food system, you will discover why growing your own edible garden is the key to a sustainable world.

Join the Revolution in your own backyard.

Food Myth Busters: Feed The World

How can we feed the world - today and tomorrow?

The biggest players in the food industry - from pesticide pushers to fertilizer makers to food processors and manufacturers - spend billions of dollars every year not selling food, but selling the idea that we need their products to feed the world. But, do we really need industrial agriculture to feed the world? Can sustainably grown food deliver the quantity and quality we need - today and in the future? Our first Food MythBusters film takes on these questions in under seven minutes. So next time you hear them, you can too.

Hugelkultur

Hugelkultur is raised garden beds that reduce or eliminate the need for irrigation and fertilizer.

This video shows the why and how of this type of raised garden bed. Hugelkultur can be built by hand or with machinery; urban lots or large acreage farms. The focal point of this video is a project in Dayton, Montana where Sepp Holzer installed nearly a kilometer of hugelkultur beds in early May of 2012. Then the video shows the results in mid September.

Michael Billington is currently the land manager there. He explains how the beds have not been irrigated and goes into some detail of the qualities of the food from the different aspects of the hugelkultur: the north side tends to be sweeter and the south side tends to have more bite (lettuces tend to be more bitter and mustards tend to be hotter).

Learn more: Raised Garden Beds

Edible City (Full Movie)

Edible City is a fun, fast-paced journey through the Local Good Food movement that's taking root in the San Francisco Bay Area, across the nation and around the world. Introducing a diverse cast of extraordinary and eccentric characters who are challenging the paradigm of our broken food system, Edible City digs into their unique perspectives and transformative work, finding hopeful solutions to monumental problems. Inspirational, down-to-earth and a little bit quirky, Edible City captures the spirit of a movement that's making real change and doing something truly revolutionary: growing the model for a healthy, sustainable local food system.

Website: Edible City

Regreening The Landscape With Fukuoka's Seed Balls

The Center of Natural Farming in Greece is a permaculture paradise inspired by the teachings of Japanese philosopher and the founder of Natural Gardening, Masanobu Fukuoka. It was started in 1998 by Payanitis Manikis, and is located 2 kilometers from the city of Edessa. No soil is tilled, no artificial fertilizers or pesticides are used, and hundreds of different plants and animals live side by side in natural symbiosis and harmony.

A remarkable part of this video is where see the result of the thousands of seed balls tossed by volunteers from the center into barren hills of southern Greece that were destroyed by fire, around the 5 minute mark. Very inspiring to see first a little green action, then a landscape covered in green thanks to Fukuoka's amazing creation.

Seed balls are seeds encased in a clay ball that hardens enough so that it can be tossed without falling apart. When the rains come, it becomes wet enough to begin germinating wherever it landed. Now those hills are blooming again. Good ideas travel all over the world!

Farmageddon (Full Movie)

The truth about the food and dairy industry.

Americans' right to access fresh, healthy foods of their choice is under attack. Farmageddon tells the story of small, family farms that were providing safe, healthy foods to their communities and were forced to stop, sometimes through violent ac-tion, by agents of misguided government bureaucracies, and seeks to figure out why.

Filmmaker Kristin Canty's quest to find healthy food for her four children turned into an educational journey to discover why access to these foods was being threatened. What she found were policies that favor agribusiness and factory farms over small family-operated farms selling fresh foods to their communities. Instead of focusing on the source of food safety problems — most often the industrial food chain — policymakers and regulators implement and enforce solutions that target and often drive out of business small farms that have proven themselves more than capable of producing safe, healthy food, but buckle under the crushing weight of government regulations and excessive enforcement actions.

Farmageddon highlights the urgency of food freedom, encouraging farmers and consumers alike to take action to preserve individuals' rights to access food of their choice and farmers' rights to produce these foods safely and free from unreasona-bly burdensome regulations. The film serves to put policymakers and regulators on notice that there is a growing movement of people aware that their freedom to choose the foods they want is in danger, a movement that is taking action with its dollars and its voting power to protect and preserve the dwindling number of family farms that are struggling to survive.