Description

Victorian farming wasn’t all about making hay while the sun shone. There were tough winters and hectic springs to provide plenty of challenges for the hard-working farmer.

In A Victorian Winter and A Victorian Spring, Paul Heiney heads back to the Victorian farm to re-enact two of the toughest seasons of bygone farming.

Paul and crew work the land with a pair of Suffolk Punch cart-horses, using the machinery and the traditional methods which would have been seen 100 years ago.

The programmes capture many other aspects of bygone rural life, some of which survive, but most of which have disappeared, swept aside by the hi-tech methods of modern farming. We meet traditional craftsmen and women still putting to good use the skills of our ancestors.

And in the kitchen, food historian Alison Sloan produces some fine Victorian fare.

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