How Did Normal Medieval People Survive Winter?

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i like how the historians are actually doing the tasks rather than showing actors do it and the historians just talk

My dad grew up in the USA. But he was on a farm without much machinery. He told me stories about very labor intensive wheat and corn harvests. They pickled eggs in barrels because hens didn’t lay during the winter. They smoked their hams and then put them into a clean flour bag and buried it in the wheat bin. They tried to use it sparingly so as to make it last. They had one pig that had to last them the whole winter. The fat from that pig was like gold. It was used in breads pastries, to fry potatoes. And every thing that needed fat. And frying out lard is not fun. A layer of grease covers every surface in the kitchen. I watched my mom and grandmother work hours over hot pans of boiling fat. They were afraid of a pan getting spilled and the possibility of severe burns. Children were kept out of the kitchen.

Ruth: “We had such a great harvest this year!🥳” Professor: “Let me tell you about one of the worst possible ways to die🙂”

The diversity of skills that the historians and archaeologists on the program have developed is amazing.

I love how organically they're showing how important socialization was. Much easier to keep your spirits up when you've got someone else to talk to. Imagine hating the people you're working with constantly and living with basically? Imagine LOVING them. Lol it's a beautiful, ugly, tender, rough world we live in.

Ruth has such a great life and enthusiasm about her whenever she is explaining something. It is a joy to watch.

What I do miss is any mention on how important wool production and spinning was in every woman's life. On the way to the fields, in the kitchen, herding the sheep - the amount of work that needed to be put into a spindle in order to be able to weave enough cloth for even one garment was immense.

Why is Ruth’s delivery always so perfect????? The ultimate Queen 👑

Love the way these "living" documentaries really get into the nuts & bolts of what ordinary people's lives were like. TELLING us how to make tiles is very different from SEEING it done. Then, the more enterprising of us can try it for ourselves. Great living history.

Just amazing. Medieval people were ingenious working the land.Everything had to be done from the ground up. A lot of work.

I'm 65 and I remember the school children in Aroostic County, Maine having several weeks off in early fall to pick potatoes. That was when harvesting was done by hand instead of machines like it is now.

This LARPing is so impressive. I'm blown away by the amount of hard work and attention to detail..the commitment to really "doing it Medival Tudor style"

Mom says her mother used lard to preserve meat. You half cooked the meat, then laid it in a ceramic jar with lard between the pieces of meat. This kept oxygen from getting to the meat. Keep in a cool place. No salt necessary.

Being of English heritage and having a love of Britain, fed my interest in this series. I didn't know I would enjoy it so much. In the 1950's I worked the family farm in north-eastern New Mexico for our food; both livestock and plants. No buying food from the stores.

This was how my family and other villagers harvested (usually wheat) when i was a small kid (harvaster came later at our remote part of the country). Neighbours helped each other. Every one had their own land. They used the sickles (they were faster than you of course:)

I just think its so amazing that theres people out there still committed to keeping the knowledge, physically, of our amcestors as our technology makes them obsolete....we never know when we sre going to need that knowledge again

I absolutely LOVE this series. Ruth and the boys are great guides, and I feel like I learnt so much the first time I watched this series. Watching a second time, my biggest criticism is how mildly the narration puts things like enclosure. When they describe the fields as being “open,” they’re not clearly expressing the idea that the fields were owned by lords or entities like the monasteries, but they were essentially public — families had their own sections of land that they could farm for subsistence, of which the monastery or landowner would take a payment in the form of a portion of that harvest. However, because the land was openly available for use by all members of the community, they could also forage and hunt on it, key to survival in this era. When enclosure began, that land that had previously been available for use by the entire community was divided up into smaller sections that were owned by wealthy individuals who no longer allowed others to use it as subsistence farmland or hunting/gathering grounds. Where before, the majority of your time might be spent farming and gathering your own food directly, enclosure meant the only way you could eat was by earning wages to buy food someone else had grown. The new landowners also prosecuted people who hunted or foraged on their land, making what was an essential element of survival illegal. It was a forced beginning of capitalism, and it was a huge cultural upheaval.

This was a really good documentary. I especially appreciated the participants enthusiasm while performing their respective duties. This was a good one and it was very informative. Well done folks!

This is mistitled. It's all about how they worked and lived in the autumn, and then ends before they get to winter.