Tales from the Green Valley

Tales from the Green Valley
Starring	Stuart Peachey, Ruth Goodman, Alex Langlands, Peter Ginn, and Chloe Spencer.
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	12
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Production company(s)	Lion Television,
Release
Original network	BBC Two
Original release	19 August 2005
External links
Website

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 was made for the BBC by independent production company Lion TV. It was directed and produced by Peter Sommer. The Series Producer was David Upshal. The narrator was Owen Teale, and the music was composed by David Poore.
• 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.
• The series has been released on DVD, distributed by Acorn Media UK.^[1]
• An associated book by Stuart Peachey-–The Building of the Green Valley: a reconstruction of an early 17th-century rural landscape-–was published in 2006.^[2]

Episodes

#	Title	Directed by	Original air date
1	"September"	Peter Sommer	19 August 2005
Ploughing with oxen, baking in a hearth.
2	"October"	Peter Sommer	26 August 2005
Gathering pears, thatching the cowshed roof with a bracken undercoat and a wheat thatch, period clothes and boots, driving pigs to forage.
3	"November"	Peter Sommer	?
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.
4	"December"	Peter Sommer	?
Building a hovel (a woodshed), period clothing, peas, preparing for Christmas.
5	"January"	Peter Sommer	?
Preparing period medicines, wood gathering, hedge laying, ink-making, and home pharmacy.
6	"February"	Peter Sommer	?
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.
7	"March"	Peter Sommer	?
Preparing the garden for sowing, wheat threshing, brewing March beer, pig yokes, fun and games, egg and pear pie with stewed salt cod.
8	"April"	Peter Sommer	?
Spring cleaning, rebuilding a dry stone wall, a new baby calf.
9	"May"	Peter Sommer	?
Preparing a new field for spring sowing, making charcoal, and butter.
10	"June"	Peter Sommer	?
Washing and shearing sheep, cheese making, and mid-summer revels.
11	"July"	Peter Sommer	?
New harvest from the garden (beans and gooseberries), making hay, clothes washing.
12	"August"	Peter Sommer	?
Fattening geese, goose pie and carrot puree, wheat and straw harvest, reed lights.

Sequels

A Tudor Feast at Christmas – a "spin-off" from the series, broadcast in December 2006 – showed the team recreating a Tudor banquet at Haddon Hall.^[3][4] The most recent series, set during the reign of Henry VII entitled Tudor Monastery Farm, was broadcast on BBC Two on 13 November 2013.

A new series set in the 19th century entitled Victorian Farm was screened on BBC Two in January 2009 and Edwardian Farm in November 2010. A series set during the Second World War entitled Wartime Farm followed in September 2012, with Tudor Monastery Farm then premièring in November 2013.

References

1. Acorn Media, 2005
2. Heritage Marketing & Publications Ltd. ISBN 978-1-905223-13-8
3. BBC: "A Tudor Feast at Christmas"
4. Blogspot: A Tudor Feast at Christmas

External links

• Tales from the Green Valley website
• Full list of all 12 episodes
• BBC News Magazine: "Lessons from our ancestors about the countryside"
• Ruth Goodman website
• Alex Langlands website