Tudor Monastery Farm is in episode 3.  It is late spring and the farm has been run for two months.  The pig enterprise has been set up.  Ruth, Peter, and Tom sheered their sheep and sold the wool to the monastery.  They then learned how to drive oxen.  Now they focus on food and what the farmer ate.  Bread and ale were a staple of the Tudor diet.  The Tudor people had a high-calorie diet.  Bread and beer were 1/3 of the calories in the Tudor diet.  Since they worked hard on the farm, they were able to burn calories faster.  Ruth comments the only thing missing was Vitamin C but if you had the “occasional leaf” you were good on Vitamin C.  If the barley crop failed, the Tudor farmer could starve.  In the Tudor period, one in four harvests failed.

Religion guided the Tudor farmer in preventing a bad harvest.  Forty days after Easter, the Tudor farmer processed around the farm boundaries to ensure a good harvest.  It was called beating out the bounds.  There were no written parish maps to tell people where their boundaries were.  A second reason why the Tudor farmer processed around the farm was to remind the people of the boundaries.  Ronald Hutton talks about how they got the Tudor children to remember the boundaries.  Boys were often beaten and turned upside down.  After they did that they were given fruit cake as a treat.  The idea was to remember bitterly what a place looked like.

Tom and Peter then discuss the pigs.  It was the earliest form of factory farming.  Farming changed during the Tudor period and instead of being subsistence farming, they were profit farming.  The boys separate the piglets from the mothers to wean them.  The piglets are taken to the woods.  They are fattened up on acorns.  A boar is introduced to the mothers to breed.

In the meantime, Ruth collects wild yeast to make bread and ale.  Her experiment in capturing wild yeast is a success.  The idea was to collect the wild yeasts that were in the air.  Ruth’s experiment is a success.  She then works to spread out the barley on a floor to start the beer-making process.  The next step after spreading it out on the floor is to get it wet.  Days go by and they shovel it into a smaller and smaller pile.  Beer making was an intensive and time-consuming job.  Ruth then transports the barley to the bread oven and continues the ale-making process.  Tudors drank ale and not beer because beer required hops.  Tudor farmers worked from dawn to dusk. 

The only place where time counted was in the monastery. The monks had specific times when to pray, when to go to the chapel and when to eat.   Tom and Peter build a clock for the monastery.

To continue to learn more about the Tudor Monastery farm, continue to watch this fantastic series.

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom.  If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students.  You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well.  Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture.  You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom.  The discussion on Tudor pig breeding would be an excellent clip to show in an agricultural classroom.  Or you could create a science experiment on capturing wild yeast to demonstrate the scientific method.

You can access the YouTube Video here.  The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.

Tudor Monastery farm continues.  Subsistence farming was giving way to farming for profits.  Tudor farmers had an eye on profits.  The monasteries made money from their tenants and now their tenants wanted to make profits for themselves.   It was during this time that farming was changed.  Ruth, Tom, and Peter celebrate Pentecost with a Market day.  Tom and Peter are raising geese to market day.  Tom comments that he is nervous around the geese.  Geese were considered a good source of revenue.  Geese were kept for meat, eggs, and fat.  Tom and Peter hope to make money with them on Market Day.

In 1500, the common lands were not enclosed.  Our time travelers turned their sheep out onto these lands.  Sheep produced thicker fleeces because of the grass the sheep were kept on.  May was the time for sheep shearing.  The time travelers work on making crooks to help drive the sheep from the grasslands back to the farm.  The crooks were invaluable to the Tudor shepherd.  With the aid of a sheepdog Ruth, Tom, and Peter drive their sheep back down to the farm.  It is comedic to watch Tom, Peter, and Ruth drive the sheep down back to their farm.

Tom and Peter wash the sheep.  The farming manuals at the time recommend that the sheep be washed before they sheer them.  They wash their sheep before shearing.  Washing the dirt, dung, and rocks out of a fleece helps the sheering process.  If a sheerer came across a rock in the fleece, the blades could get damaged.  Cleaning the fleece also increases the farmer’s profits because if a fleece is matted with dung it is not usable.

Peter who is feeling unwell with a cold, turns to nature to cure it.  The Tudor garden was seen as a pharmacy.  Many plants could be used to cure what ails the farmer. 

Ruth explores the differences with monastic herds because the sheep could provide different sources of income.  Sheep cheese had started going out of fashion because cows produced more milk.  Ruth milks a sheep to help supplement the farm’s income.  She will use the milk to make cheese.  She works in the dairy and makes sheep’s cheese.  Working in the dairy was considered a woman’s work during Tudor times.  Tudor Dairies were also cleverly designed to regulate temperature so the dairy was the coolest place on the farm.  They were built on the north wall and away from the sun.

Peter works on steam bending wood to make a bench to help sheer sheep.  He has never done it before but is willing to give it a try.  He explains the process of what he is doing to steam bend wood.  He digs a trench, lines it with rocks, fills it with damp hay, and builds a chimney to get the fire going.

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom.  If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students.  You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well.  Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture.  You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom.  I would pull clips out from the discussion on the Tudor Dairy or Tudor cheesemaking for an agricultural classroom.  Ruth is an excellent narrator as to why the Tudor Dairy was designed the way it was.

You can access the YouTube Video here.  The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.

We will kick off August with Tudor Monastery Farm.  This is a fantastic series to show in a history or an agricultural classroom.  While the monks prayed, they rented the monastery lands to farmers.  The farmers would work the lands, making money for the monastery as well as themselves.  Ruth Goodman, Tom Pinfold, and Peter Ginn are our time travelers going back in time to live as Tudor farmers.

Ruth, Tom, and Peter make their way to Weald and Downland to set up their farm.  It is 1500 and the monasteries were almost as powerful as the state.  They live during the reign of King Henry VII.  England was slowly emerging from the Wars of the Roses.  The world was heavily religious and religion weaved its way through everyday life.  The people believed they risked eternal damnation or social isolation if they did not follow the religious rules.  The church was central in Tudor England.  Religion explained everything, from the growth of crops to weather to personal wellbeing.

It is spring.  James Clark introduces Tom, Peter, and Ruth to their farm.  He explains how the Tudor farm operated.  The Monastic Farmers had to have a good head for business.  They rented their lands from the Monasteries.  Clark brings the time travelers to the house where they will live.  Tom, Peter, and Ruth tour the house.  Peter comments that the house will be hard to heat.  However, Ruth addresses this issue beautifully by stating that a fire in the middle of the room is a better use of heat.

Tudor farmers had to turn a profit to pay their landlords.  They have five acres of enclosed fields, as well as access to the common lands and woods.  The land was the most valuable asset of the monastery.  The Tudor Farmer raised sheep.   Sheep tied the farmers and the monasteries together.  English wool was of the highest quality.  They also planted peas and barley.  They may have raised pigs. 

Tom, Peter, and Ruth get to work right away.  Tom and Peter work on a pig enclosure since it was against the law for pigs to run free.  Tom picks up hazel rods for the pig enclosure.  There is a good discussion on the rules landlords imposed on their renters.  The higher the rent you paid, the more access you had to the supplies you needed for the farm.

Tudor farmers had to master a variety of building skills.  Tom and Peter work on the pig enclosure.  They weave hazel woods around the fence posts.  They also put together a dead hedge to help keep pigs in.  They finish the fence.  Peter comments that the Tudor building sources its materials from the landscape.  The fence they built can keep an elephant in the enclosure.

Peter forms a guild for the Tudor farmers.  Guilds were formed to help keep everyone prosperous and to help the transition into the afterlife.  There were saints for every day of the calendar year.  Peter forms a farmer’s guild with St. Benedict as their patron and St. Scholastica as a supporter. 

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom.  If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students.  You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well.  Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture.  You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom.

You can access the YouTube Video here.  The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.