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12 Episodes 2010 - 2011
Episode 1
59 mins
The trio establish their domicile, scrubbing a flagstone floor and cleaning out a clogged chimney. They build a hayrick to put up hay, hire a stonemason to make a trough, learn to thatch, make a rag rug and begin keeping chickens and sheep. Ruth cooks a sheep's head stew.
Episode 2
59 mins
Alex and Peter milk goats and train the ploughhorses. They begin a market garden of strawberries. Ruth pickles apples, salts a ham, and smokes bacon. Alex and Peter press apples to cider, 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 in Edwardian style.
Episode 3
59 mins
Ruth prepares for the arrival of the farm's pigs and works on the privy, 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 smithy for a billhook. Ruth makes sloe gin for Christmas and entertains with a gramophone.
Episode 4
59 mins
As winter sets in, the three farm dwellers must look further afield to earn money. 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 vacuum cleaners. They separate growing calves from their mothers. Peter finds out how leather is made. They celebrate Christmas modestly, as poor farmers might have, and listen to a Methodist Christmas message.
Episode 5
59 mins
The continuing winter forces Alex and Peter down a copper mine, while Ruth makes lace. The copper mine is the King Edward Mine, Camborne, Cornwall, and the lace-making is at Honiton.
Episode 6
59 mins
Six months into their year, Ruth, Alex and Peter explore the daily lives of Edwardian farmers. This episode has a slightly different format to the rest of the series; instead of covering a whole month's changes it uses a framing device of Ruth writing a letter describing the events of a single day on the farm.
Episode 7
59 mins
Spring arrives with the lambs and the potato crop planted with manure. Daffodils are harvested and sent by train across the country.
Episode 8
59 mins
April arrives and time is divided between the land and the sea.
Episode 9
59 mins
Summer brings the tourists, so the farm provides strawberries and clotted cream.
Episode 10
59 mins
June arrives so the sheep go up onto the moors of Dartmoor with Alex and Peter guiding, leaving Ruth to run the farm, including spraying Bordeaux mixture on the potato crop. Alex and Peter try their hands at sheep-shearing and dry stone walling, and observe sheepdogs at work.
Episode 11
59 mins
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.
Episode 12
59 mins
August brings to an end the year on the farm; weather dictates the harvest and the seaside brings much needed fertilizer.