"Tales From the Green Valley" is on youtube!!!

Goats were not traditionally kept in england. They usually kept sheep, cows, rabbits, and pigs.

I sent zodiacza a message letting him (Paul) know how much I/we appreciate all the great shows he has uploaded and also put in a request for It Ain't Easy Being Green if he can manage to get his hands on it. He's on FaceBook also and we're now "friends". Ooooh, I'm special now! lol (He plays FrontierVille, as do I)

As u once asked somebody else to do, Do u have a source for your information. Ive got a plethora of books from when I was in the SCA and some of them are on farming. I can check and see. I DONT KNOW, But I would imagine that goats were kept by the same types of people who keep them today. The inexperienced, the poor, the small holder, the old. And of course, Those who just like them. A man with a couple of acres and a family couldnt support a cow. I wager they were kept in towns also. The english in town usta all raise a garden, I cant imagine them not haveing rabbits, chickens and a goat or 2 .

Actually, goats are the most popular animal kept on smallholdings throughout the world. They certainly would have been kept in rural England. AAMOF, John Seymour mentions them in his books on self-sufficiency.

As for the hedgerow fencing, it is a fascinating subject. You can set a decent hedge in less than ten years, but it does take diligence.

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Bill I have no hard proof, just slight knowledge of the culture. I might be wrong. If you want, you can dig up some information to prove if they did or did not. From my little understanding sheep were the main animals there.

They historicly kept goats in england, or was it a recent addition, and by recent I mean in the last 200 years?

I know goats have been popular in the middle east, the mediterranean,and africa.

I agree whole hearrtedly that there were 10 sheep at least to any goat there, But just like there are 10 holsteins to every jersey here, They had goats I think in medieval England, or as I pronounced it while in ther SCA as a 1105 minor nobleman, Angleland

I've been watching Hugh Fernley Wittingstall for about twenty years. He started with a series of programs where he went around the country in a modified Landrover with a small boat on top. He lived off the land and would cook a meal from whatever he found or caught. The Landrover had a pull out field kitchen built into it.
BTW, I'm English and moved to the USA four years ago.
Someone mentioned the hedgerows. Most of them are hundreds of years old, in fact you can tell the age of a hedge by identifying the trees growing in them. Some of the big ones are about ten feet thick. Many hedgerows have been grubbed out to make way for intensive farming, but the trend now is to preserve the ones still left and rebuild some of the ones grubbed out. I remember the old guy in our village would travel around the district laying the hedges. This is where he would cut into but not through any tree that had shot up above the hedge line, and then he would lay them down and weave them together to form a level top the hedge. These laid trees would then produce shoots which would shoot up and perpetuate the body of the hedge.
A lot of the old farm laborer's cottages had pig sties at the bottom of the garden. These were stone built and had a small stone wall around the pig yard in front of the sty. Pigs and rabbits were probably the only meat available to them.
We did have goats back in medieval times, but sheep have been a dual purpose animal providing meat, and wool to make clothing to keep out the cold damp weather for a lot longer.

CB I just went to ASK and asked the question (did they have goats in medieval England). You might do the same.

I didn't know HFW had been in the public eye THAT long! I knew he had been doing television/writing publicly for at least 10 years. Have to say I preferred him when he was still a 'hippy'. lol He's gone corporate nowadays.

Where in England are you from Graham?

I'm from Somerset, down in the south west. On the Bristol Channel coast. I've also spent a lot of time on Dartmoor, where Edwardian Farm was filmed.

I agree with you about HFW. He runs courses down in Dorset for people to experience the cottage life. The money has taken over.

I'd love to take the Pig In A Day course at River Cottage - Not that I can afford it, nor the plane ticket & hotel. I hear Ray-The Butcher-Smith is no longer with RC, so wonder who is doing the meat courses taught there.

Maybe I'll hit the lottery one day and I'll be able to vacation in England and visit Somerset, Dartmoor and Dorset...<sigh> At least I live in "Falmouth"! lol

Just watched "When We Farmed With Horses". I was having constant flashbacks of my grandpa. Wish my grandparents were still around today. There's so much I would like to ask them and I could just sit & listen all day.

And what did it say? Bill, I have no problem with being wrong.

It is sad if Hugh charges high prices and has turned the cottage life into a consumer good, because from what I saw on Escape To River Cottage he got on his feet at the cottage with a lot of neighborliness, friendliness, and basic good will of decent people, as well as from bartering, so if it is true that he has gone all corperate about promoting the cottage life then he sort of betrayed the true values of the community who welcomed him, taught him, and helped him get on his feet.

Grahm I have family roots in Bristol, north central Devon (where a lot of lace making use to go on) and on the west coast of Devon. Do you know what life is like there these days and what the people are like?

I saw a few stupid things on You-tube where people were saying that in England the people in Devon get picked on because they allegedly sound like pirates.

aaarg Graham, Say it isnt so.

they are gone!

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He who thinks he knows, doesn't. He who knows he doesn't know, knows.~ Joseph Campbell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeMrK...AE7062ADE5A19C

I'm sad to report that YouTube took down zodiacza's account b/c of copyright violation complaints.

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http://homesteadingfamilies.proboards.com/

I got through the first 2 episodes, just enough to get hooked. Then they took it down

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