"... just an AgLab". JUST an AgLab ??

[Emjaybee]

Sorry no, just went hunting of the web for a quote.

[Carmela]

Are Men Born Free and Equal?  Article by Robert Buchanan that appeared in the Daily Telegraph, Jan., 1890  See:
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/UnColl/PMG/PMGetal/THH-RB.html

Wessex Tales by Thomas Hardy. Available at any good book shop or library. Many copies for sale online. Try:  http://abebooks.com/

hth,
Carmela

[Emjaybee]

Ta, saved me going searching again

Mike

[Shropshire Lass]

Are all you (UK) descendants of Ag Labs are watching "Tales from the Green Valley" (BBC2, Friday, 7.30pm)

A group of archeologists are running a farm as it would have been worked in the 1620s, putting into practice what they have learnt intellectually.  It's very interesting seeing the theories put to the test and the archeologists learning from the practical experience. 

Seeing how much our Ag Labs had to know and how many skills they had to master to do their work as it changed through the year should be enough to stop anyone thinking of them as "just Ag Labs"!

Monica 

[kerryb]

Monica

I meant to watch, but have missed both episodes so far and forgot the video! 

It is a good series, shall I remember this Friday?

kerryb

[Lydart]

This is an old thread I just found (should be outside in the garden planting the broad beans !) ... but having lived for many years on the equator in rural Africa, it occurred to me that the lives of the people I lived amongst must be very like the lives of our Ag.Lab ancestors ... very hand to mouth living, in very basic living conditions.   But extremely skilled at all sorts of things ... looking after cattle, making their own tools, growing things ... and the women's lives were hard also ... too many children, carrying water and wood, and capable of walking what to us seems like vast distances, because of lack of transport.  We had a lad staying with us for a while who walked 20 miles, in the dark, to school every Monday morning; stayed there for the week, then walked home, in the dark, through the bush, on a Friday evening ...

Anyway, I must go back to being my 21st ag.lab self, and plant those beans !

[slightlyfoxed]

That is so interesting , particularly as Im researching how the 1820 British Settlers lived when they got to the Eastern Cape of South Africa and were shocked to find a wilderness.
I was puzzling as to how they got water since the rivers are in deep gullies in the Albany region. I'd guess buckets from a stream.
I think that  having come from the England where there were some advances on 17th Century by the time of the industrial revolution,  which was in full swing by 1820. By 1820  they would probabaly have struggled to do things the way their forebears did! Although I suspect they might have had a better idea of how than we would today if we were plunged into a similar situation.

You're right about walking. I was reading about William Blake and a period in his life, living in a remote village and  he walked 7 miles to take his sister to catch a coach, and back again. These days most of us  go pale at thought of walking more than half a mile!

Green Valley was a brilliant series,  I was glued to it. Wish Id taped it!

[Lydart]

The Africans I knew best were in rural Kenya; they sometimes used wells for water, or more likely, Lake Victoria's dubious water (bilharzia, malaria, dysentery ... hope no-one reading this at tea-time !) ... or local rivers and water-holes.  It wasn't the tea that made the water brown, it was the water !  I think Africans out in the arid areas fared better for cleaner water ... it came from deep wells, and a group of men would climb on foot-holds down the wells, and pass the water up in skins, hand to hand ... singing as they did it ! 

I think it was the same for settlers in Canada ... my Gr. aunt went to Canada in1898 ... and then spent some time (years ?) travelling in a covered wagon looking for suitable land with her husband !  Imagine that, going from a relatively comfortable life 'in service' in Hampshire, and then a few years later, having to have babies in a wagon, live in a 'soddy', and brave the temperatures of 50 below on the prairies in the winter.  Only 100 years ago ...

We dont know we are born ...

(And I see you are also interested in Pomeroy's ? Me too ...)

[meles]

I'm glad this thread has been brought up again - it started before I joined Rootschat! Made me feel rather guilty as I had thought of my lot  "Oh, they're just ag labs", now I realise that they were skilled and contributed hugely to society.

Interesting that the thread lead to S Africa, where the other half comes from.

meles