Interesting TV show about surviving

[sctmom]

This show isn't about Scouting but I wondered how many Scouts and Scouters watched this show in some amazement --- Frontier House. It was shown on PBS starting back in the spring. I just saw it this week when the local PBS station was running a marathon of it.

 

They take 3 families and put them in Montana for 5 months. They must live like it is 1883 and they are setting up a homestead. Everything they have is authentic to the period. One young man is about to get married. One family has 2 kids and does pretty well but begins to argue A LOT. The other family is from Los Angeles and complains about everything! The teenage girls from Los Angeles and their mother are very upset over no makeup and more shocked about bathing, etc.

 

They are cooking over open wood fires, learning to chop wood, using dutch ovens, tending to farm animals, etc. They have to prepare for winter. The start in June and must live there for 5 months.

 

There were times while watching it that I couldn't help but laugh and think about what other campers and Scouters would say. Have any of you seen this show?

 

 

[ASM7]

sctmom

 

I didn't see Frontier House but I bet it's pretty funny. Website is www.pbs.org/wnet/frontierhouse/

 

Doug

[firstpusk]

I saw quite a bit of it. My wife was interested in watching. They went home before winter. We each commented early on that they seemed more concerned about what they were missing (modern conveniences rich food, etc.) than cutting wood. The analysis at the end by experts agreed with our assessment. They were not too likely to be able to survive the winter.

 

 

[sctmom]

I think the kids adjusted much quicker than the adults. Even the teenage girls started having fun.

 

They've been back home for a year now. I'd love to hear about what they think now, after a year. I know the one couple got divorced. The frontier life brought out some things about the wife that made a marriage difficult to say the least.

 

[lasteagle83]

sctmom, I haven't been watching it this time around, but I have seen several episodes of it in the past. Watch for the final episode and see what the couple from LA did to make their nights more comfortable........I won't spoil the ending for you....but let's just say they bent the rules beyond recognition (and did some "time traveling" so to speak).

[Twocubdad]

Once upon a time, I was big into Pioneer life or folklore. I spent the better part of a summer in college camping and trying to build a log cabin by hand. I discovered the same thing the people on the show did, that this lifestyle requires one heck of a lot of work.

 

One thing about these shows (1900 House -- I think that's the right year -- was a BBC show with the same premise about a British family)which I think is inaccurate is that these people don't have the knowledge or skills to survive in this period. These shows aren't a historically accurate protrayal of life in the period, rather they're about modern families coping with having been dumpped into an unfamiliar enviroment. The frontier families have no idea of how to raise or care for livestock. For a family in the late 1800s, animal husbandry would have been second nature.

 

Most of us, because of our Scouting experience, could probably make due better than most. But while we have some theoretical understand of how poineers lived, would you know what to do if the hens stop laying? Or how to dry hay so it won't spoil? (Le Voyager, don't answer, we know you know all this stuff.)

 

The results would be the same if a 1800s family were dropped in a modern house. They would be building fires in the electric oven and hitching horses to the front of the car.

[sctmom]

From what I have read about life in the 1800's there were some families that were as clueless as modern day people when it came to farming. As a child I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House books over and over. Some of her stories are about people they would run into that had no idea what to do, how to grow vegetables, raise animals, prepare for the winter, etc. So it wasn't too far off the mark. When many of the pioneers set off west the women were in their nice white frilly dresses.

 

What I've read so far about the making of the show, they tried to choose people who had some skills but were not survivalist. They were looking for "average Americans". The young man on the show who gets married has been an Outward Bound instructor and has lived in the wilderness in Africa at one time. He was the one who complained the least.

 

There is a book about how the show was made. Supposedly it explains a lot more about how they choose the familes and the research that went into doing the show.

 

 

[JFields2002]

hmmmm... I saw a simpsons episode just like that...

[ScoutParent]

We watched the series and enjoyed it quite a bit. It was interesting to see the difference in each family's priorities in preparing for the winter and how it worked out. Was also interesting to see how the wealthy family changed because of the show.