Topic: The Victorian Kitchen Garden DVD

[valmarg]

Oh eck, haven't got the hang of the quotation bit!!

Someone said in an earlier posting about the Victorian practice of taking the ice of the pond, and storing it in underground caves.

The point I intended to make was, that the Victorians did not have the benefit of electricity, refrigerators, ice-making machines, etc.  But they were very innovative.  Some of the ice would have been used around the churn to make ice cream.  Even they would not have been stupid enough to have put a chunk in the G&T.

My grandad was a gardener in service, somewhat older that Harry Dodgson, who presented the programme.  I was born 1944, but I can remember grandad, using his Victorian know-how to provide us with peaches, pineapples and grapes, in the most austere of post-war times.

I really think you should take the Victorian gardeners seriously.  They achieved some fantastic results, albeit in the name of the man who owned the 'big house'!!


 

[Robert_Brenchley]

Victorian ice houses are incredible; it says a lot about the society that some people admire so much that a few people could afford such gross extravagance while others were reduced to the most abject poverty.

[valmarg]

Well, RB I think you are way out of touch with the people of the Victorian age.  My granddfather was a gardener, and my grandmother was a cook, in service.

I think your stupid arrogance rearding my grandparents is, quite horrendous.

You decry them as serfs.  Can you tell me what else they could have done.  They worked hard and made a living for themselves and their families.

[Robert_Brenchley]

I wasn't decrying the ordinary people at all! I was decrying the people who hold up such an unequal society as something to be admired.

[Merry Tiller]

You never know, in the future they might look back on us with affection....HA

[saddad]

Don't forget these gardeners also created some long lasting varieties which are still with us! No GM and other nonsense for them!
 ;D

[Robert_Brenchley]

I suspect that if they do, they'll be crying up selected snippets of what's happening now, and ignoring large areas they don't fancy. Problem is, you can't take a bit of a culture in isolation, you have to look at it as a whole.

[Merry Tiller]

Agreed, you can also never really know what it was like or felt like to be there

[saddad]

but we can try MT... as the quote goes.. "the past is a foreign country.. they do things differently there"
 ;D