History
Palaisglide
Posts: 3,414
A recent thread caused me to remember times best forgotten, a History making time that has changed nothing yet is relevant in that it has all the Major areas of the world toeing the line nose to nose.
Gardening has changed completely yet is now turning full circle to what I knew as a lad. The garden then fed the family and extended family year round, almost everything we ate came out of the garden in season was bottled or preserved. Then came the fashion years, Rockeries, Lawns, Decking, extra rooms and places to burn sausages and spoil chicken. Now people around me are finding the joys we took for granted, fresh food out of the garden and into the pan, a real eye opener for most. My question, is History relevant or Bunkum as Henry Ford is reputed to have said. Does my input make any difference as looking it up it appears to be Lawns, Peony's and Strawberries with the odd fruit tree thrown in. With all the books available am I even relevant?
Frank.
Last edited: 06 October 2016 11:55:40
Posts
Yes, Yes, and Yes!!!!
How else to understand the present crises throughout the Middle East, the Kashmir situation, the Turkey/Kurds problem etc
Verdun you are correct about family. My memories are of a house full of relatives on a Sunday, mother and my Aunts setting up the table everything home made including the breads (yes breads, there would be a variety), Uncles and others up the garden with Dad inspecting the animals, a good tea where long gone relatives were discussed which meant we knew where we came from, Dad's side from Lancashire and all musicians as well as a day job, mum's side from Yorkshire and before that Scotland and even earlier Ireland. It was folklore we all soaked up before we ended up in the front room (the only day the door opened apart from me practicing piano) and the family sing song? well no TV then what else was there to do. We did not need those ancestry boards it was part of the spoken history as heard around the table eating good home grown food.
My own lot never wanted to know, they had such exciting lives to live??? and then suddenly said we have no idea what you and Mum did before we were born? I started to write and that got me places I never expected, BBC for one, Local History, general History I always had interest in and now they wait for the next outpouring which gets well discussed by all. They now have some idea of where they came from, no bad thing to my mind. History has it's place in our lives although it took a while.
Frank.
Frank - one of the Universities up here has been recording oral history from the older generation particularly in remoter, rural areas.
Much of it will be fairly similar to your own background. I was fortunate in that my grandfather told me all about life in rural Aberdeenshire.
History is definitely relevant- first of all my small garden wouldn't have progressed or been created to the level it has without the shared histories and experience of the members on this site.
Funny enough I have put together a timeline quiz for our team meeting tomorrow- even in my lifetime things have changed so much - for example - when I told my son that our first family TV was black and white with a coin slot on the back he didn't believe me - this led to getting the photos out ( yes black and white and not many of them!) Told him all about watching "Monkey" with my 2 older brothers - That I was born just before the Internet or the forerunner to it was invented - that in 1970's a Mar bar cost 6p !
We had a great conversation and shared our histories ?
Back to the garden - I have a red rose planted for my Dad who loved them, plants brought for me from family and friends that always take me back - plants that have meaning and a history.
As Verdun said - we are all relevant.
Trace
One of the first things we did when we bought the barn we now live in was check the tythe maps and county records history, partly because normal 'searches' don't tell you much if you're buying a place that has never been a house before, and partly because I'm just interested.
The next village over's millennium project was to write a book about the history of the village and record the names and a bit about all of the people who lived in each house in 2000, for future historians to find - a little history of ordinary people. We didn't turn up here until almost 10 years later, but it made a fascinating read.
How else do you set your life in context, acquire a little perspective on your problems, than by understanding the lives of previous generations? The shame is that often the everyday history can be really hard to uncover. I'd love to find out more. It's what I find interesting about 'Who Do You Think You Are?'. I've no interest at all in 'celebrities' but the programme often reveals ordinary people in history that are genuinely fascinating.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
History makes some way in marking the events we as a species create. There's no doubt that history is written by the victor. Most of what is taught in schools is biased in one way or another, sometimes by the collators of events, sometimes by the national curriculum and those who set it. However the information age has enabled us to freely seek differing interpretations of especially relatively recent events. This can only be a good thing for the independently minded, leaving it up to those who seek answers to find them. There is no doubt that history has lessons for all, and especially for governments who deign to take note, or those who choose to ignore it. Personal history is however exactly that, a very personal thing. My Grandfather would readily tell me all the things he got up to as a boy, teenager and adult. It was awe inspiring as a small boy. He made it fun as well, something I've been so grateful for as it was and remains my second favourite subject. But I have something bigger to thank him for in that as a boy he got me to sow a tomato seed in his greenhouse. Just a few days later I watched as it germinated and over the next few weeks I watched it grow. It was late July, too late to fully fruit, but as his GH was already full of of tomatoes at various stages he allowed me to eat a ripe fruit, straight from the vine. I still have that memory and the flavour in my history. I've tried to pass that on to my children with varying degrees of success, but they know the story so it will become their history. So history IS important. It defines who we are, and what we are as a species. Hopefully with increased environmental responsibility we can pass on a healthier environment to our children and their children. Although as a species I think we make the same mistakes time and time again, hopefully one day, and one day soon we take those mistakes, and finally learn from them. Thankfully I learned to be a gardener via my Grandfather, something I am forever in his debt for. Maybe one day, if I am lucky enough, I can maybe pass that love of gardening onto my grandchildren. If I can, then I will have made, and been part of history.
Last edited: 06 October 2016 19:42:54
I think that history is vital on so many levels. We all learnt at school about the Tudors and Stuarts, the Romans, the Victorians etc - but all from the perspective of the well-documented accounts. Of far greater value are the accounts of every day lives - the minutiae of daily living and working, of life and death and of various practices of the times.
I have found the programmes on the TV by Ruth Goodman - the Victorian Farm and the like - to be truly fascinating, since it looks at just those "small" events - the food, farming methods, medical knowledge etc in a way that is overlooked in the history books of political history, treaties signed, wars conducted and the like.
How often have we wished that we had quizzed our parents, grandparents and other family members about the way they lived, their own memories etc? So now we have the opportunity to pass on our memories, sometimes by village project or sometimes by personal family trees, and we are also enriched by the knowledge that is there at the touch of a few keys on the computer.
Even in the field of relatively recent gardening is history writ large. The chemicals that were taken for granted (for every pest there was a spray!) are - well, history. And we have learned the better ways of gardening with nature rather than against it, rather than trying to tame it to our wants and needs.
Todays fads will fade. New imperatives will come to the fore. We may well be indulging in Mediterranean styles of gardening by the end of the century. Or not. But the process of learning and developing are part and parcel of history.
Yes SV and the Chemicals have a history too, Dad knew about Bordeaux Mixture for blight, scab on apples and molds or rusts, he mixed his own and the recipe is still in my head as Copper Sulfate slaked lime and water. Once mixed it went into a big brass hand held pump and was pressurised then squirted on the offending plants. That was not often as he knew the dangers of Copper Sulfate, mainly we used soapy water in the pressure spray or a hose nipping the end to give a jet, it washed the bugs on to the ground and the birds got them, we had free range chickens they would follow me around when I got the hose out, I still use that method. The heavy chemicals came well into the war when every ounce of food was needed although Dad's principle of sowing one row for the creatures and two rows for us always left us plenty of fresh vegetables, after all he would say they are there for a purpose. We used DDT on people at check points coming into our area in the Middle East, it would be squirted on their heads up their clothes yes men women and children and our lads would be covered by the stuff. Luckily for me I was always designated gunner so was well back from it, years later I wondered what harm we had done. The years of use up to the late sixties caused a lot of harm to the Countryside and I would bet that even today you will find some of those chemicals in garden sheds.
Dad made his own fertiliser sending me to the fields to collect a mix of sheep droppings and cowpats these were put in a hessian sand bag the top tied and then lowered into a tub of water in the corner of the garden, one maturing one in use. An old tin cup of the stuff to a watering can and do not forget to lift and shake the bag, the smell was an acquired taste and did not go down well at the local dance when used as after shave.
Ruth Goodman and her crew caused some laughter among us people brought up on farms and there was quite a good thread on here as we discussed it. it would be an eye opener for most though for some of us the mistakes were there to see, the history of farming is a case in point, my Father would not recognise it in today's form. We had horses for the fields the old Fordson Tractor that started on petrol then changed over to Paraffin would come out for some work but horses did the ploughing harrowing and raking. Today you drive onto the field set the Satnav and have your breakfast while the machine takes the strain.
Yes I know, Boring history, "oh" well you do not need to read it.
Frank.