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Much of the upper roof is gone from the farmhouse in Wales, when they get there. Ruth thinks that the rest of the building, well, they’ll probably be able to make a pretty comfortable living space of it, but there’s no saving the roof. That would take a proper, trained roofer and a thatcher, not some experimental archaeologists and reenactors. So, for most of the year, when they're there, they’re sleeping in a cottage the producers have let out for the duration.
Other, smaller repairs are possible for them to do, and with those, the entire downstairs begins to look quite nice in a few months, even some rooms on the upper level where the roof is still intact, where they store the pears and other fruit. The inside is warm and welcomes them in from the cold when outside chores are done.
Then came that one early September day the producers had them all come in in what Ruth thinks of as her ‘civvies’ to demonstrate the whole ‘getting dressed’ routine, the boys in one room and her in another. There’s enough of a chill in the air for her to appreciate the central heating at the cottage up the road.
And through the whole winter, she doesn’t think much of it, preferring very much to be all wrapped up in her nice warm layers of wool before she has to head out into the cold to do the milking and the feeding and the hundred other farm chores and tasks a farmer’s wife would need to do in a day. One out of five days, lighting the fire falls to her, with their rotation. She gets quite good at it, really, catching the sparks that fly from the flint and steel to smoulder and flame and warm.
It’s once spring starts to come on, and then edges inevitably toward summer, that the idea crops up in her mind, like a weed among the pea crop.
But she’s used to re-thinking weeds, by that point, and reexamines the idea, turning it over in her mind while she plucks feathers or mends shirts, more and more light giving more and more time for chores. Until finally it’s grown enough that she thinks maybe it might just be worth mentioning.
It’s May in the Valley, and Alex and Peter will be getting ready to shear the sheep–none the worse for wear for their cleaning dip–the sheep or the boys, or so it appears as they tramp back into the farmhouse. Ruth smiles, taking in their tired, but faintly triumphant expressions. “I take it things went well then?”
Peter flops down into a chair, Alex follows suit close behind, if a little more delicately. Ruth is in motion, setting out some bread for the worn-out boys, a little cheese and the jug of beer. Chloe had gone back for the night, wanting to get an early start tomorrow, and she assumes Stuart has as well. The three of them will leave the farm for the cottage soon, but a bit of bread and beer to cap off the day’s work as night starts to really set in seems to be the ticket for the day. Even the camera crew have gone home for the evening, it seems.
Peter is complaining about a solid kick one of the ewes had apparently managed to land on his thigh, Alex is laughing, saying that it was really Peter’s own fault, wasn’t it? And Ruth is content. Content enough to see about bringing that little seedling of an idea into the light.
“Are you two all camped out from your charcoal-making excursion?” She asks lightly.
Peter looks non-plussed, Alex looks a little… suspicious, if she had to pick a word, though laced with amused interest. “Depends on the camping, I suppose.”
Peter nods his second to the notion.
“I was thinking, lack of proper roof in some places notwithstanding, there are one or two rooms up there that seem alright. And, when you get down to it, it’s a sight better than an open field…”
“You think you could get the producers to go for it?” Peter asks.
“Who says they’d have to know?”
Normally, contemplation of this kind would be broken by a ticking clock–not so here, where the only noises are the nighttime sounds of the house settling, the animals outside, the low noises of a pre-Industrial cottage in the country.
So the scheme is hatched. It’s decided summer is the time to do it, Midsummer most likely. To go from the revels and bonfires back to the farmhouse just as their ancient counterparts would have done all those centuries ago.
Ruth takes the hay-stuffed mattresses up there, the ones she and Chloe have refilled with the fresh, sweet-smelling hay and the fresh, sweet-smelling herbs. The room she chooses is near to the bread oven (not the nearest–that one does have a sizable hole in the roof, and she’s less than certain about the floor there), cozy, where you can see the slope of the roof. You can even catch faint drifts of the scent of the apples and pears stored just above them. Wool blankets, though she wonders if they’ll be needed with the warmth of summer coming on.
There’s drinking and merriment and all sorts of festivities for the Midsummer, making merry around a bonfire and Ruth laughs at the description of maidens coming back in somewhat less of that state afterward with the rest of them.
The three return to the farmhouse and make sure the animals are bedded down, make sure everything is shut up tight, make sure the fire is laid to light in the morning–and then Ruth lights a rushlight and, seeing Peter’s grin in the dark and Alex close behind, leads the way up to their bed for the night.
–
The producers find out later, of course. At first it’s just speculation, wondering why the three were there so early the next day, but they do come clean eventually. Luckily, their producer just laughs, and points out that it isn’t as if any harm came from it and, while the powers that be could never have okayed it, it isn’t such a big deal after all.
–
Ruth spends her first night at the Victorian farmhouse proper in her narrow brass bed with the brick to warm her feet, and thinks that it’s pretty alright. Without central heating though she’s still glad for the nights she gets to spend at home.
Eventually the boys’ room is cleaned and they’re fitted out with beds of their own, narrow brass numbers like hers.
One night while they’re there in the dead of winter Ruth proposes that they push the boys’ two beds together and make one slightly bigger one, one big enough for all three of them. With the blankets, and the warmed brick, and the three of them, it’s actually quite comfortable indeed.
–
They had planned to spend the night out on the moor anyway, around the fire. But three separate bedrolls are not nearly as warm as one combined. Even in the summer there can be quite the chill up here. But around the slow-dying embers of their peat fire, and between the three of them, it’s absolutely perfect.
–
The Wartime Farm is, by far, the most wearing on all three of them. That’s also the series where they spend the most time on the farm itself. Since they’re only there for a few months instead of the whole year, the weeks at home are reduced to days, and between the plowing by night and the spy activities, and everything else, it's a lot. It wears on them. Verisimilitude, Ruth supposes.
It’s especially bad with the blackout restrictions–no glimmer or spark of light is supposed to escape, and the feeling it creates around the dinner table is oppressive. The one big overhead light is the one they keep on, since it gives the most light, and the thought crosses Ruth’s mind that it feels like an interrogation table sometimes.
So when the boys build their straw room to give up their room to the ‘refugees’, Ruth waits until the next morning to ask how it is. Both seem well-rested, and not like they spent all night shivering out in the cold. “It wasn’t half bad,” Peter tells her, scooping up another forkful of eggs. Between the note of pride in his voice, presumably at their craftsmanship, and the fact that he isn’t moving around like someone who spent the night in the chill and wind, she suspects it was actually was pretty good.
“Maybe I’ll have to see for myself,” She smirks, sipping at her tea.
Alex laughs. “You get tired of not sleeping on straw?”
Ruth shrugs. “What can I say, I’m a Tudor girl through and through.” Peter and Alex laugh fondly.
It is, in fact, very cozy, no wind at all making it through the cracks.
–
It isn't the oldest pub in Britain– that distinction (dubiously) belongs to Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem–or maybe The Bingley Arms–or maybe none of them– but this one is still pretty old. One of the oldest in the region. Certainly the oldest in the village, but that's not too much of a distinction.
The important part is that it’s got two things really going for it: it’s got that old-world charm, all wood fire and shining brass and warm lighting that really give the feel of the traditional British pub, and it’s roughly equidistant from the three of them.
Peter’s there already as Ruth arrives, though it appears he only beat her by a few minutes, as he’s still standing at the bar. He grins when he spots her, nods to the table she would have picked out herself, his overcoat already on a hook next to it. He brings her over her pint just as the door opens to admit the third member of their team, Alex.
Hugs are exchanged, drinks are obtained, and the three of them start on catching up. It’s been a few months since the last episode of the Wartime Farm series aired, and all three of them are thinking on the things they’re grateful to no longer be going without.
“I think the rationing was almost harder,” Ruth remarks. “Being able to get things like soap, or fabric, but so little of it…” She trails off, shaking her head. “When we have to make it ourselves, it’s all down to raw materials and putting in the work, you know?”
Peter and Alex both nod in agreement. “Plus it just felt so quiet in the farm yard, without all the animals,” Peter adds. True, none of the animals usually in residence at the farm had actually been slaughtered, it had still felt almost hauntingly empty there without them. Knowing that they were all living on farms elsewhere in the area and would come back at the end of the series had been a comfort though, it was true.
This has been a tradition of theirs, since that first series. They would meet up periodically, in places like this pub, or each other’s homes or, on occasion, revisit the old places that they’d helped to fix up and see how they’re running now. That pig-sty at the Acton place may have a slightly crooked capstone, but it’s still standing good and sturdy against the wind.
They meet up with each other and just generally spend time together. And, often, take the chance to discuss their projects, joint and individual, past, current, and upcoming.
It’s that upcoming bit that has Alex looking a little unsettled as Peter claps his hands together eagerly and says, “So, what d’you think about where the old BBC is sending us off to next?"
Ruth's face brightens. As she had half joked back a few months ago, she is a Tudor girl, it's true. She's clearly excited for the chance to be back in that time period, the other two don't even need to ask.
“Here’s the thing,” Alex starts, and Ruth and Peter pause. Because that’s the tone of voice that they know quite well, that he doesn’t use all that often. The voice that makes them look at him expectantly, even with Peter’s pint halfway to his lips. “Thing is…” He pauses, only because he wants to launch in then and there into the explanations before the effect. Explaining himself before it’s all gone pear-shaped, like he’s never able to. “I’m not doing the next series.”
Silence follows and while it's the warm and filled silence of a pub, his two friends, his two companions here– they’re awfully silent.
Peter is the first to react, with his eyes that Alex will always think of as his cow eyes, dark and round. “That right?”
Ruth’s reaction is softer still. He sees the way that her eyes widen, her smile softens at the corner.
Alex takes a swig of his own pint before setting it down. “Yeah, I…” he says, still speaking more to the table than to them. “I looked at it all, I thought about it, I plotted it out and… even with weeks off for good behavior,” and here Peter laughs and he sees Ruth’s rueful look even as he doesn't quite look right at her. “I can’t.”
He splays out his hands. “What with me doing more with Time Team, and my university posting, and…” He trails off, pauses a moment…but this is his family too, after all, and you don't leave family in the dark on things. “Between my back and my heart, and everything else, I don’t know that I could do it anymore.”
He doesn’t know why he was worried. Peter looks sad, but also like he gets it. He remembers the day he asked Peter if he’d consider going along with the mad idea of recreating a Stuart-era farm in the twenty-first century, clothes and pigs and all. To go from Egyptology to rural Britain was a hell of a leap, and Peter had done it with grace and charm. Ruth’s smile has sorrow in it, but she understands. She always does.
“But you also know that you’re welcome any time. We’ll dress you up and not make you do any work at all,” Peter says jovially.
Ruth brightens. “Oh, yes, come do Christmas with us!”
Alex’s smile is free and easy again. “I’d like that.”
“Listen though,” Alex’s voice turns a little more solemn. “It’s not like this is goodbye or anything. I’m still going to be around, just not on set. Plus, maybe for the next one they’ll do another of those short run sort of ones, like your Victorian Pharmacy one, Ruth.”
She nods consideringly. “Maybe we’ll get them to do trains or something. Something just a little more modern.” She pauses then, considering him with her fond smile on her face. “But thinking about the project coming up, and remembering you’re not going to be there with us… it feels like our last day on one of those shoots, just more so.” Ruth fans herself gently with a hand and laughs. “Look at me, I’m even getting all maudlin!”
Alex hugs an arm around her shoulders. “Right after I said it isn’t goodbye and all!”
Her laugh is a little watery, but it is a laugh, and in the warm firelight of a pub that’s not anywhere near the oldest one in Britain, the three of them order another round, and look towards the future.