MovieChat Forums > Frontier House (2002) Discussion > What would you have done?

What would you have done?


So, I first saw this show in 2002 in college. I was studying wild foods, ethnobotany, plant ecology, ecological design, and earthen building construction and so were all of my friends.

We watched the show at my house and it was a non-stop commentary about what was good (there were cheers when Logan started to figure out how to dig ditches to direct the water to the garden) and what was not thought out (there was plenty - things like not working together to build the homes and food-cellars stand out) and how we would have approach the whole thing.

I'll reply to this with my answer later, but I wanted to get the question out on the list:

What would you do in this setting? Put out there with the same neighbors, supplies, and situation? Do you (honestly) think you would have survived the winter? What would you do now that you've watch their successes and failures?

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frontier house

First of all, I want to say that they did a great job in so many ways... I learned a lot just by watching their experiments.

Here's the overall strategy I could have used...

we would be working to collaborate with our neighbors as much as possible. It seems that no one family could “win” (i.e. survive) on their own; maybe they could have survived if they had helped each other.

we would establish an over-all goal which includes details about:
1. The quality of life we aspire to (fed, sheltered, happy, healthy, strong, good relations with neighbors, survive the winter, etc)
2. Production: The activities and modes of production we need to ensure that quality of life
3. Resource Base: What the landscape, house, yard, and community have to look like in order to support those activities.

this 3-part goal would let me make decisions that will be more likely to reach it.

we could test our house-hold decisions by using asking:
- if what we are doing address the root causes of problems or needs?
- if each action moves us towards or away from the needed resource base from our goal.
- If the action strengthens the weak-link in the cycle of turning sunlight into materials we need - any action that addresses a weak-link will add to the overall potential of the project to move forward. What's a weak-link will change over time.
-If the action strengthens the weak-link in the life-cycle of organisms we want or weakens the weak-link of ones we don't
-If this is the most efficient use of time and resources
If this action contributes to the overall maintenance cost of the homestead.
-if it will lead to the quality of life we want.

Without a goal and the ability to evaluate options, it would be hard to really know if the house was moving forward towards making the winter or just doing a lot of hard work in all sorts of directions.


Here's what we could have done...

- we could have saved the top-soil from the area where the house was placed and use it to build garden beds
-gone out to the woods to look for wild edibles and medicinals. I'm sure that, in this landscape there would be plenty including camas (i'd be careful of death-camas) bitterroot, nettles, and more.
- Looked for signs of winter to figure out what direction cold winds come from and to help position the house
-I think that the interior could be wattle-and-daubed and that the walls could be applied with light-clay-straw for better insultation

- we could try to have the strategy of getting our home as energy efficient as possible right from the start so that I could save as much wood as possible for the winter.
- Built an improved stove from cob (sand clay and straw) and the metal from the stove and some of the storage containers (following the “rocket-stove” model which often only need 1/5th the amount of fuel for the same job) and have it's out-vent run through the house (possibly through a cob-bench or bed-frame - to hold and radiate the heat)
- Build a “hay box cooker” which is an insulated container to put a pot of boiling food in... holds the heat in after the initial cooking and so uses a tiny fraction of the fuel and never over-cooks.
-Make sure that the house gets a good day of winter sun and build only South and east windows for solar gain, light, and minimal heat-loss
-we could have insulated the ceiling/roof... if sheep were around (i forgot) we could use the wool up there. but I could also use loose clay-straw, or feathers or straw (with the seeds removed). we could consider cutting out sod to put on the roof.
-we could have positioned the house so that it was just bellow the key-point of the landscape on a south-facing area... the keypoint is the place where a side-valley goes from being steeper to being less step. Even on a gentle landscape his is where a lot of nutrients and material from up above on the land accumulate and soils are thick and furtile. It also would mean that the garden is slightly down-slope from the house which would be useful for watering...

-we could have gone over and helped the other house-holds. This would be nice, but it would also make us more indebted to each other and more people working together can get more done.
-we could also have built something at the intersection of all our homesteads... a place to sit, meet, talk... a neutral place that represented the community. Maybe, if there was time, it could be sealed to be a place to meet with the neighbors in the winter.
-we could take every opportunity to spread any extra of anything I had to our neighbors... this would build increasing opportunities to collaborate on projects that would be too big for just one household to pull off.

-we could have hung cloth or made screens from plants to ensure privacy within the house-hold.
-It would also have made sense to move a lot of household activities outside during the warm months... outdoor cooking, eating, living, sleeping (maybe, if the mosquitos weren't so bad) bathing... why live in a house that will only get dirty and need to be cleaned until you really have to?
- we could have dug the cellar early and used the clay for sealing up the house better and different material construction needs.
- Collected sand from the river for storage of vegetables

-Here's how we could have used the chickens... we could have put them close to the house. Built the fences quickly so that I could clump them together and move the chickens from one area of the yard to the next... they would eat all the greens (plus all the greens I bring them from the surrounding area) and turn them into manure, they would eat all the bugs, and scratch-up the soil... they would prepare our planting beds while I did other more important things. we could have started this first, even before the house was set-up... get those chickens working while I build the house.

-Here's how we could have used the horses and cows... we could have tried to build a way to move them around so they grazed a particular area down before I moved them on... this way, I could plan for some winter grazing and know that there would be enough grass. Keeping them within fences would also let me have access to their manure for garden beds and plasters for walls, floor, etc. Even more exciting for the cows is, that with cows, you can mix huge amounts of cob (earth, sand, and straw - it's like adobe) for construction.

we could have build some simple earth works... ditches on contour (swales) or just off contour to collect water from the roof, creek, and property and help water the garden. These slow water down and help it infiltrate. The area where they were gets twice as much precipitation as is average in Montana. it would be nice to collect what falls. we could have build a special area for dumping gray-water from washing and bathing to help neutralize the lye-heavy soaps.

The garden would be built as close to the (south-facing) front door as possible with clear paths that shed the water into the beds... we could mostly garden everything close but have a path come through it like a stem on a leaf... just for access to minimize the amount of space used for paths.

we could plant with a mix of seeds so that there was cooperation between different plants rather then competition between plants with the same needs. It would be mulched with straw and leaves and woodchips to conserve water and improve soil life and we could take handfuls of the nearby forest-soils with each planting so the ourcorrhyzal fungwe could help boost the plants' growth.

we could have saved our urine and added it to the water for the plants, to give them much-needed nitrogen.

we could have planet a huge amount of Kale at the end of the season... because kale keeps in the ground after the freezing weather comes.

we could have set up a compost system... and probably a composting toilet... using wood-chips and sticks and leaves and straw for carbon balance...

we could have gotten as many people together as possible with brooms and sticks in a big circle in the mid-summer in a field to scare grasshoppers into a bit to collect and roast and dry for food (they are delicious and taste like crayfish) some native tribes in the region got most of their protein from grasshopper hunts.. in just a few hours you can collect months worth.

That's it for now... if I think of anything else i'll post more...

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"ourcorrhyzal fungwe"

is a weird type...

i meant "mycorrhizal fungi"

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Save as much wood as possible? Save?
Narrator says 6 months of winter. Inspectors said Glenn's cut 4 cords, Clune's "some piles", unk regarding the Brook's. Look to me like maybe 2 cords.
A cord is 4'High X 4'Wide X 8'Long. Narrrator states the Glenn's needed 3 times what they cut,(12 cords).
Not much of the Clune's was split from what I could see. Split wood dries faster. I'm in Texas and need 6-8 months of drying time before burning. Green wood won't burn.
Process: Fell a tree, limb it out, haul it home and cut it to length needed, then split it and stack. Takes time.
The teacher/inspector said "They didn't listen".
If they have had to live through the winter, probably one family would have had to abandon their home and use it for firewood for everyone.

Also as far as game, snares and deadfalls could have been attempted to catch a live food source.

Lot a wasted time making moonshine. No heat, you will die.

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As far as I could see their main problem was that they were over worked.

So I would concentrate on producing vegetables. Otherwise I would end up breaking my back producing 5lbs of beans to feed to the pig (or whatever) who would give me 1lb of meat. If I wanted meat I would buy an animal from one of the other settlers when they were going cheap, which would be when the Glenns discovered that they couldn't fed them through the winter.

I like the Clunes idea of selling bread and cakes to the neighbours.Everyone likes a break now and then and Mrs Clune's baking would go down a treat. I have made cakes and chopped wood and cooking is easier, so I would accept payment in firewood and other services.

And I would keep the still. You need something like that if winter is going to be 6 months long

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