Frontier House - A Review

I recently was able to watch the PBS series "Frontier House". The premise of the show was to determine whether 3 modern families could survive homesteading in 1883 Montana. As someone who is interested in not only the time period but the history of homesteading, I anticipated a very entertaining 6 hours watching the series.

I wasn't disappointed. The show was entertaining and educational in many ways. But my greatest entertainment, it seems, came from watching and wondering what stupid thing some of the people would do next. That isn't to say they were all stupid or completely unsuited to the task, but no few of them provoked exasperated sighs from me, and occasional annoyed outbursts at my screen.

So I thought I would give my own review of the series, the families involved, and the lives that they endured in Montana for 5 months.

Three families took part in the experiment: the Clune family, the Glenn family, and the Brooks family. They all different in size and starting point in terms of shelter. The Glenn family started with a full-built cabin, the Brooks had to build their cabin from scratch, and the Clunes started somewhere in the middle, with a half-constructed cabin that they themselves had to finish building.

Right away I knew that I wouldn't much like the Clune family. Gordon Clune was a big corporate executive, the kind of man who apparently didn't flinch at having a new mansion built for his family in Malibu. He was the kind of man who is used to getting what he wants when he wants it, and I didn't suspect that rough living would go well with him. I wasn't wrong. He complained quite often about his situation. He complained about losing weight from doing such hard work. He complained about having to carry water 150 yards from the creek to his family. He complained about the other families. He complained about having brought a gun to teach his son to shoot and then finding out that he wasn't allowed to hunt. He found complaints for just about everything that wasn't set up to his liking and didn't go his way.

His wife Adrienne wasn't much better. I'm sure she's a nice enough woman, but anybody who cries on camera because she wasn't allowed to wear makeup for a period-style group photo doesn't get much respect from me, I'm sorry. There are more important things in life than looking like a movie star when you're walking to milk to cow or tend the garden. Her daughter wasn't much better. They both smuggled in beauty products, which was clearly established at the beginning of the project as being against the rules.

Karen Glenn didn't impress me much to start with, coming across as something of a soccer mom type. As the show went on, however, I began to respect her no-nonsense attitude and driving motivation. She and her husband were both the type to not budge in an argument, which led to a good deal of friction, but despite that, I respected him too. He was hard when he had to be, gentle when he wanted to be, and didn't mess around. I think he and Karen had the right attitude about the whole situation. It wasn't an easy task, but it had to be done, and there was no time to lie around and complain about it.

The Brooks family didn't make too much of an impression on me one way or the other, which in itself is probably a telling statement. That means they weren't incompetant. Frankly, they were possibly the most competant family on the show. But seeing as how it was general stupidity and foolishness that tended to catch my attention when it came to the families, the fact that I can't say much bad about them is probably a good thing.

Right away the Glenn family had an advantage in survival, since they had a complete home all ready and waiting for them. The Clunes had to build the rest of theirs, and the Brooks family had to build their home from the ground up, cutting down the trees, hauling the logs, the whole shebang. They undoubtedly had the hardest task, though from their attitude, you never would have guessed it.

It was the Clunes who seemed to have the most difficult time upon arriving, however. Not too surprising, since they came from a life of excess to a life where frugality was prized and every little bit of everything must be used, and where chores must be done quickly. The lived in tents until their cabin was built, and then moved in as soon as the roof was up. Just in time, too, since a freak snowstorm came upon them soon after.

But the house itself didn't do much for them at that point, except as a place to store things and to live without too much snow getting on them. In their haste to move in, they had neglected to chink to walls of the cabin, and so the snow and cold came in through the gaping holes between the logs. A fire was burning in their stove, but it was no warmer inside than outside, and almost all of their clothes were wet and unable to dry because of the weather.

I asked my roommate, "What's the first thing that you can think that would be wrong if a newly-built log cabin was letting in cold and damp?" Her reply was, "I don't know. Were the walls chinked?" She saw the problem without even seeing the show. Chinking walls isn't difficult. It involves mud, maybe with some sawdust mixed in for stability, and they had both in ample supply. It simply didn't occur to them until later, when it was too late.

In fairness, I should say that the freak snowstorm happened in June, and it may be that they didn't think they would need to have the walls chinked until later. On the other hand, it does rain in June. Did they really think that the rain wouldn't go through any of the cracks and holes?

Maybe it's just me, but if I'd been chosen for this show, I'd have spent as much time as possible researching how to do all this stuff. Including what needs to be done for building a house. The thing is? This information could have been gathered by doing a quick read-through of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" series. It's not like it would have taken extensive research.

The Clune's also had a problem with food. They ran out of it quickly. They didn't seem to know how to ration well, and seemed to assume that because Adrienne had a degree in "culinary arts" from a fancy cooking school that she should be able to make plenty from very little. Except that most fancy cooking schools tend to teach you how to make a lot of fancy things with a wide variety of ingredients. They don't focus on how to make your supply of dried beans last.

The children cried from hunger. Their mother was picky enough to not eat cooked snake meat when it was caught, when they all needed whatever protein they could get. Pickiness and frontier living do not go hand in hand.

A period store was opened for the purpose of this project, where the families could buy additional supplies and sell their surplus for more store credit. The Clune family bought twice the food they had originally been supplied with, running through their store credit and going immediately into debt in one purchase.

The biggest reason, they admitted, was that they "couldn't live" without sweet things in their diet. Sugar, honey, canned fruits. It all went so quickly because they didn't know how to adjust to not having those things in their lives. What used to be commonplace was now a luxury, and they weren't used to having to think that way.

The Glenn familiy was more frugal, and as such their food stores lasted much longer. Karen Glenn shared a tip regarding making honey last longer: when some of it's gone from the jar, top it up with warm water. it thins the honey and makes it easier to pour, and makes it last longer. She stored most of the canned foods out of sight under the bed, saying that if she didn't seem them very often, she wouldn't be so tempted to use them when she didn't need to. This is the way to do it!

Not much information was given about the food supply at the Brooks household. I can assume, then, that they didn't run out quickly nor did they starve themselves in order to save food. A good balance.

One thing that's to be said about this series is that it didn't flinch at showing things that we would consider terribly harsh nowadays, such as the killing of animals for food. While the moment of the act itself was alway hidden, the camera quickly panning away as the axe falls on the chicken's neck, it was made very clear that this is where meat comes from. It didn't shy away from showing children distressed from seeing this. It made no bones about reminding people that the delicious roasted chicken dinner they were eating was, only a few hours ago, a living breathing animal.

We got to see people losing excess weight that they didn't even know they had. Injuries, sicknesses, the ups and downs of frontier life were laid plainly out for everyone to see, and that should be commended. The introduction to the show makes the claim that the time and place were "often romanticized," and it's true. Playing Little House in the Prairie is something far removed from the sweat and blood that comes when you're building your own house, raising your own food, and tending your children's injuries with little more than herbs and alcohol. It's messy and rough, and too few people really ever come to grips with it. They see the last as something clean and orderly, if primitive. There comes a time when illusions must be torn down, and viewers of this show got just that.

Wildlife of the area was shown quite often, and not just rabbits and birds. No, I'm talking about seeing bears dragging off and eating a freshly-killed cow, or invesitgating a tree in which the two Clune girls built a private treehouse. or the numerous mice scampering across the floors at night. Or the rattlesnake that was killed accidentally during haying and then cooked up for dinner that evening.

No mention was made of mice getting into food stores, thankfully. I can assume that means that it didn't happen, or that it didn't happen enough to be worth mentioning.

We also saw family arguments, ranging from nitpicky little snits to full-blown yelling, further detracting from the image that the frontier was always a happy place. Hard work and limited food supply, plus living in such close quarters, can easily make tempers fray and angry words come out, and viewers got a real taste of that, too. It wasn't like watching arguments in some soap opera or drama show. There were constant reminders that these were real people, living real lives, and these were their private arguments we were seeing, recorded for TV and displayed to the world. It's hard to turn a blind eye to something like that when you remember that the people you're seeing aren't just actors playing characters.

At the end of the 5 month experiment, experts were brought in to evaluate how each family had progressed, and to determine whether or not they had prepared enough to survive a Montana winter.

The Brooks family did well, I recall, which was due in part to the fact that they kept few animals and didn't have any children. They put up plenty of hay for the few animals they had, and then extra, reasoning that if the other families had too many animals to feed, they could either buy hay or sell the animals, and either way the Brooks family would get some gain from it. While they had the largest supply of firewood, it was still estimated to be only about 1/4 of what they would actually need to survive the harsh winters of the area. But other than that, they did quite well.

The Glenn's also did well, having acquired a good stock of food, though not enough hay for all the animals they had bought. The experts said they may have been able to make it through the winter, but the family tensions that had arisen might have made it extremely difficult.

The Clunes, however, were told that they would not have made it. They went through food very quickly, sold their horses to pay off the debt at the store, and didn't have nearly enough firewood to last. My own estimation says they might have lasted through about a month of winter with the firewood they chopped. However, they left it in rounds, not cutting it down into smaller pieces that would actually fit in their stove.

Gordon Clune disputed his evaluation. He claims that no matter what the experts said, he would have been able to make it. Unfortunately, claims and willpower alone are not enough. One can't make something true just by wishing hard enough, something which Gordon Clune still didn't seem to have learned once the whole thing was over.

Seeing the families return to modern times was interesting. All of the children seemed to agree, more or less, that the modern age had too much to do and was boring because of it. That's a sentiment I can agree with. All too often I end up sitting around, not doing anything and being bored out of my mind, all because of the sheer amount I can choose from. Do I read, watch TV, play video games, go online, write, go for a walk, go shopping, visit friends... the list goes on, and rather than doing something, I'll do nothing and not have a good time.

The adults seemed quite happy to get back to the modern world, though they expressed that they would miss the lifestyle and all they had worked for during those 5 months in Montana.

I wonder how many positive changes will come or have come about because of this experiment. Will they take more pride in what they have because they experienced a time of deprivation by modern standards? Will they work to keep fit and to keep on the muscle and keep off the fat, the way they were made to on the homestead? Will they enjoy more homemade meals? Will they find greater pleasure in physical labour? Will this spark an interest in history or farming or animal care?

I have to admit I would love to do something like this myself, though I also admit I'm not a very good candidate for it. My health requires access to modern medicines