If you don’t happen to be a fan of either reruns or soccer, the pickings on TV at the moment are pretty thin. We watched last week’s Formula 1 race in Austria, and we’ll be watching the one in Britain this coming weekend. Obviously we’ll be watching the matches where the U.S. is playing, but if you can’t figure out what a soccer off-sides is, and if you don’t have any skin in the game, watching all of them is … well … pretty pointless.
So what have we been doing instead? Streaming two diametrically opposed series—Downton Abbey on Peacock and Homestead Rescue on HBO-Max. The two shows couldn’t be more different.
Homestead Rescue features the Raney family—father, Marty, son, Matt, and daughter, Misty. They do more than just talk the talk. They also walk the walk. For the past forty-plus years the family has lived on homesteads located in the wilds of Alaska. Each year those three members of the family travel around the U.S. and Canada, too, helping other homesteaders whose dreams of living a self-sustaining liveseoff the grid are headed to certain disaster. Regardless of weather or other obstacles, the Raneys allow themselves exactly seven days to work their homesteading magic on each property.
When Bill first started watching episodes of that years ago, I thought everybody involved was … well … nuts. It seemed to me that many of the people who had decided to homestead had done so without the slightest idea of how to go about it, and it seemed to me that if the Raneys thought they could work miracles with those folks, they were as crazy as the people they were trying to help. But gradually the whole idea grew on me. Marty is the infrastructure guy. He’s all for saving falling-down barns, fixing impassable roadways, building bridges and dams where necessary, and making sure each family has a supply of potable water and/or access to electricity.
Son Matt is the protein provider. He makes sure livestock is safe, warm, and protected from predators. In the South where wild boars are a problem, he helps homesteaders learn to turn the enemy into a food source. Depending on where the homestead is located, he also teaches families how to hunt and process deer and fish. As for Misty? She’s the garden guru. She builds green houses and gardens where fruits and vegetables can grow and thrive in any weather or landscape, from treacherous Alaska freezes to the high and low desert temperatures of Arizona, New Mexico and Montana.
We had watched the series hit and miss for years, as new episodes and old ones showed up on network TV, but this is the first time we’ve watched the entire series, and now I find it downright inspirational. Marty is absolutely fearless. He pilots massive pieces of heavy equipment as though they’re ordinary tractors. He uses them to build roadways in seemingly impossible terrain and to dig down deep enough to tap into springs that can provide water for homesteads that were previously dry as dust. Matt teaches homesteaders that if they’re going to be self-sufficient, they need to have structures that keep their livestock warm and safe from predators, but that you also need to know how to process them to provide food. As for Misty? She shows people how a properly built green house can grow vegetables in an underground garden carved into a desert hillside or in a greenhouse in Alaska when it’s snowing outside.
Now that we’re watching the entire series in order, we’ve seen how the family carved a road up an impossible cliff to build their own homestead dream house only to have it burn to the ground a year or two later. In that case, we saw one of the homesteaders the Raneys were helping, comforting Marty when he broke down in tears from losing his own home. And I’m fascinated by what Marty calls “Homestead Hacks.” In one case, a small ranch in Arizona had a well with water in it, but the windmill wasn’t strong enough to pump it up to the surface. Marty took the windmill down, welded additions onto the windmill’s fans, and up came the water. When he was trying to make adobe bricks in New Mexico in the winter, it wasn’t working because the water in the wet cement would freeze and crumble the bricks before they dried. What did he do? He added anti-freeze to the mix.
Often, when a family needs help and there aren’t enough hands to get the job done, other homestead families, ones the Raneys helped in the past, turn up to help out. And don’t think the Raneys just look after the homesteads. They also look out for the people involved. In one case, the husband at a homestead two hours from the nearest medical facility suffered from serious seizures. The road between where they lived and the hospital was often blocked by fallen trees. The wife was terrified of using a chain saw, but Matt patiently taught her how to start one and cut the tree into small enough pieces that she could push them out of the way.
Misty often teaches the mothers and daughters involved how to make use of power tools. In the case of a homestead overrun with tumbleweeds, she turned tumble weeds into something like hay bales and used them as the bottom of a raised vegetable garden.
One of my mother’s favorite saying was “God helps those who help themselves.” If Evie had ever a chance to watch Homestead Rescue, she might have revised that to say, “God and the Raneys help those who help themselves.”
Okay, I get it. If you’re still reading, I’ve now gone on ATL about Homestead Rescue. (By the way, in our household, ATL stands for AT TEDIOUS LENGTH and means you’ve said too damned much!) When I started writing this, I had no idea about how much I was going to have to say. It looks to me as though this is already too long, so I’m afraid my review of Downton Abbey will have to wait.
As they used to say at the end of those old-time radio programs, “See you next week. Same time, same station.”
I’ve not watched any of the soccer games. I guess I’ve never understood it enough to get interested. I do enjoy baseball and football, but not soccer and hockey. Maybe if we had had children who were involved in it it would be different.
I have watched some episodes of Homestead Rescue but not enough. And lately I’ve not found much on TV interesting…so I read. I did like your review of the series, enough so I will take another look at it.
I’m still anticipating your new books.
Or……..Same Bat Time and Bat Channel
This was way toooo long. I am not a big fan of tv shows. Love books,including yours.
Keep on writing.
?
I stopped watching TV years ago Now I just buy DVD’s and watch movies I like over and over again, and, of course, I read. Sometimes over and over again. Never heard of Homestead Rescue, but I’ve always wondered about Downton Abbey. Looking forward to next weeks blog about it.
Blessing to you and Bill.
As we are of a similar age, try YouTube — I have found a couple of programs that are a little similar, one about a woman rancher in Wyoming ans a couple in Texas who live off-grid in rebuilt shipping containers.
Having grownup in Western NY, we moved to Montana.
Interesting and just long enough to make me want to watch these shows. Awaiting next week’s blog about Downton Abbey.
I’m not a sports fan at all and have not watched the games, just the highlights on the evening news.
I’ve been watching movies (old and new) on Netflix and Tubi, and enjoying Brit Box and Acorn – Fr. Brown, Death in Paradise, Murdoch.
Looking forward to the next season of The Lincoln Lawyer.
There’s so much more to life than sports.
I always enjoy your weekly posts. I was the presenter for the monthly book club at my 62+ activity center. I had volunteered to lead a discussion of Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley. I handed out a list of other books I recommend that I’ve read. On that list was The Walker Family series.
Way back in 1956 my oldest sister and family went to Alaska and homesteaded. What an adventurous soul! They had their house all built when it caught fire and burned to the ground! The family was safe and moved into Fairbanks. She stayed in Alaska the rest of her life, through floods, earthquakes and freezing temps. She loved her adopted state.
Judy, we don’t watch soccer simply because we don’t understand it. Frank loves any basketball game and, including women’s teams. We love Caitlin Ckark, so definitely try to catch all her games. Unbelievable the way the refs have missed such horrible fouls against her. It’s a wonder she hasn’t been permanently maimed yet
We do watch some of the Homestead shows. So interesting, although those must be some really touch folks to go through all they do to maintain a place to live.
Have never seen an episode of Downton Abbey. Loved the new Matlock series with Kathy Bates. Looking forward to the new season of that. Sometimes I watch “Ghosts” or “Elsbeth”, which neither one is on the list of shows for Frank’s interest. We contiue to watch the movie, “Tombstone”, the one with Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday, at least 3 or 4 times a week.
I love your books, Judy, and would like to try some other authors, too, but I rarely have time. Always make time for the daily crossword and sudoku puzzles in the newspaper. As you know very well, when your husband requires a lot of care & attention, your leisure time is limited. Not complaining. Just stating a fact.
Jack Benny used to say, “We’re a little late, so Goodnight, folks.”
I’m sorry to say I’ve never watched either series but the Homestead one sounds very interesting.
You gave me new insight to the Raneys and the people they help. I too have watched this show hit and miss, but now I will give this program another look. We are in an entertainment drought right now because of soccer, and before that NHL and the NBA playoffs. So, something “new” will be refreshing.
BTW, I too have been rewatching Downton Abbey from the beginning. Such a magnificently done program – and this comes from someone who has never been a fan of Victorian pieces. But Downton is in a class all its own
Homestead Rescue is one of my favorites…the whole Rainey family are heros! As someone else said, keep on writing, we’ll keep on reading.
Concise county native
I so love and enjoy your blog, and books, of course. Thank you for taking the time to share.
Such an enjoyable read! I’ve never seen the show but it sounds good. I look forward to next week hearing about Downton Abby which I’ve never watched either. And as Robin used to say see ya next week. Same Bat time ,Same Bat channel 😉
Homestead Rescue is one of my favorites, too. I like it for a lot of ideas I can incorporate into my “homestead”, here in your old “stomping grounds” of southern Cochise County. One of my favorites was building a “walipini” – a greenhouse built partially underground- because i’ve lost 2 greenhouses in back-to-back years because of the winds here (yes, they WERE anchored down, but the winds were so forceful, they ripped the anchoring stakes out of the ground.)
Looking forward to reading the Downton Abby review.