Frontier House, Episode 4: Survival

Mother Nature turns Spring into another homesteader endurance test. A driving thunderstorm lashes the families’ gardens with hail and rain. The Clunes race to spread sheets over their vulnerable plants. Gordon says, “God’s country’s like a two-edged sword. It’s beautiful, but it could also be a hell.”

It’s now seven weeks into the project. We check in on newlyweds Nate and Kristen Brooks, first. The narrator says that they have been left alone for a week to enjoy a homestead honeymoon. (I guess that means no butt-crack-cam in the boudoir.) Apparently, the glow has worn off a little after a week on the frontier. A rooster’s crow awakens the Brooks. Kristen flings out a sleepy arm and asks Nate if he’s gonna “do the chicken.” Kristen explains that she was in a daze for a week after the wedding, trying to adapt “out here.” “It’s cold. I’m putting on dirty clothes – it’s just so depressing to put on crusty socks. It’s gross!”

We see Kristen outside at a worktable, demonstrating her new-found cooking skills. Laughing uproariously, she says “I have been out here for an hour and I have created this.” She shows off a plate of burnt malformed pancakes. Holding up two glass jars, she shrieks, “Baking powder and baking soda – who the bleep knows what these things do!?”

The Clunes receive their food order from Hop Sing’s mercantile. The narrator ominously informs us that “Now they have to settle their bill.” The kids carry in giant wheels of cheese and sacks of provisions. Adrienne jokes about not shopping when you’re hungry. They have used up all their credit at the store and are $38 in debt. Gordon sells the mare and foal to storekeeper Lee to settle his bill. The narrator is still not happy, because “horses are vital for transportation and could be the Clunes’ biggest asset.”

More bad statistics. The big goal of this project is not only for the homesteaders to establish themselves on their claims and prosper in the summer months, but to be able to survive the coming winter with adequate food and shelter for themselves and their livestock. Hypothetically, of course. The Frontier House project lasts only from May to September. At the end, experts will determine which families “survive” and who are the greenhorn losers who would be sent packing if they were actual homesteaders.

The narrator scolds that at the rate the homesteaders are going, Hop Sing may own all of their livestock and even their cabins. Nearly two-thirds of homesteaders didn’t last the five years required to earn their claims, she says.

Romantic difficulty #7 (continuing from episode 3). Mark Glenn is singing “fifty ways to leave your lover,” while building a chicken coop. Raising chickens is the Glenn’s latest project to earn extra income. Mark explains his approach. “She designed it – told me how she thought she’d want it. So I just built it that way. It’s easier that way – you absolve yourself of any blame or anything. I’m just a worker.” Karen comes up behind him and says it looks good. She crouches down and says she’s looking for that Alice in Wonderland effect, the “wee door.” Mark peevishly snaps at her that he doesn’t have time for that. When he sets a plank on the roof, Karen informs him that the roof won’t work that way. When Mark drops the plank in frustration, Karen turns and mugs to the camera as he stalks off. “It took him all day to build a floor yesterday.” She imitates a gruff man’s voice, “Don’t need no help,” then gives us her big grin. “OK!” Daughter Erinn sniggers next to her. They both roll their eyes when Mark returns.

The Glenns are convinced that the way to economic stability is through livestock. The more the better. In addition to their two dairy cows, two calves, two horses and 15 chickens, they add five sheep and a pig. Mark says it’s important to have animals they could turn into food if they needed to. The Glenns take the Frontier House mandate of “thou shalt survive 1880-style” very seriously. “Without our livestock, we’re dead. I don’t see how a homesteader could survive out here without horses and at least a cow,” says Karen.

Her neighbors don’t agree. The Brooks approach is to focus on smaller animals – 15 chickens and six sheep. They have no horses or cows. With no children to feed, their need for dairy products is minimal. Kristen says that she’s not an animal person, but that you need to be an animal person out there because you’ve got nothing else to do. “I like the lambs; I don’t like the sheep.” She says their approach is the biggest reward for the least amount of work. Nate’s philosophy is, “If you dabble in too many things that are unsuccessful, then you’re sent home packing.” He says that Kristen’s becoming a sheep handler is one of the ways she is coming to terms with her frontier life.

The Brooks’ camcorder shows us Kristen coming to terms with her “natural” self. “Oh My God, I look so UGLY!” she wails as she examines her bushy eyebrows. “It’s just so many levels of it being hard. My breath right now is atrocious. I always feel greasy. I always feel like I’ve got a ring of zits right around my hairline. I feel stinky, reeky, greasy and there’s no way to get cute!” In truth, she does look cute. In a freckle-faced twelve-year-old way with her hair in braids, too. We see Kristen washing her hair in ice-cold mountain spring water that’s funneled through a trough. After it dries to a thick, curly mop, she complains that it doesn’t ever feel really clean -- there’s always a soap residue.

The narrator informs us that homesteaders who invested in sheep were lucky; the brutal winter of 1886 killed most of the cattle. By 1900, Montana was the number one wool-producing state. Because Montana winters last six months, the homesteaders need to harvest their hay now to have enough to feed their livestock. With eleven large herbivores, the Glenns need to get a move on. The burden of what they have undertaken starts to sink in as Mark and Karen begin the task of scything their grassy meadow. “With four large animals, why even start? We just can’t reach that goal,” she admits. Mark is equally despondent. “If we can’t feed our animals, we can’t keep our animals. If we don’t have our animals, we won’t make it anyway.”

Nate Brooks, however, is relaxed and confident. He imitates the sound of a power mower as he swings his scythe back and forth. He says they need far less hay for their sheep, but are harvesting extra because it’s a “sought-after commodity.” He predicts that the Glenns won’t have enough to keep their large number of livestock fed, and anticipates selling them hay or buying their animals at a deep discount.

Crisis # 3. Anxiety rides the Glenns hard. Mark says he has the paranoia not to fail, and works every moment from “when the light comes on to the moment it goes out.” We see a beautiful vista of smoky-blue mountains behind a green meadow. The Clunes are panicking because their major livestock investment, 35 chickens, has only yielded one egg. The hapless Clunes believe that they have to inspect the hens’ “vent” to see what the problem is. We hear the Clune girls shriek “Someone has to do it!” They’re trying to make little brother Conor be the someone. The girls finally grab hold of the hen. The camcorder focuses on the upended chicken, which fights off the poking fingers in a flurry of squeals and flying feathers.

High drama on the frontier. Gordon Clune marches through the yard, drumming on a pail. “Hear ye; hear ye. Catherine Howard shall be executed by the decree of the King. Off with her head!” They’re tired of poultry that won’t put out and decide to put some protein on the table. Gordon cuts the hilarity short when he’s ready to do the deed. He tells the Clune kids “Don’t laugh. This is not a funny thing,” as Henry VIII’s latest victim meets her executioner. The end result is a delectable roast chicken and stuffing dinner.

The Clunes start cutting hay for their horse and milk cow. Out in the full heat of the day, Gordon starts feeling dizzy and weak. “I went to hell for a week and a half. I couldn’t pick up anything. My joints ached. I couldn’t even walk over to the Glenns without my back killing me. I was losing weight after we bought a ton of supplies.” Suspicious of his homesteader diet, Gordon decides to check out the other men to see how their bodies are faring. After apply his tape measure, he discovers that their waists have shrunk and their shoulders gained bulk. “I’m in the best shape I’ve been in 20 years,” attests Mark Glenn. The narrator tells us that all the frontier men have lost between 25 and 30 lbs. They now weigh close to the average for men in the 1860s.

Gordon Clune is not feeling so robust. He checks his weight on a modern scale. He’s gone from 180 lbs to 147 lbs. “My thighs are half the size they used to be. I’m a shadow of what I used to be,” he laments. He narrows in on the lack of protein in his diet. When Karen Glenn hears of Gordon’s weight loss concerns, she responds with her usual impatience. “If protein source is a concern and we have milk (shrug) drink the milk. It doesn’t have to be a protein source from an animal.” She mocks a man’s deep voice, “It’s gotta be red meat!” She goes on to explain, “You can ask any nutritionalist (sic).”

The intrepid Clunes find an alternate source of protein. While haying with son Justin, Gordon uncovers and kills a rattlesnake. Wife Adrienne is grossed out by the mere presence of the snake, so daughter Aine steps in as cook. She fries up the snake in handy plate-sized portions. Gordon is more than happy to have snake on the menu. He says that a steady diet of beans is wrecking havoc on his digestive system and he needs a change.

Crisis of Crises. On Friday, the 13th of July, the Clunes finally crack, and make a break for civilization. In a desperate attempt to obtain protein for scarecrow-thin husband Gordon, Adrienne takes the kids to a local farmer’s market to trade her baked goods for red meat. “We’re not escaping. We just went out to go trading. I’m doing this out of desperation. I have a husband at home who is fading away.” The kids flagrantly violate another Frontier House rule by watching MTV while they’re at the market. Daughter Aine grouses that it wasn’t fair they got blamed for watching TV, because it was only for two minutes and it “wasn’t even worth watching.” When Adrienne shows the kids the elk steak and deerburgers she got in trade, they all cheer, then whine that they want to stay. Tracy Clune tells the camera that she hoped they’d get kicked off, so “no one’s gonna be mad at us for quitting.”

Back home, Gordon Clune gives thanks at the dinner table for a family “who comes out of nowhere to put food on the table.” In addition to the meat, Adrienne traded for potatoes, carrots and onions, which wouldn’t be part of a homesteader’s diet until the end of the summer.

Glenn Tirade #2. “They should’ve kept walking that day and just got the hell out of here!” says Mark Glenn. Kristen Brooks says it’s funny how badly everyone in the project wanted to be on the show. “We begged and we got what we wanted, and why would you want to wreck that?” Gordon says they had no choice but to break the rules. “Do what you need to survive – that’s the very spirit of what’s going on here.”

To assuage Gordon’s health concerns, Dr. Ace Walker, a consulting physician with the U.S. Marine Corps, pays a call. His diagnosis is dehydration, which affects fluid balance and the muscles’ ability to function. Dr. Walker says he was surprised at how fit Gordon was. He tells Gordon he’s looking “lean and mean.” He says Gordon was in the overweight category when the project started, and is now in the “healthy-lean” category.

The Clunes promise to stop dealing with modern neighbors, and restrict their trade to those in the Frontier House project. The Brooks come by with the valuable commodity of chopped firewood, in exchange for milk and Adrienne’s baked goods. The Clune table is spread with an assortment of raisin scones, deep-dish apple pie, lattice-topped peach pie, and round loaves of oatmeal bread, the equal of anything in a professional bakery. (Adrienne Clune has picked up the peculiar American pronunciation of scone. Instead of pronouncing it to rhyme with spawn, she uses the long O, like “stone.”) Nate and Gordon briefly discuss the monetary value of the baked goods, settling on 65 cents for the peach pie. “I don’t care how much it is – the peach pie’s comin’ home,” jokes Nate.

The narrator tells us that the families can also trade with Hop Sing Ying mercantile, which “serves farmers and workers from the mines.” Families are invited to sell butter, eggs and baked goods. The Clune chickens are now producing enough eggs to sell. The problem lay (no pun intended) in the chicken to feed ratio. Now that the hens are getting enough to eat, they’re able to produce. Justin Clune fills up a gargantuan egg crate. He says he totally turned the egg-laying situation around. From just one egg a day, the chickens are producing six dozen.

The Brooks are also looking to boost their income through livestock. In keeping with their biggest reward/least work philosophy, they acquire two goats, who will provide milk for goat cheese. Kristen experiments with various ingredients to curdle the milk, first using the proven agent of vinegar, then expanding to baking soda, with drastic results. The chevré boils up and over the top of the pan, in what Kristen calls a “total science experiment.” “Oh shit! Goat cheese gone bad,” she exclaims. We see the homesteader’s ice box, which is built into the cold waters of the mountain creek.

Back to the rant. The Glenns are suffering from high anxiety. “We have high odds of failure simply because we have livestock. We have done everything authentic, instead of succeeding by …” Here Karen stops to think of the appropriate phrase, when daughter Erinn helpfully pipes up. “Cheating!” Mom has trained her well. Karen’s view is that they’re being honest and righteous, and therefore will survive the winter. “Thirty percent wouldn’t have made it – that means one of these families. We’ve all done the math (shrugs matter-of-factly) one family’s gonna make it and two are gonna fail.” It’s a winner-takes-all mentality, with the prize going to the most deserving, which would be them. And if there’s one real winner, there must be an unworthy loser, right? That would be the Clunes, the Glenns’ arch-nemesis, and standard-bearer for all cunning high-society fakers. A very grizzled Mark Glenn hops on the bandwagon. He declares that the Clunes would never make it through the winter. “They’re about out of money. They have no animals(?) They haven’t changed, and they haven’t grown from this experience.”

Kristen Brooks gives her perspective. “I’d pictured getting along more; I’d pictured that we’d all be this great happy community that bonded. There’s a lot of funny survival stuff that goes on. It’s probably what it really was like in 1883.”

Paradox #2. Karen strikes a deal with storekeeper Lee to wash miners’ laundry for extra money. Obviously feeling oppressed and overworked, Karen takes out her angst on a handy target. “It’s honest work – it’s good work – it’s probably considered lowly work by some of my more blueblood lady friends.” (Yeah, Adrienne will invite you over to share the genteel experience of scrubbing out the henhouse.) Karen goes on to say that she’s OK with it as long as it’s not “illegal or immoral.”

Which leads us right into … Crisis # 5. In a hilarious turnabout of the old lawless hillbilly neighbors vs. the holier-than-thou gentry, the “blueblood” Clunes have chosen a genuine custom-designed copper-plated still as their luxury – oops – I mean, personal period item. The still has been made to Gordon’s specifications by his manufacturing company. He has it installed in the old family tent, which has been re-christened the “Clune Bar.” Gordon has researched the era for suitable money-making projects. He says that a still was worth more money in 1883 than 160 acres of land. He puts the boys to work picking chokecherries, which he boils into mash and leaves to ferment. The sugar in the cherries will turn to alcohol. Adrienne sings an Irish ballad about “the excise man” as they mash the berries. The narrator tells us that the Clunes can’t afford a liquor license so Gordon is breaking the law. The family bathtub is installed in the tent, and doubles as the fermentation vat and Gordon’s personal hot tub, from which he contemplates his empire. He demonstrates the mechanics of linking a tube from the still directly into his open mouth.

Summer in the mountains has settled into the kind of benevolent picturesque experience we all dream about. The Clunes enjoy a picnic in the meadow. Mark Glenn fantasizes about his mother coming to visit and “seeing her oldest boy wasn’t the loser she thought.” Issues, issues. Karen Glenn says they’ve made their homestead a wonderful little Garden of Eden. We see Karen, Erinn and Logan out riding their horses.

But then the narrator says that Montana always has a surprise in store. Only this time, it’s manmade. Montana cattle ranchers have the right of open range. They can, and do, drive their cattle where they see fit on the way to and from the summer pastures to the stockyards. It’s up to the farmers to keep the cattle off their property. Cattle rancher Ken Davenport is fixing to drive 222 pair (cows and calves) through the valley on August 1, which is only one week away. All hands pitch in to drive posts, and string barbed wire. The act of bounding his property results in an epiphany for Mark Glenn. He says he now understands what his place is. The event was a “wake up call,” setting limits, and helping to define his boundaries. When the Glenn fence is in place, Mark makes a last effort to harvest hay before the cattle arrive. He estimates that they will need four tons, and there is no way they can meet that goal. “I was not prepared. I was not successful. I would not make it through the first winter.”

Discord breaks out in the Glenn household again. Karen explains that they were having a “team” meeting about how they needed to pull together, get along, and show each other respect. Mark, who is not feeling like part of the team, protests that he doesn’t have to listen. Karen is upset that Mark is not buying into her family vision. She says that Mark wants to be the boss and she doesn’t know what he’s thinking. “I’m starting to realize some things about our marriage. There are certain things that I can’t fix about it. I can’t change the personalities of certain members of my family. I give 150% and get ridiculed,” says Mark.

Here come the cattle. They arrive at the Clune homestead first. Gordon waves them on, pointing out where the Glenn homestead lies. Mark Glenn admires the parade from behind his fence. “These are the bad boys.” Unfortunately, the Glenns’ sturdy fence fails to keep out the predations of their own livestock. Their sheep break into the garden and devour the vegetables. Karen blames Mark, accusing him of letting the sheep out and not watching them. Mark yells back, and Karen accuses him of whining. “Quit crying – you’re in the wrong.” When he denies letting them out, she calls him an asshole. Since blunt denial hasn’t worked, Mark sinks into genuine whining. “I’m starvin’ to death because all you do is warsh.” This is Karen’s cue to call Mark a “damn poor pitiful victim.” As a last resort, they utter the worst possible insult, calling each other “Gordon Clune.” (You’re so Gordon Clune – No, YOU are!)

The real Gordon Clune is contentedly celebrating his first vintage. He experiments by letting the chickens taste some of the first batch, saying that it’s Friday night and they deserve a break. He’s unperturbed by the Glenns’ allegations that he’s involving his children in nefarious activities. “It’s knowledge – it’s a good knowledge.” He says that it’s a learning experience for the kids and they will have “respect for the product.” He takes an experimental swig. “Who turned out the lights?”

Karen Glenn is thunderstruck when she learns that the Clunes have set up a still on their property. She muses about what her preacher and her Sunday school might be thinking. “I told everybody from Tennessee I can hold my head high and know we did everything morally right, legally right, and by our Christian faith right.” (She says all this with the same big grin she always uses when delivering self-righteous pronouncements and snide insults.)

Gordon remains unruffled by the Glenns’ ire. He says that competition is not family vs. family; it’s family vs. nature. “They’re preoccupied with fair play. Karen just spews a lot of foul things and a lot of accusations out of her mouth. She’s had diarrhea of the mouth ever since she’s been here. I avoid her as much as possible.”

Kristen Brooks responds to the fracas by saying that it was romantic to marry Nate, but once she got out there, it wasn’t so romantic.

Ying Ming Lee agrees to market Gordon’s moonshine. His illegal liquor earns him $25 – about 2 months’ wages in 1883. The family sings The Excise Man again in celebration when Gordon brings home his earnings. They sit down to a tasty dinner of what looks like roast pork and greens. Adrienne and Gordon sample their first vintage.

The show ends with Mark Glenn explaining his newfound perspective on life. “I let somebody else call the shots. I’m pretty much gonna have to go my own way with or without her. I don’t have a job when I go back. My marriage is probably over with. So, who’s lost more out here – me. Who’s got more out of this than anybody else – I think I have. I’ve found me.” He says that he’s discovered himself because he’s learned to detach through the experience of living on his homestead. “I really thought I was in 1883; I really did.” He imagines himself the winner in the Frontier House game, and fantasizes being told he “would’ve made it.”

Next installment: School’s In and The Final Reckoning.

Melinda Smith is a technical illustrator and writer with a background in graphic arts. She and her family live in Cincinnati, Ohio. can be reached at tremme@eudoramail.com.

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