Could You Survive the REAL Great Depression?

Survivor meets The Biggest Loser on the set of The Waltons.

Welcome!  This blog is my shameless pitch to sell you the concept for a new unscripted contest series, starring families who want the challenge and adventure of living on a family farm for a year, and will compete to make it through a 9 month spell managing a 40 acre Iowa farmstead.  

The twist?  We don't just take our contestants to Iowa - we take them back in time to virtual 1933, set them up with the period basics, and watch as they struggle to figure it all out!

Every episode will be an entertaining combo platter of engineering challenges, hygiene and fashion frustrations, inept cookery and hapless housekeeping.

Expect tension, bickering, and whiny meltdowns as our families compete to work their farm, grow and sell food, and tend their livestock.  They'll struggle through the surprising realities of the everyday life of just 75 years ago – with no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no modern appliances, no conditioning shampoo... and no fast food!  They'll learn how to milk cows and churn butter, plow a field and plant corn, butcher a hog and make sausage, and get a harvest in.

Our contestants will work, fumble, learn and achieve together.  They'll rediscover what it's like to share every family meal – to work hard on the land and build callouses and lean muscle – to compete like crazy to win a series of weekly challenges – to lose weight – to gain confidence – and to come together through shared experiences.

After 9 months of ups and downs, highs and lows, and some spectacular failures, the family who makes it over the finish line will cap their year by celebrating Harvest Home, gathered around the table to enjoy a meal they planted, raised, butchered, preserved, and harvested themselves.

It will be an epic journey, featuring fun, fights, laughter, tears, and triumph.  It conceive it as filling a niche in the space between the hardcore daredevil stunts of "Naked and Afraid," the self-betterment of "The Biggest Loser," how-to shows like "Martha Cooks" and "This Old House," and the crazy family antics of shows like "Our Little Family." 

Interested in the concept, and want a full treatment?  I'm on Twitter @RainCityPR and my email address is kirathomsencheek@gmail.com

Kira Thomsen-Cheek