Q & A with Don Wood

A very special thanks to Don Wood of Colonial House, without whom this section would not be possible. Don generously gave his time to answer a staggering amount of questions - on behalf of all Colonial House fans I would like to say thanks for answering our questions!



Why did you sign up for the show?

Did PBS provide a stipend?

Has the experience changed your work or personal life?

What was the ship that transported the group to the colony?

The shallop was always rowed, did she sail?

Did the colonists make the tools or were they supplied?

Hunting proved to be unsuccessful in the colony, were guns not allowed?

Who cooked for the Freemen?

How did the colonists deal with hygiene?

Did the colonists have help or receive advice during the project?

Did anyone have knowledge of medicinal plants and the abundant natural resources that were available?

Did any of the production crew become friends with the colonists?

Where did the camera crew eat?

Conflicts in the Colony.

The Sabbath.

Are there any hard feelings among the participants after hearing what has been said during the project and from interviews?

Do you feel that the colony accomplished more under the leadership of Donald Heinz or Jeff Wyers?

How are Amy and Bethany Wyers doing?







What inspired you to become a participant in Colonial House? You mentioned on the show that you signed up as a joke - how did you decide to go through with it?

DW: Like probably anyone at any given point in time, leaving certain parts of my life behind certainly seemed attractive, though I knew they would all be there when I got back. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to choose which things to leave and which to keep. Also, most people in NYC are desperate to do anything to get the heck out of here for the summer!
I did indeed sign up as a joke, and actually turned the show down at one point. Lucky for me, Sallie Clement met with me and talked me into it. She made it sound much harder than anyone else had, and for some reason that made me get all competitive about it, like "Oh yeah? Well I'll show you. Sign me up for that!"



Did PBS provide a stipend to cover rent (basic expenses?) during the months of the project?

DW: We did receive a small stipend from Wall-to-Wall Productions. One of the reasons I originally turned the show down was the fact that I was walking away from some good carpentry jobs that summer. I think too the young ones (Paul, Dom, Julia, Jonathan, etc.) the money thing was probably not such a big deal, but the older folks (cough, cough) all took a little hit, financially. As a carpenter, I was able to just not take any jobs for that period of time. I was very lucky with the timing. If it had started a month earlier I couldn't have done it. It's the kind of experience you can't buy for almost any amount of money, though.



Has the experience changed your work or personal life?

DW: I definitely feel like it has changed my perspective on life and work. One of the things that is hard is to keep those lessons alive in my behavior and attitude. When I first got off the colony I was astonished at how much trash it was possible for one man to produce in a day and was really good about refilling things..., the whole recycling trip. Trying to keep from falling completely back in to buy-use-toss mode is hard. Same with attitudes about people and ways of dealing with them. Trying to stay in a kind of "High Forgiveness" mode is pretty damn hard while you're commuting through a big city. Or anywhere, I suppose. It is so easy just to avoid people and issues that are difficult, leaving you walking around with all these unresolved petty conflicts. (begin lighting incense and listening to wind chimes...now...)



What was the ship that transported the group to the colony? How long was everyone aboard?

DW: The ship we sailed there on is a replica of the Nina, which is, of course, part of an earlier period in our history. I guess you can't exactly shop for the exact historically accurate sailing ship... The men were on the boat for about 20 hours, I guess and the women, 36 or so.
The water was 48 degrees. And yes, that is bone-chilling cold. You can kind of see it in the reactions of people jumping in, though you did get tougher about it as the summer went on. Especially when the cameras are on, haha.



The shallop had mast and leeboards, yet she always was rowed while on camera. Did she have the ability to sail?

DW: The shallop was indeed rigged for sail a few times, unfortunately, the wind came straight down the very narrow inlet we were on and tacking up and out was impossible, at least for a crew with our experience: zero. As they became more and more desperate to get a shot of us catching a fish, they loosened some of the insurance- driven limits on where we could take the shallop, and we did get her out into some more open water and sail her a couple of times. That was alot of fun. I think they do show us breaking out the forsail to help us row back. Usually, we were just rowing from one "maybe here" fishing spot to the next. Not so fun.



Did the colonists make the tools or were they supplied?

DW: The axe heads were forged in England. Not just for us, they were bought by production. We didn't have a blacksmith, which was a bummer. After we got talking to each other, we realized that almost every man on the project had asked to be the blacksmith when they were cast. We did have a bunch of stuff made for us by the blacksmiths at Plimoth.



Hunting proved to be unsuccessful in the colony, were guns not allowed?

DW: We did hunt with the bows, without much luck. Insurance was an issue with guns, but they brought a guy in and we did get to do a couple of hunting days with muskets. Not everyone went, and I was not in on those trips. I was afraid I'd get a good opportunity, in which case you either screw up and miss, or kill something, neither of which sounded too appealing. The gun expert told us our bows were much more accurate than a musket anyway. John Vorhees did shoot a porcupine with a bow and we ate that, but there was very little meat on it, in the end.



Did the women make most of the meals or did the freemen try their hand at it too?

DW: How the Freemen were going to eat and where we did eat was a constantly changing and controversial situation. There were endless discussions on it. Eventually, when Clare showed up, she and Bethany offered to cook for us full time (and get out of the crowded kitchen at the Governors House), and that was amazing. It really made a difference being out at work and knowing that there was someone in your house looking out for you and your stomach. It was very humbling and motivating, knowing they were working so hard on our behalf in a house with no hearth. It was basically like living inside Weber Grill. It's too bad they never showed that.

We did feed ourselves probably an average of twice a week, and every breakfast. It changed a lot during the show, as you can probably tell. In general the men did not help cook. Cooking is a full, and I mean FULL time job. Whoever is making the meal is not doing anything else, so when all the work is physical, it makes sense to break the labor down along gender lines, I guess. It was a real partnership, I think.



How did the colonists deal with hygiene?

DW: Everyone bathed according to their own schedule. I jumped in the ocean about once a week. Dominick went every day. We would wipe ourselves down with wet cloths for the day-to-day stuff. We originally used licorice branches to brush our teeth, which worked pretty well. Soot or something started to collect in the tiny cracks in our teeth, however, slowly turning our teeth black. When the production team couldn't be sure-after talking to dentists-if it would be permanent, we were given toothbrushes.



Did the colonists have help or receive advice during the project?

DW: We were filmed, at the beginning, 12 hours a day, 4 days a week. That went up to 5 or 6 days toward the end. The production team was our babysitter and they were in constant contact with experts in Plimoth Plantation as well as around the country and even the UK. It was definitely intense.



Did anyone have knowledge of medicinal plants and the abundant natural resources that were available?

DW: We did indeed eat a lot of native plants. Goose Tounge Grass was a huge staple and, along with Sheepshead (???), one of our only greens. We had a ton of blueberries once they came in and did eat a lot of mussels as well. They had an adviser, David Craven, that was pretty much one of the most amazing men I have ever met. He is a farmer/lobsterman/game warden and he took us on a couple of walks through the countryside just pointing out what we could eat, use for medicine, get poisoned by, etc.



Did any of the production crew become friends with the colonists during or after the show?

DW: We did indeed become very good friends with the camera crew. There was just one crew (the same that did Frontier House), which was key. Because of that, they did become just like "another colonist" which made us really comfortable. Also, they learned all of our routines and how we worked, which allowed them to be right next to or behind us and know just when to move to get out of our way as we turned or got up. They were amazing and man, the place looks gorgeous. It's kind of funny to see it and say to yourself "Man, our house didn't look that nice when we were sitting in it."



What and where did the camera crew eat?

DW: The camera crew ate regular food in a kind of crude trailer-home/shed that served as their headquarters, about 1/2 mile from the colony. They were required to keep all that out of our vision, though every once in a while when they were at a remote location, you would see a PA bringing them plastic bags containing precious styrofoam food containers! Jealousy.



It seems as though the show focused mostly on the differences and conflicts in the colony instead of the daily routines and relationships of the colonists. Is that an accurate depiction of the colony? Do you keep in contact with everyone?

DW: Those are our exact problems with the show. That the soap opera stuff drowned out much of the "community besides all the soap opera" stuff. That and the day- to day existence stuff that would have been more educational than who's sleeping in which house. But what can you do? Not everyone gets along now, but 90% of us do, to varying degrees, and we do keep in contact.

It seemed like a lot of 21st century ideals and convictions clashed with the 17th century Puritan life, especially regarding Sabbath attendance. How did you feel about the situation?

DW: This is a hard one to answer. I think the thing to remember is that the project itself is an exercise in compromise between the need for a pure experiment and the realities of 21st century life. Everyone went in very gung ho about the project and its purity, though I do feel a few severely underestimated the physical demands. But soon you realize that nothing is really "pure" about it. We were not allowed to hunt or fish with nets or trap lobster, all things that would have been a huge part of their existence. We knew very early on that fishing the way we were doing it was not going to work, but they still needed shots of it, so out in the boat we would go. After a few instances like this, I think it becomes easy for a colonist to say, "Well, why can't a compromise break my way?". I think this was the perspective of many people on the Sabbath. Everyone went for the first weeks, singing the songs and listening to the prayers and bible readings. I can only speak for myself when I say that it became increasingly spiritually uncomfortable to be involved in a religious service I did not believe in when right next to me were a lot of people who hold it as the most important part of their life. I think we felt that we had given the project hours of footage to work with in showing a Sabbath, and that as long as we didn't disrupt the proceedings, then we weren't taking anything away from the show. We're talking about an event that began almost two months in to the project.



Are there any hard feelings among the participants after hearing what has been said during the project and from interviews?

DW: I don't know for sure. If there is anything along those lines, I think it would be between Jonathan and the Heinz's, as they didn't seem to play very straight with each other. On the other hand, I think they each expected as much from the other. With everyone jammed together in such a small space for such a long time, any problems you had with people generally came out in the open pretty darn quick. I think Dom was a bit taken aback by something I said on the diary cam. But it was nothing I had not said to him in person. In fact we are still very good friends despite having so many points on which we are exactly opposite. He was in NYC to watch the series and we'd been hanging out, getting into some of the same arguements! It's much funnier now though. It would be hard to hide anything about yourself in that environment for that length of time, so I don't think anyone on the Colony is too surprised by the revelations others have made. I think some of the people MAKING the revelations might be a bit surprised by how they are being percieved by the audience (as evidenced by their vilification on message boards, etc.).



Do you feel that the colony accomplished more under the leadership of Donald Heinz or Jeff Wyers?

DW: He and Heinz were both different, obviously, but both brought strengths to bear on a very difficult job. Jeff was better with people, Don was better at fighting the production company on our behalf. In the end, it was the colony itself as a sort of organic entity, that decided to turn things around and get moving. This largely came from the new colonists, like Jeff and Craig, who are sadly underrepresented in the finished product. Not to take anything away from Jack, he worked like a trooper and brought a great attitude to the colony, but the show kind of makes it seem like he came in and kicked some tails and got things moving, which is a bit misleading. If the colony hadn't decided to move in that direction prior to his coming, he would have been doomed, because at that point we had been there so long, and were so hardened, no boot in the world would have been big enough to kick us into gear. Jack was/is a consumate dealmaker, and was able to pull off a very difficult job; trying to redirect Don Heinz and keep peace on the Council and Colony.



The Wyer's reuniting was a very emotional scene, but news of a potential hospitalization for Amy in Texas required them to leave the colony and return to the 21st century. How are Amy and Bethany doing now?

DW: It was emotional seeing them reunited. And they are an incredible, very tightly knit family. They all came up to visit me in my apartment a few months ago and it was CH all over again, people spread out all over the floor. Bethany is doing really well, going to school and all that young person stuff. Amy Wyers is doing really well too, and her medical problems are pretty much behind her.