Here's what troubled me. It looks like conditions were harder for the reenactors than for the typical real-life homesteader. Even if it was typical for Montana, Montana wasn't typical of the American west. Why didn't they choose to hold the experiment in, say, Kansas, where the winters are shorter and milder, there is more rainfall, and the land is more fertile? Probably because Kansas is already cultivated from one end to the other; there is no sod left to bust (except on prairie preserves). And why is there still a lot of uncultivated land in Montana? Because that land is still economically marginal. In other words, it's nearly worthless as farmland. If it weren't worthless, it would have had farmers on it already.

But I missed the first hour or so of the series. Did they give some kind of explanation there that I missed?