Texas Ranch House... this May

I got curious and did a little web digging... it occurred to me that
this spring we'd be due for PBS to air another "House" reality series,
and sure enough, the next one is "Texas Ranch House", airing the first
week of May 2006. It's supposed to be a real-life 1860s Texas cattle

wdstarr...

Texas in the 1860s, eh? First half of the decade or second? and
either way I wonder if they'll have any black participants.

Tony Calguire...

1867. Here's some background from the website.

The latest and most ambitious experiment in living history from the
makers of Frontier House and Colonial House is TEXAS RANCH HOUSE. In
TEXAS RANCH HOUSE we send a group of modern-day people back to the year
1867. It is the era of Western expansion, a time of rounding up and
branding free-roaming cattle. It is a time of taming wild horses and
sleeping under the stars. But Texas 1867 is also a time of hard living -
long cattle drives, endless, punishing days in the saddle, chowing down
on pork and beans, and surviving lonely nights out on the plains.

TEXAS RANCH HOUSE will allow you to follow in the footsteps of the
visionary trailblazers of this time, men and women who initiated new
industries, forged great wealth and created a new mythic heroism of the
West. Modern America was built on the ambition, grit and phenomenal
drive of these larger than life characters. Have you got what it takes
to join the experience? Could you survive and flourish at the TEXAS
RANCH HOUSE for four to five months?

Background
In the era of the open range, where millions of cattle roamed free, a
new idea of ranching as a business was budding in Texas. To meet the
demands of the burgeoning city populations, entrepreneurial ranchers,
with the help of highly skilled cowboys, seized upon the opportunity to
turn cattle into a national commodity by driving herds to distant
markets. Tejanos (native Texans of mixed Spanish and Mexican ancestry),
Anglo settlers, and newly freed African Americans were merging their
complex cultures, innovating industries, forging wealth. Texas ranches
were emerging - and with them the cowboys' and ranchers' way of life.

ranch.

Rich...

Will the people look like they bathe once a week, or will they sport
the latest Hollywood make-up and hairdoos?
-Rich

I'm going to make a prediction right now (so I'll be able to gloat when
I'm right)...

... One of the contestants will be a vegan who refuses to brand the
cattle, ride the horses, or otherwise "drive" the cattle in any way
(and the producers will let him/her get away with it).