A Work in Progress

The First Four Years, Laura Ingalls Wilder

If you are a Little House fan and perhaps watched the TV adaptation, and wondered about Laura Ingalls's "ever after" you can get a glimpse of her life in The First Four Years.  It is a slender book and picks up directly where These Happy Golden Years leave off.   The novel has an interesting history and a different feel to it than the other eight books.  It came with my boxed set, but for myself I think I will always consider the Little House books as beginning with Little House in the Big Woods and ending with These Happy Golden Years.  Those stories are told very much in the same spirit.  According to the introduction Laura Ingalls Wilder had penciled the story in three orange-covered school tablets like the other books.  She may have written this last Little House book in the 1940s but when her husband Almanzo died it's possible she "lost interest in revising and completing it for publication."  It was not published until the early 1970s after her death.  There is definitely a very different feel and tone to the storytelling this time out.

I thought it very interesting that in the story Laura distinguishes between being a pioneer girl and a farmer's daughter.  She is the former and has her doubts about the life of a farmer's wife.  Just before their marriage Almanzo built their little home for which she has much pride.  It's nicely proportioned and "cannily" furnished meeting all their needs.  She is especially delighted with the long narrow pantry, which is Almanzo's pride and labor of love for his new young wife.

"The pine floors of the front room and pantry were painted bright clean yellow.  The walls of all the house were white plaster, and the pine woodwork was satin-smooth and oiled and varnished in its natural color."

"It was a bright and shining little house and it was really all theirs, Laura thought.  It belonged to just Manly and her."

Almanzo's first appearance in the stories came all the way back in Farmer Boy when he was living with his family in New York. But it is in the Dakota Territories where he has come to take advantage of settling the land with his brother that he meets the Ingalls family and eventually begins courting Laura.  In every situation he shows himself immensely capable and now he is hoping to make a go of farming the land and raising the trees that will hopefully enable him to keep their property.  Of course we all know how precarious it is to live the life of a farmer.  They are reliant on cooperative weather and just how often does all go as hoped and planned.  And Laura is hesitant about this lifestyle.  She knows how fortunes can be reversed or lost all in the drop of a hat.  She shares her reservations with Manly, but ever the hopeful optimist he convinces her to give it three years and if they do not succeed he'll do whatever else she likes.  So what follows are the first four years of their marriage.

The story is filled with adventures but now of a very different sort.  Laura is a fine housekeeper, but all the things Ma did seemed so very easy.  Now it is nerve racking to have to cook for the threashers who come to the farm to help.  How mortifying to serve beans not quite cooked through or a pieplant pie without a spoonful of sugar added in under the crust.  And then there is the day a group of Indians come to her doors while she is alone and eye her horses in their stalls.  One even makes overtures and receives a hearty slap in return.

A new mowing machine makes life so much easier for Almanzo.  Even though it is not paid for outright a good crop will make the payment easy enough.  Except for a horrible hailstorm that flattens their wheat in a matter of moments.  Most worrisome for Laura is that the house is mortgaged.  She had no idea how much money was owed from the cost of building it.  But the arrival of their daughter Rose brings both happiness and maybe a little parental fear.  The familiar refrain becomes "the rich have their ice in the summer but the poor get theirs in the winter."If the planting, and the growing and the harvesting go well they can make a success of their lifestyle. 

So the question is what is success.  Those first four years are filled with happiness but equally with hardships. Lots of hardships.  Laura always remains the optimistic pioneer girl who can understand Manly's love of the land and its appeal. 

It's truly been quite a journey through these nine books of the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family.  From the little house in the big woods of Wisconsin all the way, albeit somewhat roundabout at times, to the Dakota Territories.  These stories are a real delight.  I will say that this last book is tinged with a feeling of melancholy.  To me it was palpable between the last book and this one.  The last book ends on such a happy optimistic note.  While this one does as well, there is a little something more that hovers just in the background. 

Somewhere in those intervening years between the publication of the last book and this one a more mature and worldly tone takes hold.  It is a woman of experience, and perhaps not all easy or happy, who has penned this last story.  I was just a little anxious after reading the first dozen pages or so as a cloud seemed to float above this little house in a way I hadn't seen before.  But it all ends well despite the hardships.  I will revisit the Ingalls and Wilder families again someday happy to relive their adventures.  Now I will take a break from the Prairie, though I did indulge in a YA book about the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder as well as two books of her letters home on travels that took place after her marriage.  I need a little time and distance before seeing her again as wife and mother rather than little Half-Pint.

These Happy Golden Years

If I was feeling a tad bit bereft upon finishing Little Town on the Prairie, I have to say I am feeling downright sad to have finished These Happy Golden Years.  They are happy years and of course the story ends on a most satisfying and happy note, but that is essentially the end of the story of the Ingalls family and their many adventures.  While I am now reading the last book, The First Four Years, it is somewhat different in tone, which I will explain in greater detail when I write about it.  At the end of These Happy Golden Years, Half-Pint is an eighteen-year-old young woman, earning money, betrothed and then married.  This series of books is so immensely endearing and they really do feel like a life lived (and lived well and happily), but so many changes occur in the last two or three books, it is a reminder of how time flies by and how the world changes and what growing up does to a person and a family.  Or maybe as the year winds quickly down, I am just feeling a little maudlin.

Both Mary and Laura left their childhoods, those years of simple work and simple pleasures, behind them several stories ago.  Mary is away at college, and will she ever permanently return?  Perhaps.  It is alluded at, yet she has a new life in Iowa where she is attending college and learning how to be self-sufficient despite being blind.  Laura is both still a schoolgirl and studying and going to school, but she has also earned her teacher's certificate and at the beginning of the book she has been offered her first teaching position.  And oh my, what an eye-opening experience is that. 

The world of these books is mostly idyllic, but every once in a while the reader is shown the harsher side of life on the prairie.  It was an opportunity for so many people to come west.  There was the possibility of starting a new life, a life of adventure and the possibility to build a new place to live and to have many acres of land.  There was a real freedom in coming west, but there was also a cost.  The weather was unreliable.  Winters might be long and harsh and quite deadly, and then there is the chance of losing crops and the livelihood and putting an entire family in danger.  Laura's first teaching position is not a happy one.  She has a small schoolhouse with few students, but she must live in an unhappy situation.  What happens when a husband brings his family west and his wife, so used to Eastern ways, finds the difficulties and the solitude too much?  Laura experiences some harrowing moments in this new environment.

What saves her, no, who saves her, is Almanzo Wilder.  It's a nod to Laura's humility and earnestness that she doesn't quite realize that she is being wooed by the young man.  She wishes more than anything when she is away that Pa will come and bring her home for the weekends, but it is too far to come and too hard for the horses.  But not so for a bachelor and fine horseman like Almanzo.  She never complains or lets on entirely of her unhappiness but they know and each week Almanzo comes for her--horse bells jingling each Friday announcing her reprieve--no matter how cold.  She is both ecstatic to go home but slightly mortified to think she is taking advantage of Almanzo, so one weekend she tells him he needn't come for her--she wouldn't go riding with him otherwise.  And then is mortified that she says so in such a direct way.

Part of the loveliness of this story is the gradual understanding by Laura of what sort of person Almanzo is and that she would indeed like to spend time with him.  And he is really her perfect match.  His passion and abilities are working with horses.  Not so very long ago Laura found herself galloping away on a horse bareback and it was exhilarating for her.  Not just once does Almanzo show up on her doorstep with a new pair of horses that need to be broken and Laura is a willing partner in his work and escapades.  Even while Ma is inwardly cringing and Pa just trustful enough of Almanzo's talents to keep the horses restrained and Laura safe.  She learns just how to carefully jump into his buggy between those wheels without tilting the seat and upsetting the horses.  And on more than one occasion (and with increasing deftness) she even takes the reins.  They are surely a match made in heaven.

So Laura is coming into her own--still learning and teaching and sewing.  She earns enough to keep Mary at school and is even able to help buy an organ for when Mary returns so she can practice her playing.  Carrie and Grace must help pick up the slack and Carrie comments that surely they can and are just old enough--Mary and Laura had already been helping out long before when they were little. 

Some moments of surprise for me--surely this is not the first book (though I think it is) where something akin to a tornado is experienced.  Laura is most decidedly not suffragette material but she balks at the idea of having to say "obey" (and Almanzo agrees) in a marriage ceremony.  The book covers not just one year but three.  Whereas Christmas holidays were always so special, they seem to be less so (maybe because Mary is not there to celebrate with the family?), but the Fourth of July is happily celebrated.  There is still hints of Ma's delicious meals--popcorn balls made with molasses, fresh bread and eggs and new potatoes, and just what exactly is a pieplant pie and what does a two-egg cake taste like anyway?

I don't want to give all the best bits away, though I don't think you need to have read the books to know how the story will end.  I will just end with one thing.  I had to smile when Laura had this conversation with Mary:

"I [Mary] am planning to write a book some day," she confided.  Then she laughed.  "But I planned to teach school, and you are doing that for me, so maybe you will write the book."

"I, write a book?" Laura hooted.  She said blithely, "I'm going to be an old maid schoolteacher, like Miss Wilder.  Write you own book!  What are you going to write about?"

Little Town on the Prairie

It's a little hard to get used to Laura as a young woman, but here she is in Little Town on the Prairie (how far the Ingalls family has come from the big woods of Wisconsin!)--fourteen years old, nearly finished with school, earning money by sewing in the summer months, becoming the "older" sister, and even catching the eye of a young man.  Still, even as she presses Ma to allow her to cut her hair so she has bangs, she still snaps out at the ever-trying Nellie Oleson!  She may well be becoming a proper young lady, but she still has a streak of the tomboy in her as well.

I'm convinced now that as a child I never read the whole series of Little House books.  I'm not sure that I ever got past Plum Creek, and surely I would have remembered that very long winter.  Laura remains always a school girl in my mind, but now she must take the lead--while Mary had always wished to be a school teacher, it falls to Laura to teach.  It's all the more important as Mary must have the chance to go to school in Iowa, so Laura is driven to help out.  These stories are charming and remain as fresh in the telling as when they were first written (or at least from my own youthful recollections of them) without feeling dated, but that thread of self-sufficiency and propriety flows throughout the stories.  I can see why they are classics and why parents would happily press them into the hands of their children.

"In two more years she would be sixteen, old enough to teach school.  If she studied hard and faithfully, and got a teacher's certificate, and then got a school to teach, she would be a real help to Pa and Ma.  Then she could begin to repay them for all that it had cost to provide for her since she was a baby.  Then surely, they could send Mary to college." 

The family remains in De Smet.  In winter they live in town and in summer they move out to the claim to grow their crops and work the land.  Finally there the family is properly settled and De Smet is growing up around them.  They may have not been as prepared in the last story to survive such a long, hard winter (barely managing), but now life is becoming somewhat easier.  It's not all hardship and difficulties.  As a matter of fact, the Ingalls family is flourishing somewhat.  When Laura takes a job (much to the chagrin of Ma as a proper young lady would wouldn't work in town) she is able to earn money, but more this is an eye opening experience for her in a couple of ways. 

"The more Laura saw of the town, the more she realized how well off her own family was.  That was because Pa had got a whole year's start ahead of the others.  He had broken sod last year.  Now they had the garden, the oatfield, and the second planting of corn was growing quite well in the sod."

She must also turn a 'blind ear' to some of the more colorful language of the men of the town  . . .  ahem.  As the town grows the newcomers must begin from scratch, as the Ingalls family begins to prosper.  Even Nellie Oleson must live out on a claim.  Her pride isn't wounded from having been set back, however, she is as odious as ever, and even though she would never admit it, she has a jealous streak running through her.  And she is always eager to show Laura in a bad light or make her life difficult.  When the new school teacher arrives, Almanzo Wilder's sister as a matter of fact, Nellie becomes her confidante and spins tales about Laura. 

I think the rivalry between the two girls was always more pronounced in the TV show, but Nellie makes herself a nuisance on more than one occasion.  She might be boastful of what she will accomplish, but it's usually--happily for the reader--Laura who takes the day.  What makes Laura such a sympathetic character is her ordinariness and modesty.  Sometimes she surprises herself by her accomplishments.  Though I am with Laura on the question of corsets--

"Her corsets were a sad affliction to her, from the time she put them on in the morning until she took them off at night.  But when girls pinned up their hair and wore skirts sown to their shoetops, they must wear corsets."

You know you are entering new ground when a beloved character, little Half-Pint, is now wearing corsets.  Part of me is shaking my head thinking no-let Laura continue frolicking in the fields barefoot or shimmying down branches over streams or racing on a horse bareback.  But then when Almanzo begins walking Laura home at night from the town's 'Literaries', life takes on a new hue, a new path that might be interesting in other ways.

So much happens in this story.  It is both exciting and bittersweet because there are only two books left to read and life for the Ingalls family and Laura in particular is changing quickly.  The cover shows school girls, but not for much longer.  Spoiler alert--though nothing I will be sharing is likely to be earth-shattering.  Mary does go away from home.  The illustration in the book shows quite a young woman--almost startling in her maturity.  The family is both happy yet a little bereft.  I mentioned the town Literaries--finally a little bit of culture is introduced.  You know the town is growing and prospering when they move from just a Main Street and a few families settling to being able to introduce evenings of music and literature.  The latest trends have even arrived--the Easter 'Thing' is to have calling cards, and then there is the confusion of Almanzo.  Why does Mr. Wilder show Laura so much attention?  She mistakenly thinks he is older--someone who would be part of her father's circle, perhaps, since he has his own claim--so why then does he pay her such attention?

And then the most surprising moment is at the end, which I won't give away now, but I am reading about the next path in Laura's life in These Happy Golden Years.  I should finish the book in the next day or so.  And then Laura's and the Ingalls's family story will be complete.  A happy sigh for me, but a little bit bereft as well I suspect.  And where will my own reading path take me next?

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder

"The cold lasted so long that it seemed it would never end."  Out of bed in the cold.  Daily meals of coarse brown bread.  Grind the wheat to make the bread.  Twist the hay as fast as they could.  Day after day after day.  Daily meals of coarse brown bread.  Grind the wheat.  Twist the hay.  All to keep fed and warm.  To survive an awful, and very long winter on the Dakota Plains.   The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder certainly takes a decided turn from the previous books of warmth and bounty.  I am chastened.  Remind me in January and February when I am sure to be complaining about the 'long winter' that long and winter are terms that are open for interpretation!

That 'new horizon' that I read about not so long ago is now home to the Ingalls family.  They set off from the banks of Plum Creek to stake their claim on a piece of land to call their own.  Their own  homestead out west, acres of land to farm but close enough to a town, or a burgeoning town that will soon grow by leaps and bounds, so that the girls could finally go to school.  Things were looking bright and cheery despite Mary's loss of sight.  They had built a sturdy shanty and Pa had a storefront in the little town, and while everything was new they were setting down roots.  A first year in a new place, and this town is as new as they come, is always a little spartan--hence the green pumpkin pie, but the Ingalls family has always done well.  They are frugal when need be and cautious but always reap the bounty of their efforts.  

Laura is nearly fourteen and must be useful in ways she has never had to be before.  Aside from the fact she is not a little girl anymore, she must take over tasks once Mary would have taken care of as the oldest.  Laura has always preferred to be outside.  She loves the wide open country and nature and being part of it.  She's not especially happy with the idea that since Mary is blind she will now need to be the one to become a teacher and does not look forward to going to school.  For now, though, she convinces Ma and Pa that she can help work in the fields--even though Ma notes that only "foreigners" allow women to work the fields.  But needs must and there is no one else to help Pa.  While Pa pitches the hay into the wagon Laura tramples it down and later it will all be stacked to be saved and used later.  And it is a wise move as events will show later.

Mary helps in the house as best she can, Laura helps Pa, Carrie takes over Laura's chores and Grace is still too little to do anything but watch and wish.  And soon fall comes and school starts and even sooner than expected the days turn cold and the snow begins to fall.  It's a sign that the prairie animals begin growing thick coats.  But it's not what Pa notices about the animals so much as what he doesn't see.  "Something's queer.  Not a goose nor a duck on the lake", he tells Caroline.  "I never saw a country so empty and still."

"The silence was as terrible as cold is.  It was stronger than any sound.  It could stop the water's lapping and the thin, faint ringing in Laura's ears. The silence was no sound, no movement, no thing; that was its terror.  Laura's heart jumped and jumped, trying to get away from it."

First the animals and their nest building and preparing for winter.  Then the lack of animals.  It was the strangest fall and no one could quite say why it felt so strange since they were having what seemed to be perfect weather, a beautiful Indian summer. Then an October blizzard hits and Pa brings back news from the town of De Smet that a very old Indian brought warning of the coming hard winter.  Every seven years he tells the town that a terrible winter hits and so Pa makes the wise decision to close up the shanty and move to town.

Even living in the little town of De Smet among so many people (too many for Laura!), some seventy-five or eighty, won't keep the Ingalls family safe from the weather.  It would have been okay if the trains could get through, but blizzard after blizzard closes the school and then closes down the town.  They are cut off from everyone.  No matter how they try and dig out the tracks they are only covered again and again.  Finally there is nowhere to put all the snow and no way for anyone to get into the town to bring food and supplies.  No matter how prepared the Ingalls family is, their food stocks begin to thin out.  So the wheat must be ground and the coarse bread baked.  And for warmth the hay that was so carefully harvested now becomes their fuel to burn and to cook with and their only hope for survival.  But even that begins to run out.

The Long Winter is quite a story, an adventure story and a story of survival.  While it is very much a Little House book it has a slightly different tone than the others I have read so far.  The Ingalls family has changed and their living situation somewhat new, though the pioneer spirit is there strong as ever.  Laura is much the same yet older, too, and so growing up and becoming more of an independent spirit (even more so in the next book!) and more responsible.  Almanzo and his brother Royal are 'baching' like so  many other men setting out west.  While 'Manzo only made a cameo appearance in the last book, he is a resident of De Smet with hopes and plans to make his own farm.  He is young (and tells a fib to appear older and stake a claim) but smart and something of a hero in this story.  If the bleakness of the winter made me weary for the families, Almanzo's pancakes made my mouth water.  It's quite a lean winter for most families (unless you are bachelor brothers by the name of Wilder) but if you can hold out long enough winter fades into spring.  

I am already reading Little Town on the Prairie and am happy to tell you that it is warm and sunny and July right now and not a snowflake is in sight.  I have two more books left to read of the Little House books.  I am hoping I can finish all three before the year is out (and hope I am not being overly ambitious).  It has been fun watching Laura grow up and there are still more adventures to come I suspect.   

A Piece of Green Pumpkin Pie, Anyone?

You've heard of friend green tomatoes, right?  (I've had them--they are pretty yummy).  How about a piece of green pumpkin pie?  Never had that, though pumpkin is probably my favorite flavor pie!  With so many resources right at my fingertips, it is hard sometimes to imagine a world where even basic food staples might be hard to come by.  Living almost exclusively off the land, and not being able to visit a proper store meant Ma had to be creative in the kitchen in the Little House books. 

Only three chapters in and I am already treated to vivid descriptions of life on the Dakota plains.  And all signs point to a coming winter that is going to be long and hard.  Pa sets off to try and bag a few geese (no luck--they are all hurriedly flying south with not even a short stopover to rest), while Ma decides a little surprise is in order for Pa for his return.  She sends Laura off to the pumpkin patch to bring back a green pumpkin.  A green pumpkin?  For a pie, of course.  You never know what you'll end up with if you don't give your ideas a try.  So, while Ma prepares the dough for the crust, Laura cuts the pumpkin into little slices. 

"Ma put the crust in the pie pan and covered the bottom with brown sugar and spices.  Then she filled the crust with thin slices of the green pumpkin.  She poured half a cup of vinegar over them, put a small piece of butter on top, laid the top of the crust over all."

And voila, pumpkin pie.  Every time Ma opened the stove door, a warm, rich smell would waft out.  It "was a beautiful pie."  And the taste?  Pa cuts off a piece of his slice and pops it into his mouth and exclaims, "apple pie!" and "delicious"!

I wonder what it really tastes like?  The recipe appears in the Little House Cookbook apparently. I have never heard of anyone baking one (though you can google it and it sounds like others have attempted it to mixed results).  I don't think I will attempt baking a green pumpkin pie anytime soon, but I would happily try a slice.  Has anyone eaten it before?  Or better yet, tried to bake one?  Does it really taste like apple pie?  What other treats are in store in The Long Winter?  I am hoping that by reading about a long winter, it will make my own winter season seem like a piece of cake!  (Or, rather, a piece of pie).

By the Shores of Silver Lake

It's been a while since my last Little House adventure.  When I last left Laura and family behind they were trying their luck in the wilds of Minnesota.  Let's see, they started out in Wisconsin then traveled to Indian territory in Kansas.  It was the government's 'gentle nudging' that sent them to Minnesota where they settled on the banks of Plum Creek.  I think Ma was happy to settle and doesn't especially like the rambling life.  A town and a proper school is what she wants for her four girls.  Laura, however, takes after Pa.  And Pa is never happy too settled in one place.

"Pa did not like a country so old and worn out that the hunting was poor.  He wanted to go west.  For two years he wanted to go west and take a homestead, but Ma did not want to leave the settled country.  And there was no money.  Pa had made only two poor wheat crops since the grasshoppers came; he had barely been able to keep out of debt, and now there was the doctor's bill."

I had forgotten what happened in the lives of the Ingalls family and one daughter in particular as the story progresses.  If you'd rather not know, you might want to skip ahead as a few plot spoilers will follow.  At the opening of By the Shores of Silver Lake two important things happen.  First, nearly all of the Ingalls family was laid low by scarlet fever.  Although they all came through the sickness, Mary was not unscathed.  She lost her sight during the illness and is now blind.  How could I forget such a dramatic event?  It is not, however, dwelled upon at length in the book.  Laura simply acts as Mary's eyes and 'sees' for her (though Mary has an uncanny knack for knowing when Laura is not behaving the proper young girl).

Ma and Laura, weak from having to care for the family see a strange woman riding up to their home in a buggy.  It's pretty aunt Docia, who we first met back in the Big Woods of Wisconsin.  Now she and her husband, a contractor working on the new railroad, want Pa to come help in the construction and live in the camps in Dakota Territory.  It's a golden opportunity but one that must be grabbed immediately.  A bit of upheaval and rough living it will mean at the outset, but with a little time and hard work, Ma's dream  might finally be realized.

So, the second big event.  There is literally no time to lose and the family must pull up stakes and follow Docia west.  I had forgotten how often the Ingalls family moved about.  For Laura, who takes after Pa, she is more than happy to keep moving and westward ho would be her happy refrain, but moving about in the 1800s is no small feat especially for a family that has just recovered from a serious illness.

By the Shores of Silver Lake is all about the Ingalls's family experiences living in a railroad camp.  It is their first real taste of living in a settled yet unsettled community--a community that would take some time to be properly civilized.  The men who live and work on the railroad are pretty rough and tumble.  Pa sets off with aunt Docia in order to be assured a job and Ma and the rest of the family follow and travel by train.  This, then, is a novel of firsts almost.  The girls are growing up, the States are expanding west, Pa will not farm but work in a store and the world itself is changing right in front of their eyes. 

"There had never been such wonders in the whole history of the world, Pa said.  Now, in one morning they actually traveled a whole week's journey, and Laura had seen the Iron Horse turn around, to go back the whole way in one afternoon."

No farmstead, or sugar snow season to extract maple from trees, no worries of Indians, or failed crops or plagues of grasshoppers. 

"There was really no difference in the flowers and grasses.  But there was something else here that was not anywhere else.  It was an enormous stillness that made you feel still.  And when you were still, you could feel great stillness coming closer."

Laura will get to see how the ground is prepared and graded before the tracks can be laid for the new rails, and Pa will have to try and keep peace among the men who demand their entire pay even before Pa can add up the time sheets and submit their work totals. 

It's a run in with wolves that will help Pa find the perfect piece of land on which to build the new family homestead.  It is the perfect place for the family to settle, and they will as soon as the winter passes.  Pa's offered the chance to live in the surveyor's house and keep an eye on it rather than return east until the weather will allow them to build on new property.  It is filled to the brim with bounty and any family would be snug as a bug in a rug to stay there with all the food supplies even as the wind and snow howls outside.

The Ingalls family is not the only one to have the Dakota Territories in their sights when it comes to staking their claim to land and building a homestead on that perfect piece of land--which is not technically theirs until they can make it official.  Come spring, every time Pa plans on going to get his official papers to the piece of land, more and more people come on their way west.  Ma is adamant about offering them food and shelter, but so many arrive that she has to begin charging the men--almost as in a rooming house.  Will Pa get his claim? 

Another delightful book by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I thoroughly enjoyed this new direction that the family has set off on.  Laura, affectionately (even at the age of just 13!) is still called Flutterbudget and Half Pint.  I can't picture her past the age of thirteen.  She is still tomboyish and has her mischievous moments--always compared to Mary who is very Good.  Carrie is beginning to have more of a real personality in the story and they are joined by baby Grace!  Maybe just one other significant event . . . Almanzo Wilder and his family are heading west, too, and 'Manzo makes a cameo appearance. 

Already a new story opens on the horizon.  The family will need to put down roots.  In order to keep their land they must stay there for five years!  By story's end the shanty is built and Ma's china shepherdess graces the shelf--her new home, too.

More adventures to follow and I have already started reading The Long Winter.  Part of me wants to race ahead and find out what happens.  But with just a few more books to read I don't want to rush them either.  I wonder if my winter will be a long one?  I have a stack of books to keep me company in any case.

On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder

With each new adventure that is the Little House series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, I think I like the book just read the best.  Actually I love them all, but I did greatly enjoy On the Banks of Plum Creek and finished it with a contented sigh.  It's not a stretch to call these books charming, delightful, cozy reads (hence the enduring love of them by so many readers), but I think you can definitely read between the lines, too.  Living on the prairie, in the American Midwest in the late 1800s was hard work and it was at times dangerous too.  Fortunes could be made and lost literally with the change of the weather.  The books might seem like charming adventures, and they are, but reality surely lacked some of the rosy hue of the books. 

The Ingalls family began their journey in Wisconsin, in the Big Woods, then (after a digression to meet Alonzo Wilder in New York) it was off to Kansas, or Indian territory.  Before the US government could begin removing white settlers from Osage territory they decided to try their luck in Minnesota.  It is on the banks of Plum Creek that they make their new home.  Not only are they close to the river but they live a mere three miles from town.  So close!

"At last Ma drew a long breath.  'It is all so tame and peaceful,' she said.  'There will be no wolves or Indians howling tonight.  I haven't felt so safe and at rest since I don't know when'."

"Pa's slow voice answered, 'We're safe enough, all right.  Nothing can happen here'."

"The peaceful colors went all around the rim of the sky.  The willows breathed and the water talked to itself in the dusk.  The land was dark gray.  The sky was light gray and stars prickled through it."

Idyllic it sounds, doesn't it?  As for 'nothing can happen here'?  Famous last words.  But it is a happy new adventure for the family in many ways.  They trade their horses for the land and a sod house.  Now the Ingalls family will live in a dugout until Pa can build their home.  It all hinges on the crop of wheat he will grow and sell.  A good crop will bring more money than they have ever had and Pa promises not just a house but a buggy with new horses, new dresses and anything else Ma and his three girls could want.

There is much to explore and learn and adventures to have.  Laura is now seven and as impish as ever.  She is fearless at times and finds herself in scrapes more often than not.  She listens to Ma and Pa, but she stretches the rules and finds herself dangling above a rushing Plum Creek or sliding down a hay stack or battling small animals she had never before encountered.  Usually Mary is the stalwart one who cannot be swayed--either following the rules too closely or simply afraid (and perhaps afraid when it is wise to be so), but on occasion even Mary is lured into doing something she really shouldn't.

Life seems to be going along happily and much as planned and expected.  Pa builds a house using materials he bought on credit against the crop that has been growing so steadily (practically unheard of and something that he loathes doing--never wanting to be beholden to others).  And it is not just any house.  Their new home has windows and a proper door, a roof with sturdy shingles and even a shiny-black new cookstove.  Living so close to town means Mary and Laura can finally begin school and the family is able to go to Sunday mass.  It is a life of normality even if they 'live in the country'.

For Laura and Mary there had never been a thought towards any sort of distinction in the way they live.  Of course they live in the country and they live simply and without many luxuries, but this is not a hardship.  It's just the way life is and to not have shoes or to share a tin cup is not a strange thing in the least.  Now it is just a hop skip and jump away from Walnut Grove with its school, stores and church.  On their first day of school Laura and Mary realize they have short skirts (compared to the town girls) and that to learn they will need a slate and chalk.  They are the only children who have to stay at school to eat their lunch as it is too far to walk home and back.  And then there are all the other children.  It is here that Laura first meets the girl who is to become her nemesis, Nellie Oleson!

"Nellie Oleson was very pretty.  Her yellow hair hung in long curls, with two big blue ribbons on top.  Her dress was thin white lawn, with little blue flowers scattered over it, and she wore shoes."

"She looked at Laura and she looked at Mary, and she wrinkled up her nose."

"'Hm!' she said.  'Country girls!'"

First impressions.  Nellie doesn't improve much upon closer association.  But she does get her comeuppance.

This new life for the Ingalls family is threatened by a new calamity--not Indians or wolves or even the influx of other settlers, but by grasshoppers.  Like a fast moving storm on the horizon that can be seen from afar, one summer day when the wind was down and the grasses were still, they literally come down with a thud and eat their way through Pa's entire wheat crop, which had promised to bring in enough money to see them well through the winter, as well as the grass for the animals to graze on and the Ingalls's garden.  It's, of course, devastating for the family.  Once again their fortunes reverse and the family must once again rethink how (and likely where) they will live.

A children's book and not even an especially long one and I feel like I have barely touched the tip of the iceberg and shared the excitement of the story with you.  It's all in the details, and Laura Ingalls Wilder manages to paint quite a picture of life on the Prairie.  It's filled with happiness and danger and lots of adventure.  It may be cozy on the surface but it's obvious, too, just how much of a struggle it is for the family to get by.  But they are a happy family and that is what makes these books so very special. 

On the next ultra hot day, I think I might just have to share an excerpt or two of the winter the family endured in this book.  And sometime I should share the literary meals which I find kind of fascinating.  Every book introduces something that I have never heard of before--like corn dodgers (corn bread that is fried, baked or boiled like a dumpling) or vanity cakes, which sound a little like donut holes (though vanity cakes aren't sweet).  But I think I'll save those for another day.  I mostly wanted to quickly write about On the Banks of Plum Creek so I can start reading the next book, By the Shores of Silver Lake!

Little House on the Prairie

And so the adventure continues.  I'm finding the Little House books to be thoroughly 'gulpable', and if I don't make myself ration them out I think I could easily read my way through the rest of the set without so much as a pause.  The story, of course, begins with Little House in the Big Woods--the big woods being in Wisconsin.  Farmer Boy is something of a divergence, but a good one, and a story I never bothered with when I was a child.  Almanzo's story takes place in New York state at about roughly the same time. 

When we last were with Laura and her family she was Pa's little Half Pint, a mere six or seven years old, trying to be good but struggling with naughty moments, wholly aware of her plainness measured against elder sister Mary's goodness and golden ringletted prettiness.  Laura is such a wonderful, sympathetic character.  Her love of her family, Pa especially, makes you feel all warm and happy inside yet the storytelling is tempered by her shortcomings.  Reading the books brings a lovely nostalgic feeling yet the hardships the Ingalls family endures is a reminder, too, that though these are children's books, life was not easy on the Prairie in the late 1800s.

The tone of the story and the way it's told is much the same as the previous two books, but life for the Ingalls's has changed drastically.  They have left everything and everyone they know behind in search of vast open spaces where families are not crowded up against each other and where land and its bounty is more plentiful.  After an anxious crossing of a rather furious creek, they travel to and settle in Indian Country--Kansas.

"No road, not even the faintest trace of wheels or of a rider's passing, could br seen anywhere.  That prairie looked as if no human eye had ever seen it before.  Only the tall wildgrass covered the endless empty landand a great empty sky arched over it.  Far away the sun's edge touched the rim of the earth.  The sun was enormous and it was throbbing and pulsing with light.  All around the sky's edge ran a pale pink glow, and above the blue the sky was no color at all.  Purple shadows were gathering over the land, and the wind was mourning."

Laura and her family must now start from scratch.  They travel in covered wagon for weeks until they find a plot of land to build their new home--one so very, very far from any other settlers where they can live off of and make a new and hopefully prosperous life.  While the stories so far followed the rhythm of the seasons in already established communities, now they are living all sorts of new and mostly exciting, occasionally a little terrifying, adventures.  The covered wagon, their home on wheels for so long, folds down and is collapsed into smaller parts, and Pa with the help of Ma, begins to build their log cabin home and barn. 

They discover that they are not quite as alone on the prairie as they had first believed, though their neighbors are many miles away.  Trading work (the work ethic and independence of families--not being beholden for so much as a single nail--is a strong theme in the books) means their home becomes quite warm and cozy and they slowly become 'comfortably' self-sufficient.  What to modern sensibilities would be a frugal, very simple and pared down existence was just enough for the Ingalls family.  It's such a reminder that 'stuff' does not bring happiness. 

The world was such a very different place, and even a children's story told through the eyes of a young girl is a reminder of just how different.  Neighbors were not just other families or bachelors making their way west, but being Indian Country, Native American tribes were in abundance.  Little House on the Prairie was published in 1935 and set some time in the latter years of the 1800s.  Indians were a palpable presence and at times a fearsome one at that.  The views and attitudes of the white settlers were not always the most enlightened ones--these settlers would have been trying to (perhaps not always successfully) coexist with them.  Ultimately it is the question of who gets to settle where that will push on the Ingalls family to their next adventure at the end of the book.  

I think this is my favorite book of the set so far (I seem to like each new read just a tiny bit more than the last), though there is so much to love about all these stories.  They are simply told, but beautifully told as well.  It's all the little details that make them so interesting, the family dynamics and general enthusiasm of Laura that turn the books into page-turners.  I've had to look a few things up, by the way.  I remembered well the sugar snow (made from the sap from the Maple trees) in the first book, but there are some new dishes to contemplate now.

"Breakfast was ready.  When Pa came from the creek they all sat by the fire and ate fried mush and prairie-chicken hash."

Fried mush is fried cornmeal mush, or hasty pudding.  It would have been chilled, sliced and fried in fat--I would have opted to eat it with maple syrup!  Food seems to play a prominent role in these stories, though less so this time around.  I would have enjoyed the little pickles and the sweet potatoes cooked in the ashes of a fire, I think.  Remind me, however, not to complain about slow mail.  Living on the prairie, two days ride from the nearest town of Independence, you don't get mail or even any supplies unless a special trip is planned. 

" . . . Charles, I'd like to write to the folks in Wisconsin.  If you mail a letter now, they can write this winter, and then we can hear from them next spring."

Now that is patience.  It's a mostly happy existence for the Ingalls family, and certainly their year in Kansas is an exciting one, but the book's cover illustration is apt since it fits both the beginning of the story as well as the end (witout giving too much away).  Next up is On the Banks of Plum Creek--I'm not sure how Laura is going to be (ten or eleven perhaps?), but I am ready for her new adventures.  Bookmark is already at the first chapter and it sits ready on my night stand!

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

In the not so distant (literary) future Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder are going to meet and marry and hopefully live happily ever after.  But for now the two are separated by distance though they are very much of an age.  While Laura lives with her family in the deep woods of Wisconsin, Almanzo lives in New York state with his parents and three elder siblings.  And by all appearances his family is happy, healthy and relatively well off.  Farmer Boy, published in 1933, is a little bit of a digression from Laura's story begun in Little House in the Big Woods. 

It's the late 1860s and Farmer Boy chronicles Almanzo's ninth year in very much a similar fashion as Little House--following the rhythms of the seasons.  Unlike Laura's father who is a trapper, Almanzo's is a farmer so their lives are dictated by the planting, growing and harvesting of their crops.  This was a time when to be a farmer was looked upon as a way of independence and self-sufficiency.  Everything the Wilders have is what they grow or build or make themselves--from the food on their table to the clothes on their backs.  They are not ever at the beck and call of anyone else--from wheel-wright to shopkeeper.

The story begins once again in January as Almanzo and his brother and two sisters trek through the snow to school.  As one of the youngest pupils Almanzo must sit towards the front of the class with no desk and only his primer in hand.  School is not, unsurprisingly, his favorite activity.  He'd much rather stay on the family farm and he dreams of having his own horses to take care of and train.  But for a boy as young as he is he must wait, as a poorly trained horse would be ruined, and they are too expensive for a boy so small.  Instead he has two calves he must care for and train and will use to help in many of his chores. 

Happily for Almanzo he spends more time on the farm helping than in the classroom.  While his elder siblings often trudge off to school or when they eventually must go away for their schooling, he stays at home to help with the many tasks that farm life demands.  Cutting ice in the coldest months ensures the family will have a fresh supply all year long.  Everything has its season--from picking potatoes to berries, threshing wheat, felling timber, sheering sheep and selling horses.  

He helps with making candles and watches his mother weave homespun and knit and later barter with the tin man for her household wares to get her through each new year.  Little is bought in a store, and even their shoes come from an itinerant cobbler.  Almanzo's first pair of boots are almost a rite of passage as he had only worn moccasins--growing feet mean boots are something of a luxury.

Daily chores can never be neglected and often they must be done at the same time each day in order to keep the animals on schedule.  It's no wonder then that the appetite of a growing boy's such as Almanzo is so vast.  And there is always such an abundance of food. 

"The big blue platter on the stove's hearth was full of plump sausage cakes; Eliza Jane was cutting apple pies and Alice was dishing up the oatmeal, as usual.  But the little blue platter stood on the back of the stove, and ten stacks of pancakes rose in tall towers on it."

"Ten pancakes cooked on the smoking griddle, and as fast as they were done Mother added another cake to each stack and buttered it lavishly and covered it with maple sugar.  Butter and sugar melted together and soaked the fluffy pancakes and dripped all down their crisp edges."

If carbohydrates are fuel for the body, Almanzo needs them all as it's not unusual for him to spend his entire day working during a busy time of year on the farm from sunrise to sunset.  It's not all work, however.  A bountiful harvest means days of rest, too.  When the County Fair rolls around in the fall the family dresses in their Sunday best and spends the better part of three days there.  A prize pumpkin grown on a 'milk diet' means a blue ribbon for Almanzo, but so much fun actually begins to tire him and he is always happiest returning to the farm.

The Little House books are surely an idealized look at life in the late-1800s, but they are filled with warm happy memories of a way of life long gone.  It's not always a perfect world--there are bullies in school, and mischievous cousins, and lessons hard learned.  But it's such a fascinating look at what was a very different world.  My favorite part was when Almanzo's parents went away to relatives for a week leaving the four children home alone (How old are the oldest siblings?  Not as old as I imagine them to be, I suspect).  They are told not to eat all the sugar and to keep up with the chores.  It's every child's greatest desire--the minute the parents are gone to go and make ice cream and eat all the cakes, but trust me, never feed the piglet sticky taffy!

Pure escapist reading for a cold winter's day!  If I think it's cold, at least I don't have to do chores in -40F weather!  These books are absolutely delightful and I am sorry I never read Farmer Boy as a child.  I thoroughly enjoyed it as an adult.  I already have Little House on the Prairie at the ready.  Laura and her family are moving from Wisconsin to Kansas.  I'm ready for more adventures.

Little House in the Big Woods

Let me warn you--if you start reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods, you will not want to put it down.  I read in in practically one sitting and have already started Farmer Boy.  It was with a feeling of nostalgia that I started reading thinking that here is a simpler way of life, a world without the cares of our modern world, but I had to reassess my perceptions time and time again as I read.  It was a simpler world in so many ways, and sadly thinking of it I think our modern world is lacking in many ways, too.  But to think that people's lives were in any way easier is most decidedly a misconception.  The Big Woods were often harsh and unforgiving.  Just surviving in such a demanding environment was a challenge.  To say that the past is another country is not so very far off from the truth really.

The story, written for a juvenile audience (but enjoyed by people of any age) is a simple one and simply told, but it's quite beautifully told, too.  It follows the rhythms and seasons of the year beginning in Autumn and following through to the next.  It's written in third person and told from the perspective of six-year-old Laura who lives in the deep Wisconsin woods with her Pa, Ma, older sister Mary and baby Carrie.  It's not hard to see why Laura is such a beloved childhood character.  She's very much a real (and imperfect) girl that any child can relate to.  Her Pa calls her his "half-pint of sweet cider half drunk up" because she's so small.  Plainer than Mary, she has mousy brown hair with no little ringlets that receive so many admiring glances like Mary's.  She's mostly good, or at least tries to be, but Pa has occasion to take the strap down from the wall when she misbehaves. 

Laura is particularly fond of her father, who sets out each day to check on his traps.  If she's lucky he will finish early and will take out his fiddle to sing or tell stories of his own childhood or of his father's who lives even deeper in the woods where the trees grow so very close together.  To modern ears it's strange to hear of a small girl relate how much she loves bear meat or how she and Mary play with a pig's bladder--handily blown up to be batted around like a balloon, but this is sometime just after the Civil War in a wild and untamed (and untrammelled) America.  But it's fascinating, too.

This is Laura's story mostly.  The world, her world, is seen through a small girl's eyes.  It is a world of wonder and happiness mostly.  But there are also moments of adventure like when her Ma unknowingly slaps a bear outside their barn at night.  There are no near neighbors.  She has only her sisters to play with and cousins on those few visits that are made at holiday time.  But the world opens outward through her Pa's stories.  And finally at six she is old enough to travel into town which is quite a sight to behold.  The store where her Pa trades his furs is filled with so many things she could look for weeks and still not see everything. 

Just as such a young girl would not know her parent's history, so the reader has yet to learn of their meeting and romance.  But Ma, Caroline, grew up in the East, and Laura admires the beautiful dress she knows Ma brought with her and is saved for those extra special occasions like a dance during sugar snow season when the sap is taken from the Maple trees.  It's a time when friends and family come together t help Laura's grandparents turn the sap into sugar at the end of winter.

I read Little House in the Big Woods as a child and it just shows you where my mind is usually at that the part I remember so vividly happens to be that sugar snow.  I remember Laura and Mary eating the snow that has had syrup poured into it to make candy.  (I always wanted to try that by the way but never have).  I don't know why I ever waited so long to reread the book and now will read the rest anxiously following the family's adventures.  To say I loved the story is an understatement.  Farmer Boy is a story I didn't read as a child--I'm sure I thought a "boy's" story would hold no value for a little girl like me.  But I am certainly enjoying it now.

If you have never read Little House in the Big Woods (or any of the other books), I highly recommend it.  Or if it's been a while, go and pick up a copy now.  It is a perfect Winter read!