Under Construction

**WARNING**

This blog has been hijcacked!!

This is Tiffany & I will be giving Prairie Sense a little make over REALLY SOON!

. . . unless one of my kids gets sick, or my husband does something crazy & ends up in the ER, or I will the lotto (which I don't play) - in which you can find me somewhere tropical. Otherwise this blog will be UnDeR CoNsTrUcTiOn REALLY SOON!!

Breakfast on the Farm

If you read Farmer Boy, you will see a vast difference in the way the Wilders grew up compared to the Ingalls'. The Wilders were prosperous farmers. The Ingalls' struggled to make a living constantly. Take breakfast, for instance.

Almanzo opened his eyes again, and the candle was sputtering on the bureau. Royal was dressing. His breath froze white in the air. The candlelight was dim, as though the darkness were trying to put it out.

Suddenly, Royal was gone, the candle was not there, and Mother was calling from the foot of the stairs.

"Almanzo! What's the matter? Be you sick? It's five o'clock!"

He crawled out, shivering. He pulled on his trousers and waist, and ran downstairs to button up by the kitchen stove. Father and Royal had gone to the barns. Almanzo took the milk-pails and hurried out. The night seemed very large and still, and the stars sparkled like frost in the black sky.

When the chores were done and he came back with Father and Royal to the warm kitchen, breakfast was almost ready. How good it smelled! Mother was frying pancakes, and the big blue platter, keeping hot on the stove's hearth, was full of plump brown sausage cakes in their brown gravy.

Almanzo washed as quickly as he could, and combed his hair. As soon as Mother finished straining the milk, they all sat down and Father asked the blessing for breakfast.

There was oatmeal with plenty of thick cream and maple sugar. There were fried potatoes, and the golden buckwheat cakes, as many as Almanzo wanted to eat, with sausages and gravy or with butter and maple syrup. There were preserves and jams and jellies and doughnuts. But best of all Almanzo liked the spicy apple pie, with its thick, rich juice and its crumbly crust. He ate two big wedges of the pie.
Taken from Farmer Boy in the chapter entitled Winter Night

What a meal! Can you imagine the nap you'd need after a breakfast like that? Why do you suppose they could eat so much at breakfast?

I think it had to do with the hard work they did. Earlier in the chapter, it's also mentioned that the temperature was 40 below zero. 40 below! They needed plenty of nutrition to keep them going with such cold temperatures and hard work. Father worked outdoors or in the barns much of the day, and Mother worked in the attic spinning wool, making candles, and doing other various chores. The children all walked to school. A breakfast like the one above would certainly sustain them!

I hope my children don't remember the part about apple pie at breakfast. I distinctly remember saying several times, "We don't have dessert at breakfast" after requests for candy, brownies, or ice cream in the morning. Almanzo was a lucky boy!

Threshing

Farmer Boy is the one story in the Little House set that does not talk about Laura. It tells of her husband, Almanzo, as he grew up on a farm in upstate New York. There is so much interesting information in this book, historically and otherwise.

If you're interested in self-sufficiency, you'll find a wealth of information.

If you like little humor, there's plenty here!

If you want nuggets of wisdom, the Wilder family can share plenty.

Here's just one little thing that jumped out at me this week. Almanzo and Father were threshing the wheat in the barn during a winter storm.

Almanzo asked Father why he did not hire the machine that did threshing. Three men had brought it into the country last fall, and Father had gone to see it. It would thresh a man's whole grain crop in a few days.

"That's a lazy man's way to thresh," Father said. "Haste makes waste, but a lazy man'd rather get his work done fast than do it himself. That machine chews up the straw till it's not fit to feed stock, and it scatters grain around and wastes it.

"All it saves is time, son. And what good is time, with nothing to do? You want to sit and twiddle your thumbs, all these stormy winter days?"

"No!" said Almanzo. He had enough of that, on Sundays.
- Taken from Farmer Boy in the chapter entitled Threshing

That is a great example of how the Wilder family lived, and Almanzo carried this work ethic into his adulthood. When he moved out west to the Dakota Territory, he fibbed about his age so he could apply for a homestead. The requirement for free land was that you must be 18 years old and be willing to live on and work your land for 5 months out of each year for a number of years. Now, I don't condone lying. This just illustrates Almanzo's willingness to jump in and start farming.

When he and Laura were married and had moved to Missouri, they purchased a farm, where Laura and Almanzo worked it all by hand. Almanzo found and hauled large rocks and boulders from his farming site and used them to build a house.

Today, we have all manner of things to fill our 'time.' There's plenty of entertainment out there, and it's fun to be entertained. And if we can work hard and have fun, we will have a very rich life.

What Makes a Home

Laura Ingalls began her first school teaching job at the age of 15. She was teaching in a school 12 miles from her home. This meant that she must be boarded at the home of the Brewster family near the school for the two-month duration of her term.

She wound up with a terrible family; today we would call them dysfunctional. The lady of the home was either yelling or silent, but never friendly. The toddler screamed constantly. The man of the house was either gone or brooding in a corner. It was nothing like the cheerfully family Laura had at home. She had to sleep on a narrow couch in the same room with the family.

She didn't know how she would ever survive two whole months of this. She secretly hoped Pa would come get her for the weekend, but she knew it was a long drive for Pa's horses.

What a wonderful surprise it was when, on Friday afternoon of the first week, Almanzo Wilder showed up with his fast team of horses and a small cutter, or sled. He had driven the twelve miles to take her home! She would have a short break from the dismal home she was staying in!

The next morning:

"Good morning!" Carrie said from her bed, and Grace bounced up and cried, "Good morning, Laura!" "Good morning." Ma smiled when Laura entered the kitchen, and Pa came in with the milk and said, "Good morning, flutterbudget!" Laura had never noticed before that saying, "Good morning," made the morning good. Anyway, she was learning something from that Mrs. Brewster, she thought.

Breakfast was so pleasant. Then briskly, and still talking, Laura and Carrie did the dishes, and went upstairs to make the beds. While they were tucking in a sheet, Laura said, "Carrie, do you ever think how lucky we are to have a home like this?"

Carrie looked around her, surprised. There was nothing to be seen but the two beds, the three boxes under the eaves where they kept their things, and the underside of the shingles overhead. There was also the stovepipe that came up through the floor and went out through the roof.
Taken from the book These Happy Golden Years in the chapter entitled Sleigh Bells

Laura knew then that it is the people that make a home. She didn't have a fancy home. She shared a bedroom with her 3 sisters in the attic of her father's store in town. There were no fancy window treatments, no pictures on the wall; just a stovepipe and three boxes.

Downstairs was the same. They had homemade wooden furniture, a cook stove, a braided rug, simple tin plates and cups, and plain curtains on the windows. But to Laura, it was the best place in the world.

After supper, when Laura and Carried had done the dishes, Pa said as Laura had been hoping he would, "If you'll bring me the fiddle, Laura, we'll have a little music."

He played the brave marching songs of Scotland and of the United States; he played the sweet old love songs and the gay dance tunes, and Laura was so happy that her throat ached.

Laura knew that home could be anywhere: in a covered wagon on the wide open prairie, a log cabin in the woods, a house made of dirt, a claim shanty in the Dakotas, or a store building in town.

It's not the house, or the furnishings, that make a home. It's the people, the smiles, the kind words, the hugs, the music, the laughter, and the time spent together.

Today, a fashionable home is a thing to be desired. We all want one. Most of us dream of a new sofa, or a nicer bedspread, or the perfect flower arrangement, or the latest window treatments. A beautiful home is a good thing. But let's not forget what makes it truly special. It's the people who live there, and the love they share.

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home