"holler 'nuff! holler 'nuff!"

To Build a Snow Fort: To make a snow fort, wooden spades may be used, if the snow is loose; when, however, it cakes, heavier implements are necessary, as the weight and resistance of the blocks would soon destroy a wooden shovel. A snowball may be brought to almost any size, first by kneading a small one with the hands, for the nucleus, and then rolling it over and over, when it will gain size in its progress, until at last it can only be moved by employing the leverage of long poles. To make a snow fort, the foundations should at first be marked out, either in a square or circular form, and then clear out the snow from within, piling it upon the line of boundary to form the wall. A similar process goes on from without, and thus a good stout wall is soon produced, which must be considerably broader at the base than at the top. The size of the constrution, and the plan, must necessarily depend upon the number of boys engaged in rearing it, and the supply of material in the form of snow. In a castle of ambitious construction, there should be a parapet, raised above the wall, on the top of which latter the defenders stand, to ward off the attacks of the besieging party. Loopholes should also be pierced, through which the smaller boys, hidden in the interior, harass the approaching enemy with snowballs. The height of the fort, exclusive of the parapet, should not exceed six feet, or seven at the most; and care must be taken, in piercing the loopholes, to strengthen the surrounding parts, or the attacking party may find a breach most conveniently made, through which they can enter the fortress, to the discomfiture of the defenders. The snowballs used for the bombardment and defence must not be made too hard or too large, and all the military operations should be conducted with that good humor and love of fair play for which American boys are in general famous. -The American Boy's Book of Sports and Games, 1864
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:00 PM

 
not fit to feed stock

Father Wilder was correct; a threshing machine breaks the straw; no doubt about it. According to the New York State Agricultural Society in the year Almanzo Wilder was born, the recommendation was to "rub out" seed wheat by hand (do you think Almanzo did that with his Marshall crop?); it was better than wheat threshed by the flail, yet wheat that had been threshed by the flail was far preferable to that threshed by machine. The flail didn't crush the wheat kernels, and it was proven that when using a threshing machine, at least one-tenth of the kernels were either cracked, bruised, or had lost the wheat germ.

Of course, threshing by flail was a lot of work. One poem about threshing includes the following:

Sweating over his bread
Before he eats it; the primal curse;
But softened into mercy, made the pledge
Of cheerful days and nights without a groan."

Or, as Father Wilder put it: "All [mechanical threshing] 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?"

Prior to the introduction of threshing machines, one and a half bushels of seed wheat was generally used to seed an acre, but two bushels of seed threshed by machine were needed to give the same coverage, and often that was even a little thin. Farmers who had complained of feeble, unproductive stands of wheat found that when they switched to flailed seed that was plump and unmutilated, they got strong, healthy plants and a field full of grain. "As ye so, so shall ye reap."

One method of threshing that wasn't mentioned in Farmer Boy was that of "treading out" the grain by horses or even oxen, in practice from Biblical times until the end of the 18th century. An entire crop could be beaten out in a few days, securing the wheat from both insects and thieves (i.e. rats, mice, and little boys who like to chew it). Treading-floors were often permanent and from forty to one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, with a path or track at the outer perimeter being about twelve feet wide. The horses were led around and around by halters, kept in pace at a sober trot. Four horses could be on the treading floor at the same time. Three thousand bushels of wheat could be obtained in four days by four horses. It would take five men over one hundred days to do the same with a flail.

And those same four horses could walk in a circle and power a threshing machine, and accomplish the same results in a single day.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:00 PM

 
enough detail to make your brain hurt

Almanzo should have described a bob-sled for Laura prior to the publication of Farmer Boy the same way he described a bob-sled for Rose prior to the publication of Free Land. In a 1937 letter to Rose, her father wrote that "a Bob sled is just two sleds coupled together." He even drew a picture.

In Farmer Boy, the sled that Father Wilder and Almanzo build in Chapter 24 ("The Little Bobsled") is only one sled, but it has two runners, two cross pieces, two slabs, a tongue, four stout poles, and lots of pegs. I can keep up with the directions until the body is finished and they get to the pole and the tongue and the mess with the iron spike and how that would push against the iron ring in the calves' yoke and when they backed the ring would push against the spike and the tongue would push the sled backward. I'm glad there won't be a test on this tomorrow.

Helen Sewell drew a nice full-page picture of the little bobsled in action, but she probably couldn't follow the directions either, because she sort of fudged on the tongue affair and was probably glad she could just draw lots of snow-bumps to hide the runners and cross-pieces and all. Garth Williams drew an excellent bobsled, but even he doesn't really show us how the tongue attaches to the sled. And I still don't get how that spike will let you go both backwards and forwards; surely it only comes into play when you're going backwards. Is there something more to it? There's a chain involved, right?

I love the painting of Star and Bright (it's not really supposed to be Star and Bright, you know). I see the ring; I see the spike. But I still don't get it.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:00 PM

 
joseph walker

When Almanzo Wilder received his first pair of boots in 1866, the cobbler attached the soles to the uppers, and the heels to the soles, with pegs - pegs that the cobbler had made out of fine grained maple, by hand.

Shoe-pegs had been invented about fifty years earlier, by Joseph Walker of Massachusetts. Prior to that time, all parts of the boot were sewn by hand, but pegging proved to be such a time saver that they were soon widely-adopted. To save even more time (the earliest pegs were made by hand from long slivers of wood), machinery was developed to produce shoe-pegs quickly and efficiently. There were over two dozen factories in New England alone that produced shoe-pegs by the thousands, but apparently the Wilders' cobbler still made own. He doesn't even use a shoe-peg plane, which, with two passes made at right angles, would score the maple into a mass of pointed pegs just waiting to be separated with a chisel.

Here's what was written about shoe-pegs in 1877:

Shoe-pegs are made by machinery. The bark is peeled off the log, which is then sawed into slices across the grain, a little thicker than the length of a peg. The face of each block which is intended for the heads of the pegs is planed smooth.

The block is grooved by a machine in which a V-shaped cutting tool recriprocates rapidly across the face of the block, which is advanced the thickness of a peg between each stroke of the cutter, by feed-rollers. After the block has been grooved one way, it is again grooved at right angles to the first grooves, the surfaces of the block on one side now presenting a regular succession of quadrangular pyramids, which are the points of the yet embryo pegs.

The splitting is done on machines by a vertically reciprocating knife, which drives into each groove in turn, as the block is fed beneath it, the object being not to split the pegs entirely apart, but to have them hang together at the heads. The blocks are fed to the splitting-knives by fluted rollers, the flutes of which fit the grooves in the blocks made by the grooving-machine. When the block has passed through the splitting-machine once, it is turned and fed through again at right angles to the direction in which it was first fed, and after this operation the pegs are nearly split apart, but they still hang together somewhat like a bunch of split lucifer matches. After the second feeding, knotty and faulty parts are removed, and the block is forcibly thrown off the table of the splitting-machine on to the floor, and the pegs fall asunder. The pegs are then dried in a tumbler heated by steam-pipes, bleached with sulphur fumes till they assume a uniform white color, run through a fanning-mill to free them from dust, and finally packed for market.

The largest factory of shoe-pegs in this country is at Burlington, Vermont, where one factory transforms every day four cords of wood into four hundred bushels of shoe-pegs.

Who was the jolly, fat cobbler who arrived at the Wilders' house too late to make new shoes for Royal, Eliza Jane, and Alice to wear to Franklin Academy? Unfortunately, Laura Ingalls Wilder doesn't tell us his name. According to the 1860 census, there were 27 shoe-makers (none of them were called cobblers) living in Malone at the time of the 1860 census. This may sound like a large number, but there were over six thousand people living in Malone Township at the time.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:00 PM

 
two miles by road

The beech nuts grew in the timber lot. Father owned 50 acres of timberland, two miles from the farm by the road, but letting down the fences and driving through the fields it was only a half mile. Mr. Webb was a good neighbor and let Father drive across his land. - Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy manuscript

Published Farmer Boy says nothing about Father Wilder owning a timber lot. Recorded deeds say nothing about James Wilder owning any land within two miles of the farm, by road or not by road. The closest Mr. Webb (Dorlus) lived in a farmhouse at the end of Panunzio Road (across the bridge over Trout River); his property joined Mr. Wilder's across the Trout River to the southwest and it's about a half mile by road. Over the years, the Webbs held several mortgages on the Wilder property.

There are beech trees southwest of the Wilder property (see photo). And a bit of frustration when trying to make the fiction fit the lay of the land and recorded history. The only thing that makes sense (and nobody says it has to make sense; Farmer Boy is, after all, fiction) is that the Wilders took the road to Mr. Webb's property, and took down a fence to get to their own property across Trout River, a half mile by road. Who knows where you'd end up if you went two miles by road. Perhaps you'd best check your compass.

In the manuscript, there is a story about Mr. Webb that deserved to be edited out (sort of like the last sentence of the previous paragraph). I only wish it was still in Farmer Boy so we'd all be collecting compasses.

It was quite cold now, but no more snow had fallen, so it was pleasant out doors when the sun shone. Mr. Webb said it was good hunting weather and wanted Father to go with him into the mountains toward the lake and try and get a deer. But Father was busy so Mr. Webb went alone and they had seen nothing more of him when bedtime came.

In the middle of the night there was a pounding on the door and someone shouted for Father. Mr. Webb hadn't come home. They were afraid he was lost and the neighbors were gathering to hunt for him.

Mother said it wasn't any use to look for Mr. Webb before morning, for they would never find him in the pitch dark, but Father took his lantern and a compass, so they would not be lost in the woods on the hills.

All the rest of the night the men hunted for Mr. Webb in the woods toward the lake but they could find no trace of him. When the first, gray streaks of daybreak were in the sky, they came back tired and discouraged and now really worried, to get a bite of breakfast before they went again into the woods to hunt for the lost man.

They came to the fence at the back of the Webb farm and followed it around toward the house. And there, sound asleep, in a pile of beech leaves in a fence corner, only 200 yards from his own house, they found Mr. Webb. He was an astonished man, when they waked him and he saw where he was. He had been lost in the hills after the sun went down and wandered until he was exhausted. Then he lay down, making himself snug in a pile of leaves to wait for morning.

"But your compass, man." Father asked. "Why didn't you follow your compass?"

"The darned thing wouldn't work! It wouldn't do anything but point in the wrong direction," Mr. Webb answered.

"Let's see it!" said Mr. Wood. So Mr. Webb took his compass from his pocket and looked at it.

"Why it's all right now!" he exclaimed astonished.

Then tired as they were and a little angry too, everyone shouted with laughter.

"What's a compass for, if you won't believe it when you're lost?" Father wanted to know.

Oh great. Now I want to know who the heck Mr. Wood was.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:00 PM

 
meet me at..... the fair
While this was written about the Franklin County Fair the year after the one from Farmer Boy, no doubt the Wilders were there. Did Almanzo show Star and Bright? Starlight?

December 10, 1867. - B.P. Johnson, Esq., Secretary of New York State Agricultural Society:

Dear Sir- The sixteenth annual fair of the Franklin County Agricultural Society was held on the Society's grounds, in Malone, on the 2d, 3d and 4th days of October, 1867. The attendance was larger than ever before, in fact, crowding our grounds almost to their utmost.

The exhibition of stock showed a marked degree of quality, though the numbers in some classes were less than last year. Oxen, cows, sheep, swine and poultry proved that the farmers of our county appreciate blood and condition, and that they were not to be outdone by any. Sheep and swine were of such superior quality as to excite the admiration of all. Young cattle, such as two year olds, we think, did our locality great credit; while the lovers of horses, either for single or double driving, or for purposed of draught, felt that they were looking at animals not inferior to any. The display of fruit proved one fact to a demonstration, that apples, pears, plums and grapes can be grown here in our cold latitude, in such profusion and of such quality, as to satisfy the taste and demands of any palate or stomach. Vegetables were in such numbers and of such superior quality, as almost to defy competition or description. There were several very fie samples of hops on exhibition, showing that the hop growers of our county understand the culture and curing of hops almost to perfection, and that we have been favored beyond other sections in escaping the havoc made by the insect. The hop interest in our county has been growing very rapidly for the past few years, adding greatly to the wealth of the county. Many of the growers have realized $1000 per acre for this year's crop.

The ladies of our county cannot be too highly commended for the rich and varied display of flowers, paintings, drawings, crochet work, needle work, patch work, knitting, wool embroidery, carpeting, flannel and fulled cloths, while the exhibition of photographic pictures by Fay and Farmer and Ferris were unsurpassed in the State. The exhibition in Mechanics' Hall filled the building to its utmost capacity, each article showing a marked progress.

The afternoon of the last day of the Fair was devoted to hearing an address from Hon. J.L. Bigelow, and to the award of premiums. The address was one of marked character and ability, breaking out from the common routine of agricultural addresses, saying things not usually said on such occasions, creating in us a desire for another of the same sort, thoroughly practical, and one which if carried out in the farmer's and mechanic's life, would prove a source of blessing.

The whole amount received from all sources during the year was $2913.25, plus amount on hand from last year totals $3961.25. Amount of disbursements during the year for premiums, repairing buildings, &c. was $2758.35.

Officers for the year 1868: President, Thomas R. Kane, Burke; Secretary, Smith T. Palmer, Malone; Treasurer, M.S. Mallon, Malone. Signed Thomas R. Kane, President.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:00 PM

 
after the potato explodes
Apply hot, wet bread.

I never thought about the poultice that Mother Wilder applied to Almanzo Wilder's eye and face after his skin was burned by the hot potato. But if you've ever put wet tobacco on a bee sting, then you've used a poultice, which is simply a "porridge" of moistened plant material or grain, applied directly to the skin. Technically called a cataplasm, it is similar to a fomentation (a cloth soaked in the wet material and wrung out, then applied) or a compress (a wet cloth placed under or over the material).

The most commonly used poultice at the time of Farmer Boy was one made out of bread and water, or out of bread and milk. Boiling water was poured over torn pieces of bread and allowed to soak. This water was pressed out and the hot water soak was repeated until the mixture became a doughy mess. It was beaten hard with a fork, then slathered on a piece of linen or cotton, and placed slobby-side-down on the area to be treated (a burn, bruise, or whatever). It was held in place by bandages, and in order to keep the insides from icking out all over the place, it could be covered with oiled silk. Mmmmm, sound yummy, I mean helpful.

Roasted potatoes, however, ARE yummy. I couldn't believe that I found a recipe for "ash roasted potatoes" on Martha Stewart's website HERE. Of course, this isn't done in an outdoor fire of dried potato-tops. You take fireplace ashes and roll wet potatoes in them, then wrap in aluminum foil and bake. You scoop out the pulp and combine it with other ingredients, then serve it in the ash-coated potato skins.

Martha doesn't say a thing about poking the potatoes so they won't explode.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:30 PM

 
all i wanted to know was what a butter tester looked like

The butter-buyer went down cellar, where the butter-tubs stood covered with clean white cloths. Mother took off the cloths, and the butter-buyer pushed his long steel butter-tester down through the butter, to the bottom of the tub. The butter-tester was hollow, with a slit in one side. When he pulled it out, there in the slit was the long sample of butter... - Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy, Chapter 19, "Early Harvest"

Did you ever wonder what a butter-tester looked like? That's a drawing of one from the "Little House" years; they're still in use today and something to add to your LH collection (when not hanging on your Christmas tree, you can use it to core apples). Butter testers were about a foot long and uniformly tapered from about 3/4 of an inch at the handle to half an inch at the rounded, sharp, digging end. Also called a butter trier, butter tryer, butter plug, or butter searcher, there were also early testers made with ring-shaped handles, or those made of two slotted tubes, one of which fitted inside the other so that the whole apparatus could be taken apart for cleaning. Perhaps this is the kind that was used on Mother Wilder's butter. Although the butter-buyer in Farmer Boy used a steel tester, they were also made of nickel, and there were even silver plated ones!

But why test the butter, anyway? Laura Ingalls Wilder implies that it was simply to see if it was solidly packed and "all the same golden, firm, sweet butter" (Chapter 19), something that could be determined by sight only. Properly made butter had a firm body and a waxy feel. Body and texture were controlled by the churning temperature and the conditions of churning, washing, salting, and working the butter. The butter buyer was trying to avoid weak-bodied butter, which would soften quickly. He also didn't want greasy body, a sign of over-working, or salvy, crumbly, mealy, gritty, or leaky butter. If you've ever opened a stick of butter and there was obvious moisture, that's leaky butter.

Color was due to the feed eaten. It could cause high-colored (more orange)or low-colored (more white -- get out the carrots and leaky pie tin) butter. Improper working could cause dull, mottled, or wavy butter.

There's more to butter than its appearance, though, and it turns out that the butter industry was highly regulated even in Almanzo's day, and there were even right and wrong ways to test the butter.

The best butter testers were also - or had at one time been - butter makers, so they knew what they were doing. Even so, the first step in butter testing was: Wash your hands with soap and water. The trier should also be clean and dry. The trier was pushed into the butter in five locations in the tub (some of them at an angle). There was even a way to replace the plug in the sample and how to smooth over the butter so there would be no visible signs of disturbance.

A good butter tester was said to be "born, not made." He also had to have an excellent sense of both taste and smell. He was also to be a "man of character" who would be conscientious, careful and able to make decisions, and to stand by his convictions.

Everyone who has eaten both good butter and bad butter knows the difference between the two. And there were also several tests probably done that Wilder didn't share with us but could have been performed to determine how much fat the butter contained, to determine its saltiness, and to determine its moisture content. But here are some of the common defects a butter tester was looking for as he took a taste:

(1) Flat flavor - due to excessive washing. In Little House in the Big Woods, we see Caroline Ingalls washing her butter, and Angeline Wilder washed the buttermilk out of her butter in Farmer Boy. Too much cold water, though, could absorb the volatile oils of the butter, leaving it tasteless, or flat.

(2) Stale butter - the off-flavor usually due to butter made from cream from cows at the end of their lactation period. Milk from cows about to go dry could be mixed with milk from fresh cows to avoid this. There was nothing to do if you had one cow and it was late in the season. Maybe the butter Mrs. Boast brought to the "Christmas in May" dinner in The Long Winter was "stripper butter."

(3) Sour, curdy, or cheesy flavored butter - Caused by high-acid cream, usually from cream shipped a distance prior to being churned.

(4) Unclean tasting butter - Suggested the use of dirty milkpans (remember the scalding and cleaning of the cellar in Farmer Boy?), dirty hands, and dirty water used to wash the butter. Was there a well on the Wilder farm, or did they get their washing water from the same river they washed the sheep in?

(5) Cowy and Barny flavor - From milking cows whose udders and flanks are plastered with manure. Ick.

(6) Musty flavor - Caused by not cooling the cream or letting the "heat of the animal" escape from milk cans before sealing. Could also be caused by cows eating moldy hay, silage, and grain.

(7) Garlicy butter, or butter that tastes like turnips - Obvious causes!

(8) Oily flavor - Resulted from churning sour cream.

(9) through (XXX) Okay, there were all sorts of other "defects," including fishy taste, metallic taste, obvious mold, rancid butter, woody flavor, scorched taste, and even a category for "off" or "coarse" flavor, which mean two completely different things.

Studying what the butter tester was looking for is enough to scare a person into never eating butter again, especially if you spend too much time looking at pictures of bad butter and forget that you're living in 2009, not 1866. Enough already. Why not throw caution to the wind and make your own butter tomorrow? Don't worry if it's too leaky or too mottled. Don't worry about what the cows were eating the day they were milked, or if they were about to go dry. Just get some good, rich cream and get to shaking that jar, unless you'd like to hear how cream was tested and what the cream tester was looking for?
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:30 PM

 
six cups of sugar
Does six cups of sugar sound like an awful lot to use when your parents have gone out of town, they've left you to your own devices, and you want to make some ice-cream? Turns out it's not, even if you're only making enough ice-cream for four children to enjoy before chore-time.

Custard used for custard pies can also be used to make ice cream. While Almanzo and Royal were pounding ice to do the "freezing" part, Alice and Eliza Jane whipped up an egg custard using six cups of sugar (the only definite measure Laura Ingalls Wilder gives us in Farmer Boy), and (perhaps) 6 eggs, separated, 10 tablespoons of flour or some other thickening agent such as arrowroot, 2 quarts of cream/milk mixture (more cream than milk), a dash of salt, and maybe some flavoring. One assumes from Farmer Boy that the ice-cream is plain egg custard, but in the manuscript, it was flavored with wintergreen.

To make custard, one scalds the milk and cream and adds the sugar, flour and salt. Add the beaten egg yolks and cook until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture has thickened. When cool, add stiffly-beaten egg whites and the flavoring. Freeze. This makes THREE GALLONS of ice cream. Add a whole cake to that, and is it no wonder that the siblings didn't want any dinner that night? One early recipe I found suggests that using two quarts of milk/cream will make enough ice-cream for thirty-five persons. Make that three children and one growing farmer boy...

The Wilders didn't have one of the new-fangled patent ice-cream freezers like the one shown in the illustration. Like threshing their wheat with flails, they must have preferred to make ice-cream the old-fashioned way, in a tin pail surrounded by ice and salt to do the freezing, with frequent stirring. Crank ice-cream freezers had only been around for a dozen or so years, and early cookbooks often included suggestions as to how to tell your "tinner" to construct a container to be used only for making ice-cream: one author suggested that it was to be 8 inches in diameter and 18 inches tall, and slightly larger at the top than bottom, so that the ice-cream could be removed in a solid piece and served in slices. The container was to have a fitted top with a handle on it, and the whole affair should only cost around fifty cents.

In the Farmer Boy manuscript, in addition to the blacking brush being thrown (but at Alice, not Eliza Jane!)there was an added bit about Eliza Jane and Royal getting into an argument and managing to spill a whole pail full of milk on the floor, and although they knew it would ruin the paint (are the floors in the Wilder house still painted?), they left it there and walked around it rather than clean up the mess.

It would have been cute if Almanzo had let the barn cats inside to lap it up.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:30 PM

 
Laura Ingalls Wilder, A-Z

As some of my blog readers know, I took down most of what was on www.pioneergirl.com - Pioneer Girl, Facts and Fiction of Laura Ingalls Wilder A-Z - in 2003 (or was it 2004?) for very personal reasons which I didn't share. For almost two loooong years my files were in storage, and for almost an entire year they were 2000+ miles away from where I was living. So it just made sense to stop working on a site that I couldn't, well, work on properly. You may have noticed that the blog was missing-in-action during a good bit of that time.

Since relocating to the south permanently in October 2006, my research partners and I have concentrated on research, and I left LIW A-Z offline. It always bothered me that so little was complete. I started putting the pages back online last year, and just this week I've also uploaded the A-Z index and search, although you'll find precious few of those entries actually online with links working properly (and where those items are found in the "Little House" books won't be added to the index until later, although that information can be found at the bottom of each entry that is uploaded). The good news is that much of the research has been done; it only needs formatting.

New pages will be uploaded on a daily basis. If you're curious about something A-Z that you don't see online now, drop me a note at seventhwinter[at]gmail[dot]com and I'll try to move that particular entry up the queue.

It's good to be back.
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:00 PM

 
i miss huckleberries

Blurry photo. Yummy berries. Pie anyone? (Yes, I know it's not the season for fresh huckleberries, so I am taking comfort in homemade huckleberry jam.)
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:28 PM

 
boom!

Although two songs were included in published Farmer Boy, no singing was mentioned in the existing manuscript. At the Independence Day celebration, the only song reference was to the noise of the cannons being fired: "As Yankee Doodle said, it made a sound like father's gun, only a nation louder." (Chapter 16)

I have to admit that this chapter leaves me cold, and not just because it starts out with frozen corn and spashes of cold water. It must have been heavily edited by Rose; the manuscript has no confrontation with Cousin Frank, no sucking pigs, no lemonade, no bits from the Declaration of Independence, no town pump, no liefs and double dares, no half dollars, no axes and plows making the country. Details about the firing of the cannon were left in, but one can imagine that the cannon fire was something Almanzo would have remembered and related to Laura, and Laura dearly loved a detail.

According to Dorothy Smith's The Wilder Family Story (1972), the actual celebration did included the reading of the Declaration of Independence, speeches, orations, prayers, and the ringing of bells and the firing of guns.

In Farmer Boy, the Revolutionary War is remembered, but not the Civil War, which must have been on the hearts and minds of everyone who attended a Fourth of July celebration in 1866, not only in Malone, but everywhere, except perhaps for Portland, Maine, which almost burned to the ground that holiday due to a child's mishap with a firecracker.

I've uploaded the front pages of the New York Times for July 5, 1866;
CLICK HERE to read some of how a Glorious Fourth was celebrated that year: Nine thousand men in parade - Letters from President Johnson and General Grant - Fireworks - A beautiful day - Half-masted flags.... The flag that flew that year had 36 stars; Nevada had been admitted to the Union in October 1864, and this flag had been adopted on July 4th of the previous year.

Btw, happy birthday, Almanzo.
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:30 PM

 
nibble, nibble, nibble

The woodsorrel of Farmer Boy and the sheep-sorrel of Little Town on the Prairie are two different plants entirely, although both have a decidedly lemony, sour taste. Almanzo nibbled on woodsorrel, a type of geranium, most likely Oxalis montana, which can still be found in Franklin County today.

Woodsorrel is a perennial, growing from 2-6 inches in height. Leaves have three heart-shaped leaflets and both leaves and flowers close at night, during changes in the atmosphere, and even when touched. The half-inch flowers appear on long, delicate stems. They can be found in moist and shady spots in the woods.

Nicknamed fairy bells, Laura Ingalls Wilder could have written one of her "fairy poems" about woodsorrel, as it was believed that the "ringing of the fairy bells called the elves to dance their moonlight dance." The original shamrock of the Irish was also Oxalis, woodsorrel with its three heart-shaped leaflets. You will start seeing Oxalis potted plants for sale soon, as they are commonly sold prior to St. Patricks Day in the United States. Look for them in a grocery store near you!

The stems and leaves of woodsorrel are sour due to oxalic acid and potassium oxalate. The leave were used to make a tea which helped reduce fever or as a lotion for skin infections. Oxalic acid is slightly toxic, so woodsorrel should not be eaten in large amounts. It can bind the body's supply of calcium and lead to a deficiency.
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:30 PM

 
one third more fat than regular sheep!
Today's word is suint (also spelled swint), that slippery, slimy, greasy substance that must have horribly polluted the Trout River at the Wilders' sheep-washing time. Since there's no great loss without some small gain (as Caroline Ingalls always said), I'm sure James and Royal Wilder, French Joe, and Lazy John had really soft skin after washing all those sheep!

Wool, besides the moisture and dirt which it naturally contains, is made up of three ingredients: suint, wool fat, and pure wool hair. The suint is an excretion of the perspiration glands of the skin; it chiefly consists of a compound of potassium with an organic acid containing nitrogen. Suint is soluble in cold water, and is in great part removed when sheep are washed before shearing. In the case of Merino sheep, the suint may amount to a third to more than half the weight of the unwashed fleece, but in the case of ordinary sheep, freely exposed to the weather, the quantity may be 15 percent or less. In a washed fleece the wool fat may vary from more than thirty percent to eight percent or less (note that this is after the suint has been washed away). Short fine wool contains the largest proportion of fat.

Merino wool is wonderfully wavy, sometimes having as much as thirty crimps per inch. As it grows, it is coated with and saturated with the suint, which causes the wool to shed water and prevents it from tangling or felting while on the sheep's back. It also causes dirt to stick, and it is for this reason that sheep were usually washed before being shearing. The wool as it is clipped doesn't fall apart like bunches of hair, but holds together like a skin, and as Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote, it could be rolled up and tied into a bundle, each fleece by itself.

Mrs. Wilder doesn't mention a second washing of the fleece, which typically took place prior to carding. It was during this second warm washing that the wool fat, or lanolin, could all or partly be removed from the fleece. Lanolin could be skimmed and saved for use in the making of soap or sold as a natural lotion or lubricant. One Merino fleece could yield from 3 to 12 ounces of lanolin.
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:30 PM

 
stone fences

No sooner is a stone fence built than Nature acts to work to make it a part of herself. She adopts it and adorns it as if it were her own child. A little sprig of ivy may be seen creeping up the side and clinging fast with its many feet; a tuft of grass roots itself between two of the stones where a little dust from the road has been moistened into soil for it; a small bunch of fern grows in another such crevice; a deep, soft, green moss spreads itself over the top and along the sides of the fence; and wherever nothing else will grow lichens adhere to the stone and variegate their hues. Finally, a great deal of shrubbery is sure to cluster along its extent, and take away all hardness from the outline; and so the whole stone fence looks as if God had had at least as much to do with it as man. - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Portions of the James Wilder property is still bordered by stone fences which may date from the time of Farmer Boy; they can be found on the northeast quarter and in places along the eastern property line. A bit of the fence can be seen from Stacy Road. [To clear up a bit of confusion: the above photo is not of stone fencing on the former Wilder property, but of that on the west side of Panunzio Road in the 15 acre agricultural district just south of the Wilder Association property.]

Wherever there was plenty of loose stone which must be removed before the land could be cultivated, stone fences were the best and most economical that could be constructed. They were also one of the best ways to designate property boundaries.

The first thing in building a stone fence was to haul the stone. Usually this was done from year to year and hauled to a given place for the purpose of making a stone fence, although it was best not to leave stone within four or more feet from where the actual wall was to be built. Unless the earth was solidly and uniformly solid, it was best to dig a foundation deeper than the frost line. This would prevent movement in portions of the wall which might not cause it to fall, but would surely displace a few stones.

Size of a stone fence was usually determined by the size of the largest stone available. Stability was provided by having the wall wider at its base and tapering slightly to the top, which was best covered with the flattest stones possible. Most of the rock in the stone walls around the Wilder farm are around a foot in diameter (or smaller), and would have been easily lifted by a man. The Wilders' stone fences were actually - by definition - more cobble-stone than boulder. Some are still standing that are about thirty inches wide at the base and a foot wide at the top, standing three or more feet in height. Although none are evident today, there were once said to be stone fences near the farmhouse itself.
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:30 PM

 
rags for tin
An early definition of paper reads: "A material made in thin sheets from a pulp of ground rags or other fiber, and used for writing or printing upon or for wrapping." To expand on this, true paper was defined as being "made of rags or other vegetable fiber, reduced to a pulp, gathered into a sheet, felted in setting, and dried." Paper thus produced has been around for over two thousand years; the Chinese produced vegetable fiber paper out of rice, bamboo, and bark. From China, paper-making spread to Asia, Europe, America. As the process of paper-making spread, so did the materials used in its manufacture - eventually giving rise to the use of cotton, then flax.

It wasn't until about the 12th century that the Spaniards began using linen and cotton rags in paper-making, instead of the raw material itself. It was found that rags pounded into pulp made a paper that was less brittle, which was a very good thing. At the time of Farmer Boy - when flax was grown as a staple on almost every northern farm and spun into linen - linen rags and worn-out articles of linen clothing were sought after by paper mills in New York and Pennsylvania. Could it have been that The War of Northern Aggression had somehow made cotton a little harder to come by? Could it have been that cheap northwest trees for paper pulp and the transportation to get it from here to there hadn't yet arrived on the scene?

Could it be that the publishing industry was on the rise in New York and that paper was sorely needed? Newspapers even advertised for women to save their rags (and old newspapers) for collection; the following poem appeared in a Massachusetts newspaper:

Rags are as beauties which concealed lie,
But when in paper how it charms the eye.
Pray save your rags, new beauties to discover,
For paper, truly, every one's a lover;
By the pen and press such knowledge is displayed
As wouldn't exist if paper was not made.
Wisdom of things, mysterious, divine,
Illustriously doth on paper shine.

Enter Nick Brown, the tin-peddler. He traded his tinware for Mother Wilder's "good, clean rags of wool and linen" (Farmer Boy, Chapter 12, "Tin-Peddler"), which he would then sell to a rag merchant for about four cents per pound. Laura Ingalls Wilder was astute to include the superior quality of Mrs. Wilder's rags, as there were at least five different categories of rags purchased by rag merchants. Mr. Brown's standing as a rag seller would depend on the quality of rags he collected, and while many fictional stories include a tin peddler as a lower class and dishonest traveling merchant (and excellent story-tellers), Mr. Brown seems to have been both honest and highly regarded by the Wilders.

In Farmer Boy, Mr. Brown gives token gifts of tinware to Eliza Jane, Alice, and Almanzo. One can only wonder if the "gift" the tin-peddler gave to Royal Wilder was the desire to become a traveling salesman?
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:30 PM

 
ways to celebrate laura ingalls wilder's birthday
1. Read a "Little House" book.
2. Bake gingerbread. Chocolate frosting adds to the goodness.
3. Share a bit of research you've been holding back.
4. Make a donation to a "Little House" heritage homesite.
5. Make another donation to a different "Little House" heritage homesite.
6. Wash your face in a frying pan.
7. Drop down on all fours and chase your kids around the woodbox.
8. Slide down a haystack. Or roll.
9. Write a letter. Turn the page and fill it the other way, too.
10. Give Little House in the Big Woods to a child who has never read it.
11. Invite friends over for oyster soup, biscuits, white frosted cake, and oranges.
12. Follow the moonpath.
13. Waste good candy on a pig.
14. Loosen your corset strings.
15. Wear your sunbonnet.
16. Curry the underside of a horse with a corncob.
17. Plant watermelon.
18. Watch the sun rise.
19. Make an air castle. Tie the corners with red yarn.
20. Braid your hair.
21. Change into a clean apron.
22. Sweeten the cornbread with the print of your hand.
23. Eat all the maple sugar you want. It never hurt anybody.
24. Slap a bear.
25. Holler 'nuff.
26. Buy a cap with earlaps.
27. Grow a beard.
28. Have your picture taken. Hold the chair arm so it looks like you're making a fist.
29. Don't eat the only bug in Dakota Territory.
30. Come from back east.
31. Get a leech on your leg, then dance like Nellie.
32. Tell the truth, but only if Ma and Pa ask you.
33. Fry some apples 'n onions.
34. Graduate from anything.
35. Learn to write copperplate.
36. Write a verse on your slate. Erase it.
37. Be glad that the little boys like you.
38. Exchange namecards.
39. Write a verse in a friend's autograph album.
40. Make a braided rug.
41. Fetch that frozen cod from the front room.
42. Wave your arms and shout, "Grasshopper weather! Grasshopper weather!"
43. Cut some paperdolls and dress them beautifully with bits of paper and ribbon.
44. Diagram a sentence.
45. Plan your garden.
46. Nibble half a cookie, then share the other half.
47. When you talk to your husband, try to include at least one "Oh, ______."
48. Carry a bale [sic] of hay in your teeth.
49. Pop your weasel.
50. Take a stab at writing down family receipts.
51. Play charades. Make sure you have an ax and some potatoes.
52. Compete against your mother in a jigging contest.
53. Sing Yankee-Doodle-de-do
54. Wear nothing but skins.
55. Buy a white pony without one strap.
56. Make bedshoes out of an old blanket.
57. Dig wintergreen berries of the snow. Share, or not.
58. When you laugh, try to make it sound like great bells ringing.
59. Explain about the shortest verse in the Bible.
60. Bake twelve blackbirds in a pie.
61. Grab the wool on a black sheep. Scream.
62. Jump up and down, shouting, "Lookie! Lookie!"
63. Stare at three parched corns.
64. Shake out your pet's bedding.
65. Write a book with your daughter.
66. Buy an earspoon for a loved one.
67. Wash your quilt by hand. Strong wrists help.
68. Give a chicken a grasshopper.
69. Bounce on your bed. Pretend it's a haystack. "I'm flying! I'm flying!"
70. Eat another scone with butter. Pretend it's the fish that's making you fat.
71. Renew your membership at a "Little House" site.
72. Move as beautifully as a cat.
73. Modulate your voice.
74. Dye your hair golden (it's much prettier than brown).
75. Offer to trade your best horse for a neighbor's child.
76. Be seen and not heard.
77. See how much sunshine you can soak into your bones.
78. For a change, buckle your bustle in back.
79. Put your leg through a screen door.
80. Let your butter speak for itself.
81. It's a good day to get a lunatic fringe.
82. Save the clippings for your switch.
83. When you disagree with someone, tell them they are "utterly too-too."
84. See how many pieces of hard candy you can cram in your mouth.
85. Now try to yell, "Yah, yah. Long-legged snipes!"
86. Contemplate the rings of a carrot.
87. Catch a gopher for your mother. You know she wants one.
88. Don't obey against your better judgment.
89. Wash, starch, and iron your curtains. Even if you live in a shanty, you can be decent.
90. Call your husband "The Man of the Place" today. And only today.
91. Sleep on a narrow sofa.
92. Flip that penny.
93. Mail all your "Little House" postcards. You can always buy more.
94. Be fascinated by angleworms.
95. Milk a cow from the wrong side.
96. Buy a broo-oom.
97. Call one of your friends by both their first and last names.
98. Bet somebody a cigar you can beat them at a game of checkers.
99. Only read part of today's newspaper. Save the rest for tomorrow.
100. No matter how mad you get, do not throw the blacking brush. Seriously. Don't throw it.
101. Offer to set up a Laura Ingalls Wilder display at your local library.
102. Make a button string.
103. Learn to knit.
104. Sew red catch-stitching on your underwear.
105. Sing a round.
106. Make butter.
107. Put an extra three dollars in the collection plate tomorrow.
108. Cross that bridge when you come to it.
109. Play both "Uncle John" =and= "Ring Around a Rosy."
110. Take a walk on the wild side: wear pink ribbons with your blue dress.
111. Make the toughest railroader back down.
112. Give a Laura Ingalls Wilder biography to a teacher.
113. Make a dish cupboard out of a packing crate.
114. Give away your prettiest Sunday School card.
115. Make fudge. Roll in bloodsucker shapes.
116. Walk a furrow barefooted.
117. Twirl 'round and 'round on the piano stool.
118. Let the other girls hold your doll.
119. Say "Good morning."
120. You wash. I'll wipe.
121. Plant a tree for each of your children.
122. Make rhubarb pie. Sugar optional.
123. Locate primary sources.
124. Eat honey from the comb.
125. Learn the difference between a homestead, a preemption, and a tree claim.
126. Spread the word that there was no Albert.
127. Remember a "Little House" site in your will.
128. Make your own raised print using alphabet noodles.
129. Throw a candy box out of a train window.
130. Make hailstone ice cream.
131. Grow geraniums in tin cans on your window sill.
132. Resist the urge to scratch under your flannels.
133. Marvel at a world that could not support both sage =and= onion in the stuffing.
134. Make praise-worthy buttonholes.
135. Covet an Indian baby.
136. Get a pet antelope.
137. Pick up and move.
138. Be thankful for plenty of meat left on the bones.
139. Just watch those darkeys' feet.
140. Eat a pound of crackers. How full do you feel?
141. Watch the wheels go 'round.
142. Buy your own damn copy of the Pioneer Girl manuscript.
- posted by pioneergirl at 8:46 PM

 
a silver streak at the edge of the sky

The St. Lawrence river showed like a streak of silver on the northern horizon and the forest trees on the Mt. slopes were a cloud of delicate green colors... - Farmer Boy manuscript, page 54

As the crow flies, it's only about six miles from Burke to the Canada border, and another fifteen miles north to the St. Lawrence River. And, as Almanzo pointed out, you really can see it in the distance, if you know where to look.
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:30 PM

 
it was springtime in the mountains

In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash'd palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle... and from this bush in the door-yard,
With delicate-color'd blossoms, and heart-shaped leves of rich green,
A sprig, with its flower, I break...
      -- From Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Courtyard Bloom'd", 1865"

In pre-Wilder-Association photographs of the Wilder farm like this one, there don't appear to have been any lilacs remaining between the road and house. Is that a lilac or a snowball growing by the front door today? I can't tell from the renovation photos, but it would be interesting to know if any evidence of plantings was found when digging for the new foundation in the 1990s. Lilacs can live for two hundred years (or more!), so it would have been possible for lilacs from the time of the Wilders to still be living today. (There is at least one maple tree near the house that does date from that time.) When Rose visited Malone, she wrote to her father that "there are old lilac bushes in the yard." (RWL to AJW, 1932)

Springtime to Almanzo - or to Laura who was writing his story and Rose who had recently been there - meant that the lilacs and snowball bushes were in bloom (no snowball bushes appear in the manuscript), and that violets and buttercups were blossoming in the pastures. Mother Wilder could apparently see a lilac from her bedroom window to the south, and Almanzo walks "between the rows of lilac blossoms up the front path from the road and in at the front, parlor door." (FB manuscript, page 54)

Where have all the lilacs gone?
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:30 PM

 
have you seen this tree?
I want one to plant. Or a branch big enough to make a walking stick out of. Or just some bark to play with. Even some fresh seeds will do in a pinch. Can you help?

That's a moosewood tree - Acer pennsylvanicum - the bark of which Almanzo might have used to braid his whip just like Father's big blacksnake whip (only blacksnake whips don't have wooden handles, and Almanzo's did, except not in the manuscript). Also known as the striped maple, Pennsylvania maple, leatherwood, whistlewood, moosefoot, or snakebark, the moosewood tree is a North American native maple that has smooth green bark with brilliant white stripes, and beautiful, large yellow leaves in the fall.

Or do I want the moosewood shrub - Dirca palustris - a native plant found in wet woodlands from New Brunswick to Florida? In the Farmer Boy manuscript, Almanzo "cut some moosewood bushes, peeled the bark from them and cut it into strips" and braids them into a whiplash. Strings of moosewood bark are also attached to the ends of the shoulder yokes that both Almanzo and his father wear; they hold the sap buckets during maple sugaring.

In size, moosewood (both Acer and Dirca)can be happy as a shrub or a tree up to forty feet in height, and both do best while growing in the shade of taller trees. As the moosewood tree matures, the bark becomes more and more cracked and striped with white, giving it a "snake-like" appearance. Rarely does a moosewood tree reach such heights, however, and it's the moosewood maple that is most common in upstate New York and locals believe was used by the Wilders. (See the Fall 2002 Farmer Boy News.)

Moosewood bark is so tough that it was used for gate hinges and emergency horse bridles, as well as whip lashes. Moosewood bark cannot be broken or torn; it must be cut. The bark can be removed in long, stringy pieces, light greenish-brown on the outside and warty or mottled, but smooth and straw-colored on the inside. It was also a favorite substitute for twine or strapping material. And some of us just want to grow enough to make a whip or two.
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:30 PM

 
almanzo just sat

Although not part of Laura Ingalls Wilder's fictional Farmer Boy story, the construction of the new Methodist Church was an important part of 1866-1867 Malone history. With over 200 members at the time the book begins, the congregation had out-grown its large, square frame building at the corner of Ft. Covington Road and Main Street, built in 1838 and known as Hedding Chapel. A lot was purchased at the corner of Main and Brewster Streets for just under $2000; it isn't known if the congregation financed the new building as they had the old, by fining church members between six and fifty cents each time they were absent from services!

Almanzo attended the $3,000 Hedding Chapel in the years before Farmer Boy, and the $40,000 Malone Methodist Episcopal Church until moving to Spring Valley, Minnesota, a half dozen years later. The new church was 100 feet long and seated eight hundred; it was dedicated on August 18, 1867. Once Hedding Chapel was no longer needed, it was used by neighboring St. Joseph's Catholic Church as their convent, then converted to a hotel and known as Franklin House, shown above.

When visiting Malone in 1932, Rose Wilder Lane sent her father a similar postcard view of the Hotel as the one shown above, and told him that "when the new church was built, the old one was sold and turned into a boarding house. It did so well that it was enlarged and enlarged and finally became this grand hotel, very smart and modern, but the old church building is still in it." (RWL to AJW, October 7, 1932). So what Almanzo must have remembered and described for Rose and Laura was the older building, since this is the one Rose seems to have investigated. Sadly, it is no longer standing.

The church and church barn were located at least twelve blocks from the Franklin County Fair Grounds, and four blocks from the City Park. Yet Father Wilder "parked" this far away from the Fourth of July festivities and County Fair and walked back to them. He may have ridden to town at ten miles per hour, but "what he did with the time he saved" was done on foot.
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:30 PM

 
must you yell like this guy?

As long as there have been warriors, there have been battle cries, and as long as there have been boys, there have been boys "yelling like Comanches," as Mother Wilder described Royal and Almanzo's noisy behavior while bringing in the bath water (see Farmer Boy, Chapter 7, "Saturday Night").

Both history and literature are full of descriptions of the Comanche yell. "It was a yell that made the very leaves shiver..." "The whole party, shaking their lances in the air, let forth with the most unearthly yell it was ever my misfortune to hear..." "A party of eight Comanches wheeled out of the chaos, and with a simultaneous burst of that infernal whoop, came thundering on at full speed..." If you grew up watching westerns on television, you've no doubt heard a version or two of this war-cry. And if, like me, you grew up thinking that the "Rebel yell" had been borrowed from the Indians, you might enjoy hearing some actual "Johnny Rebs" in action, filmed in 1938 during the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Did Mother Wilder really accuse Royal and Almanzo of yelling like Comanches? There is no bath scene in the Farmer Boy manuscript (how long would it take to heat a washtub of icicles, anyway?), no examination of ears, no frying of twisted doughnuts. The Comanches were known as fierce warriors, skilled hunters and excellent horsemen, and surely stories of the Texas Indian wars were interesting to Almanzo. At the time Farmer Boy takes place, the Comanches were definitely in the news; they were being forced to give up their lands and move to a reservation in the Oklahoma panhandle. By the 1870s, there were only a few thousand Comanches left, thanks to gifts from the white man: cholera and smallpox.
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:30 PM