In Little Town on the Prairie, Pa sells the heifer to make some money to help send Mary to college. He says he ought to get “all of fifteen dollars” for the calf.
In The Long Winter, Pa doesn’t butcher his cow or the heifer calf, even when the family is down to eating only brown bread and precious little of that. Mr. Foster butchered his oxen, though, and sold everything down to the gristle for twenty-five cents a pound.
Seems to me that if Charles Ingalls had butchered and sold even just the heifer calf during the Hard Winter, he could have made a lot more than the $15 he was excited to be making just a few months later. Sixty pounds of meat/gristle at 25 cents per pound is $15. A year old heifer is going to weigh, oh, at least 500 pounds, depending on its breed and what it’s been fed (precious little other than hay, in the case of Charles Ingalls’ heifer).
But think of the good gravy to go on the brown bread and how Carrie’s mouth watered at even the thought of beef!
