Description:
The first in the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, it's based on decades-old memories of her early childhood in the Big Woods near Pepin, WI, in the late 19th century.
In the book, Laura turns 6, but she was actually 3. Little House in the Big Woods describes the homesteading skills Laura observed and began to practice during her fifth year. Hard work is the rule, though fun is often made in the midst of it. Laura gathers woodchips, and helps Ma and Pa when they butcher animals. Laura and Mary have great fun roasting a pig’s tail and blowing up the pig’s bladder for a ball to play with. Laura also helps Ma prese
The first in the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, it's based on decades-old memories of her early childhood in the Big Woods near Pepin, WI, in the late 19th century.
In the book, Laura turns 6, but she was actually 3. Little House in the Big Woods describes the homesteading skills Laura observed and began to practice during her fifth year. Hard work is the rule, though fun is often made in the midst of it. Laura gathers woodchips, and helps Ma and Pa when they butcher animals. Laura and Mary have great fun roasting a pig’s tail and blowing up the pig’s bladder for a ball to play with. Laura also helps Ma preserve the meat. They put the hams and shoulders in brine before smoking, and help make the sausage balls and head cheese. This is all in preparation for the upcoming winter, since there are no grocery stores from which to get food or refrigerators in which to keep it. Fall is a very busy time, because the harvest from the garden and fields must be brought in as well.
The cousins come for the winter holidays that year, and Laura receives a doll, which she names Charlotte. Get-togethers with relatives are often a combination of work and play, as big jobs are made easier and more fun with many hands. Later that winter, the family goes to Grandma Ingalls’ and has a “sugaring off,” when they harvest sap and make maple syrup and brown sugar! Laura makes snow candy, and eats syrup and brown sugar and good things till she feels about to burst! They return home with buckets of syrup, enough to last the year. Laura remembered that sugaring off for the rest of her life.
Each season has its work, which the author makes attractive by the good things that result. In the spring, the cow has a calf, so there are milk, butter and cheese. To make cheese, Rennet (part of a calf’s stomach) is boiled in the milk to cause the curd and the whey to separate. Ma takes the curd and saves the whey. She and Laura and Mary put the curd in the cheese hoop, and set a board and a weight to make any extra whey run out of the curd. Ma and Laura let the hoop sit overnight, and then they remove the new cheese, sew a cloth tightly around it and rub it all over with butter. Finally they wrap the cheese in paper and store it. To make the butter, Ma and Mary use a butter churn to churn the cream until there are lumps of butter in the churn. Laura loved drinking the fresh buttermilk after Ma rinsed the butter and salted it!
That summer and fall, the Ingalls again plant a garden and fields, and store food for the winter. Laura’s Pa trades labor with other farmers so that his own crops will be harvested faster when it is time. Not all work was farming. Hunting and gathering were important parts of providing for the family as well. When Pa went into the woods to hunt, he usually came home with a deer then smoked the meat for the coming winter. One day he noticed a bee tree and returned from hunting early to get the wash tub and milk pail to collect the honey. When Pa returned in the evenings, Laura and Mary always begged him to play his fiddle.[9] In the winter, they enjoyed the comforts of their home and danced to Pa’s fiddle playing. Laura was happy that winter, knowing that she was safe and snug in her little house in the Big Woods.
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Manufacturer: HarperCollins
Release date: 19 July 1971
ISBN-10 : 0064400018 |
ISBN-13: 9780064400015
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