Chapter 2: Crossing the Creek

"The rushing sound of water filled the still air. All along the creek banks the trees hung over it and make it dark with shadows. In the middle it ran swiftly, sparkling silver and blue.

'This creek's pretty high,' Pa said. 'But I guess we can make it all right. You can see this is a ford, by the old wheel ruts. What do you say, Caroline?'

'Whatever you say, Charles,' Ma answered."

Pa, Ma, and the girls have traveled for days and days across the Kansas prairie. Now they are approaching a creek down at the bottom of a valley. It is quiet and still in the bottom lands where the blowing wind doesn't reach, but the creek is rushing and gushing along. Pa wonders if it is safe to cross.

Laura wants Jack, their bulldog, to ride in the wagon with them, but Pa says he will be able to swim the creek just fine. They start across the creek, but when they are out in the middle the water suddenly starts to rise. Pa jumps into the creek to lead the swimming ponies across and Ma must take the reins. Ma tells Laura and Mary to lie still in the wagon, then covers them up with a thick, heavy quilt so they can't see and become frightened.

For many minutes the wagon sways in the water and the ponies swim, fighting to keep from being swept away by the flood. At last their wagon scrapes the bottom on the far side of the creek and they pull out of the swift current. Pa is glad they are safe and Ma's face starts to lose its scared look, but where is Jack?

Jack was swimming behind them when the flood hit, but now he is nowhere to be seen. Pa walks up and down the creek bank calling and calling for him, but there is no answer. Pa is sorry that he didn't let Jack ride in the wagon. Now the family must move on, climbing up, up, up out of the bottom lands and onto the high prairie.

Thoughts:

Well, this is a challenging chapter. What to do....what to do? Finley's been looking a little nervous ever since I completed the chapter, but I don't think I'm ready to drown him, even for an authentic Little House experience. I could take him swimming, but there is no liquid water in its natural habitat at this time of year. And giving him a bath in the tub, while it does involve intense canine suffering, doesn't seem like a very good comparison. So I guess Finley is safe...for now.


It may not be the most exciting of all the activities I've tried, but overall, I find making a salt dough map of Laura's journey to be much preferable to offing my faithful companion. My first step was to look up a recipe for salt dough on the internet---really, I don't know what pioneers did before the internet was invented. It is as follows:

Salt Dough

1 cup flour
1 cup salt
1/2 cup water.

You can change the ratio of salt to flour, with more flour giving you a smoother dough and more salt giving a grainy, rough texture. Mix it up, form your creations, then bake in the oven at a low temperature until done. This takes approximately forever, but baking them too fast causes bubbling, warping, and cracking.

Following this recipe will give you a dough that looks somewhat like biscuit or sugar cookie dough. Do not be fooled; it tastes like eating the ocean. Of course, it does open up certain possibilities to the practical joke-inclined person, but *I* would never be so cruel. As it turns out, I don't even have to be cruel if I hang around greedy, disobedient people.

See, it happened this way. My bowl of innocent-appearing dough was sitting on the counter when my sister came over. I happened to look up just as she reached in and pinched off a bite.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I screeched, stopping her in her tracks. She looked at me, eyes wide and startled. For a split second we both stood frozen, then moving with lightning speed she grabbed a piece and popped it into her mouth.

Oh, well. I tried. Now there was nothing left to do but sit back and enjoy the show.

Almost immediately her triumphant expression melted into one of horrified disgust. She raced for the trash can, wiping her tongue and spitting all at the same time. Over the sounds of my hysterical laughter I heard her plaintive wail, "I thought you were just trying to keep all the good stuff for yourself...."

So, like I said, there are possibilities for someone if they are so inclined.

Anyhoo, after the dough was mixed, I carefully rolled it out, transferred it to the pan, then traced out the shape from a map I got from---where else---the internet. I labored over it with love and care, working in the basic state shapes while my mom looked up topographical information. Just as I was finishing she handed me the first print out, for Wisconsin. Let's see, where is Wisconsin? WHERE IS WISCONSIN?!

I had completely forgotten to include Wisconsin. Thankfully, there was a little border left around the edges that I was planning to cut off, and since the Big Woods were in the bottom left region of the state, I was able to extend my map just a little. Except my mom, Wisconsin born and bred, seemed to feel that her state was being slighted somehow. Just because there's only a sliver of it showing!

Then it was time to paint it, something that I always enjoy. It is easy to make a painting of a large section of the earth look good; all you have to do is blend some colors together and it looks like it's supposed to. Adding the details was fun, and if the map lasts, I'll paint more as the tales progress. In fact, I had such a good time that I might make a more lasting and detailed one on paper sometime and offer it on the blog. We'll see.

Voila! The finished map of Laura's journey---much faster and less work than riding to Kansas in a covered wagon. Note: The first picture says "Big Woods" not "Bic Woods". That is a 'G' even if it doesn't look like one in the picture.





Of course, I don't think Laura and her family had to worry about giant, marauding kittens eating their settlement, so you can see we don't have everything easy!

Little House on the Prairie: Chapter 1

"A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. They drove away and left it lonely and empty in the clearing among the big trees, and they never saw that little house again."

The Big Woods are becoming very crowded. Sometimes they can hear a rifle shot that isn't Pa's. The path beside their house is becoming well traveled, with a wagon creaking past almost every day. Pa is ready to move on. The wild animals will not stay in a land so choked with people.

One dark morning, Grandma and Grandpa, all the aunts and uncles, and all the cousins gather around a wagon all packed with things from the little house. It is still winter and the air is cold, but Pa and Ma load the girls up and head off to Indian country. They have to get across the Mississippi before the ice breaks up.

It is a long way to Indian country. They must ride in their bouncing wagon across Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and into Kansas. Laura gets very tired of riding in the wagon, but they keep on, day after day, following the wagon tracks across the prairie.

Thoughts:
It certainly took a special breed of men to be pioneers. And it took an even more special breed of women to agree to go with them! If it had been me when Pa came and made his case for uprooting the whole family to go on a perilous journey so he doesn't have to listen to anyone else's rifle, I think I would have beaned him with a cast iron skillet. But it wasn't me, and so the West was won.

"One day in the very last of winter Pa said to Ma, "Seeing you don't object, I've decided to go see the West. I've had an offer for this place and we can sell it now for as much as we're ever likely to get, enough to give us a start in a new country."

I just love this. "Seeing you don't object." To uprooting the children, leaving behind every convenience you'd managed to scrape from the wilderness, drag your family across five states, and expose them to untold dangers. No, I'm sure Ma didn't object. Men can be so clueless sometimes; he probably thought the silent treatment was consent. But Ma loved Pa enough to go with him.

They had to face a large peril right at the start of the trip. Lake Pepin, a wide spot on the Mississippi River, had to be crossed before the ice broke up. It was late in the season, and there was absolutely no guarantee that their heavily loaded wagon wouldn't go crashing through the ice, drowning all of them on their first day of travel. Obviously they made it or the book series would have been a whole lot shorter, but nerve-wracking much?

Maybe it's because I'm especially not fond of drowning, but this particular experience really jumped out at me. The risk the Ingalls family took, the suspense of a mother not knowing if her decision would cost her children their lives---it's very gripping. So it was a natural for me to pick it for the blog.

Of course I don't have any scary lakes to cross, and I wouldn't cross them if I did (I lack the true pioneer spirit remember!), but I do have the place where the road flooded last spring. It's still underwater and now frozen over. Since I walked the thing while it was still liquid, I knew that it never came over my waist. Still, I felt precautions were in order. A good pioneer expects the unexpected...but doesn't that make it expected? Hmmmmmm.

Life jackets would have been nice, but since I didn't have any on hand, I went with the next best thing---inner tubes. I felt they added a jaunty aspect to our appearance, but certain sensitive teenagers disagreed. Oh, well, no ice time without 'em, so we suited up to the tune of murmured grumbles.

"Pa drove the wagon out onto the ice, following those wagon tracks. All around the wagon there was nothing but empty and silent space. Laura didn't like it. But Pa was on the wagon seat and Jack was under the wagon; she knew that nothing could hurt her while Pa and Jack were there."

The ice seemed thick, but we've had several warm days in the last week which added an authentic aura of risk to the whole endeavor. As authentically risky as one can be over waist-deep water and with an inner tube around one's middle. Hey, if we fell in we could get a cold, you know...

The sun was just setting, casting the whole scene in a golden glow as we made our careful way along the path. The water plants from last summer were still poking through the ice to mark the roadway, but even without them we could still tell where the road was. Over the road was a comforting opaque whiteness that dropped away into a sinister midnight blue on either side.

It is always longer to cross that section than it looks from the shore, whether you're worried about prowling pond slime monsters in summer or catastrophic ice collapses in winter, but eventually we made it and paused for a triumphant photo on the other side. Then we headed back across to try it again, this time on ice skates.

"Laura hadn't thought about it before, but now she thought what would have happened if the ice had cracked under the wagon wheels and they had all gone down into the cold water in the middle of that vast lake.

'You're frightening somebody, Charles,' Ma said, and Pa caught Laura up in his safe, big hug.

'We're across the Mississippi!', he said, hugging her joyously."

We had a great time, had some laughs, and created a fun memory in peaceful and beautiful surroundings, but that's kind of the key point. We only did it for fun; the Ingalls family did it for real and the stakes were a lot higher than getting their feet wet. I can't imagine being that brave (or foolish, depending on your point of view), but I'm glad that people did have that kind of courage, the courage to try new things and places.

Chapter 13: The Deer in the Wood

"The weather grew colder. In the mornings everything sparkled with frost. The days were growing short and a little fire burned all day in the cook stove to keep the stove warm. Winter was not far away.

The attic and the cellar were full of good things once more, and Laura and Mary had started to make patchwork quilts. Everything was beginning to be snug and cozy again."

As winter approaches, Pa sets out to put in a store of meat for the winter. He has made a deer-lick out in the woods where deer can come to lick the salt Pa puts out. After supper one night, Pa takes his rifle out into the woods. He will stay out all night, and in the morning there will be fresh venison.

But this time, there is no deer hanging from the tree when Laura and Mary wake up. Pa is busy working all day, and it's not until evening that he is able to sit down and tell them the story of his adventures in the Big Woods.

It had been a busy night at the deer-lick. First it was visited by a great big buck, but Pa was so captivated by its size and beauty that he never shot his rifle. Then came a great big black bear, but Pa was busy watching it and forgot to shoot. After that, a mother doe and her yearling visited the deer-lick, but Pa couldn't bring himself to shoot either of them.

Both Mary and Laura are glad that Pa didn't shoot the animals. They scamper off to bed and snuggle down underneath the warm, soft quilts. Pa plays his fiddle while Ma knits by the fire. The long evenings of music and firelight have come again.

Thoughts:
Not too many options for activities in this chapter. I could have gone deer hunting, but since I lacked, oh, pretty much EVERYTHING with which to go hunting, I decided to skip that one. I'm always a little paranoid about being mistaken for a deer anyway. I mean, if hunters can shoot a school bus by mistake, what chance do I have?

Making a doll quilt like Mary and Laura seemed much safer. Of course, nothing but hand-sewing would do, and I decided to keep a journal of my experiences.


Day 1: Today I picked out the fabric for my charming doll quilt. How exciting! I loved shopping amongst all the lovely fabrics; it was certainly hard to choose, but I feel I picked some very nice colors. My quilt will be a thing of beauty.






Day 2: Today I cut out the pieces for my adorable doll quilt. I've decided to do a basic appliqued heart pattern. Nothing too fancy---after all, this is all going to be done by hand. I'm sure it won't take me too long to finish such a simple little piece.




Day 10: Working on getting the hearts ready for application. I tried ironing the edges under, but that didn't work, so I had to do a basting/gathering stitch around the edge before I turned it under. Oh, well. Sewing is so relaxing I don't mind the extra work. I just wish I were making faster progress.


Day 36: Finished readying the hearts for sewing today. Found out that they are too big for their squares. No problem---ha, ha, ha. I still have plenty of fabric, so I'll just cut bigger squares. Crumbs. Just realized that I will have to re-cut all my other pieces now, too. Making this quilt is turning out to be a little more work than I thought, but it's worth it. So few people take the time to create things of lasting worth anymore. The modern world demands instant gratification; I'm glad to do my part to stem the tide and bring back an appreciation of old-fashioned values.

Day 54: Got three of my hearts sewn on. Lost the other one. Please tell me I don't have to start over with another one! I think I'll wait a few days and see if I can find it....


Day 75: Found the heart today. Now to sew it on. Hand sewing is trickier when you have cats that want to floss their teeth on your thread! Sometimes I have to sew standing up just so I can work without being attacked. But my quilt blocks are looking very nice. It's given me new energy to press on. Surely it won't be long now.

Day 92: Learned how to blanket stitch today. Tricky, but used the trusty ol' pioneer standby "You-tube Tutorial", so finally got it. To add to the authentic, rustic appeal I decided to make my stitches random and uneven. It was hard to overcome my native talent for perfect stitching, but I want this quilt to look just as if a young Laura Ingalls had stitched it herself.

Day 133: Finished the blanket stitching. Started to sew the actual quilt together. Am doing the same effect with my seams as with the blanket stitch---rustic and authentic. Beginning to doubt I will ever be finished, but trying to keep the faith. No wonder girls started working on quilts for their hope chest as soon as they could hold a needle! And many of them didn't marry until late in their 60's and 70's just so they could finish!

Day 198: Half-way done with the quilt top. Why didn't I make a hot pad?

Day 247: In the home stretch of the quilt top. Last border to put on. Discovered I forgot to make two of the sides longer to finish the rectangle. Will have to put in extra set of squares in the corners...no one will know it wasn't on purpose. Turns out to be a good thing I forgot, because, as the photo shows, I don't have enough fabric to make it all the way around and have to piece the final 3 inches.

Day 560: Completed the quilt top last night. My fingers have more holes in them than a colander. Whose stupid idea was this anyway?

Day 1,498: I have the quilt pinned to the batting and backing now. Beginning to work on the quilting. Slow going. Might not live to complete it....

Day 2,041: Still quilting. My fingers are killing me, and if I get one more needle under my fingernails, I'm going to scream.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Day 3,989: Quilting not done yet. Can't last much longer. Fingers three inches shorter...Several of them have left completely in protest.

Day 5,467:Done quilting! Only two more steps to completion--I have to baste on the binding, then stitch it on. I think I feel my strength being renewed. Wait.....wait....nope.

Day 12,468,391: Almost finished! Sewing on the buttons. Hands cramping. I'll never play the violin again..........



Day 3,450,183,693: Done! I made the last snip today. It was an event on par with the driving of the golden spike as far as historical significance is concerned. I think I might do this again sometime--oh, in another lifetime or so.





This is me before I started the quilt.



This is me after finishing the quilt.



Now that my beautiful doll quilt/wall hanging is finished I need to find it a nice home. If you want to be the lucky owner of such exquisite workmanship, post your favorite cookie recipe in the comments and I will draw a name randomly. Then I will sit around eating cookies and getting fat until my hands recover sufficiently to do anything else but lift baked goods to my mouth.

For entry in the drawing post your recipe no later than February 15, 2012. If you don't know me outside of the blog, make sure to check back and see if you won because I will have other no way of letting you know. Also, if you try to comment and it won't let you, just email your recipe entry in if you know me and I will post it. Good luck!

Chapter 12: The Wonderful Machine

"'It would have taken Henry and Peterson and me a couple of weeks apiece to thresh as much grain with flails as that machine threshed today. We wouldn't have got as much wheat, either, and it wouldn't have been as clean.

'That machine's a great invention!' he said. 'Other folks can stick to old-fashioned ways if they want to, but I'm all for progress. It's a great age we're living in. As long as I raise wheat, I'm going to have a machine come and thresh it, if there's one anywhere in the neighborhood.'

Pa was too tired that night to talk to Laura, but Laura was proud of him. It was Pa who had got the other men to stack their wheat together and send for the threshing machine, and it was a wonderful machine. Everybody was glad it had come."

The closer winter comes, the busier life is at the cabin in the Big Woods. Ma works all day preserving summer's bounty so it can be enjoyed during the winter. Carrots, turnips, and potatoes are all dug and put away. Pumpkins are harvested and cooked down for eating and pie making. Corn is hulled and turned into hominy. The girls help by spending long hours gathering the many different kinds of nuts.

Ma also takes the straw from some of the oats and soaks it. When it is soft, she braids long braids to be used for hat making. Ma can make beautiful hats, and Laura is learning to do it, too, by making a hat for Charlotte.

One exciting day, a clankity-clackity machine comes down the road. It is the threshing machine, run by a crew of men who all expect to be fed. All the extra work in the kitchen is a sacrifice Pa is willing to make, because it saves him untold hours of work in the field. How wonderful the new machine is!

Thoughts:
I happened to be reading this chapter right during harvest time out here on the prairie. From morning until late into the night, giant farm machinery could be seen rushing back and forth across acres of fields. The harvest must be got in, and you can sleep when it's winter or you're dead, which ever comes first.

I wanted to do the chapter using one of the modern harvesters. It would have been very interesting to see how technology has changed since Pa Ingall's day. For instance, I don't think that horsepower is counted in real horses anymore! But just in case that didn't work out, I picked up a cooking pumpkin one of my trips to Williston.

My pumpkin sat for over a month, no doubt growing smug in its belief that it would not be needed after all. Surely I would be able to focus on harvesters and it would be allowed to grow old gracefully as a genteel autumn table decoration. But unfortunately, I never got around to the fascinating study of harvesters, and in the end, it all boiled down, if you'll pardon the pun, to the pumpkin.

"With the butcher knife Ma cut the big, orange -colored pumpkins into halves. She cleaned the seeds out of the center and cut the pumpkin into long slices, from which she pared the rind. Laura helped her cut the slices into cubes."


It was a sad day for my pumpkin, but it had to be done.








"All the water and juice must be boiled away, and the pumpkin must never burn."



I put the cubed pumpkin chunks in water to boil, then went back to cooking and eating lunch. The pumpkin boiled merrily away, and kept right on going! Before I knew it, the water was all gone, and my golden chunks were sticking to the bottom of the kettle with an odor suspiciously similar to char. Well, maybe it wouldn't hurt if the pumpkin burned a little...



After the pumpkin was cooked, I mashed it and began the process of boiling it down. I tried to gain clues from a careful reading of the text--"thick, dark, good-smelling mass", "rich brown stewed pumpkin", that sort of thing. Not exactly a precise recipe! How thick was thick? How dark was dark? And did it count if some of the darkness was from the charcoal?

At long last, I decided the pumpkin must be done. If I boiled out any more moisture, I'd be spraying pumpkin dust when I took the first bite. Now, oh joy, it was time to taste this delectable treat.

"Ma never allowed them to play with their food at table; they must always eat nicely everything that was set before them, leaving nothing on their plates. But she did let them make the rich, brown stewed pumpkin into pretty shapes before they ate it."

Ah! A reprieve! I set to work sculpting. And sculpting. And sculpting. At last, everything that could be sculpted was sculpted.

There remained but to try it. I will draw the veil over the next few moments. Mainly because the one picture I took of me eating it was ridiculously unflattering (at least I know what I'll look like at 50!), and there was no way I was doing a do-over for a better shot. One bite. That was it. No clean plate, no matter what Ma would say about that. I don't know what her version tasted like, but if it tasted anything like mine, treats have improved in the intervening years. I could market that stuff as a dietary aid. Taste it and your appetite leaves you. But Laura was right about one thing, you can make pretty pictures out of it.

A Rare Literary Find

The lost chapter

It's been quite a while since my last Little House post due to a very exciting event in the literary community....the discovery of a lost chapter of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Recently, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Preservation Society has been renovating the recreated cabin from Little House in the Big Woods. Buried in the right-hand corner, under the concrete foundation, was an old-looking package wrapped in brittle duct tape.

The contents were 5 typed pages that, after rigorous examination by a panel of experts, have been determined to be hand-written by Pa Ingalls himself. It details a previously unknown period of time in the Ingalls saga.

It seems that one fall a tragedy occurred that could have brought an early end to Laura's tales. Late one September, Pa suddenly realized that he had done no winterizing to the cabin all summer long. Winter was rapidly approaching, and without dramatic intervention, the family would freeze to death.

Undaunted by this seemingly insurmountable circumstance, Pa devoted the next month and a half to unceasing labor. His job was made harder by the fact that most of what he needed hadn't been invented yet. So Pa set to work creating a primitive oil refinery to develop the petroleum products he needed for covering the windows with plastic, a loom to create the first duct tape recorded, and a furnace to spin glass fibers for basic fiberglass insulation.

After invention came installation, and Pa spent many, MANY hours putting all of his clever devices into use. Of course, Ma was right by his side, and being gifted with truly hardy pioneer spirit, refrained from pointing out that if Pa had done it when he was supposed to, he wouldn't be in such a rush now.

When I learned of this stunning lost chapter, I simply had to include it in my blog. I have followed Pa's account as closely as possible, though of course all the products are already available to me. I don't have to invent them, thank goodness, because just installing them has proven to be enough of a project! It has been a truly unforgettable experience, but I am glad to be finished and ready to pick up the less strenuous "known chapters."

Chapter 11: Harvest

"Pa and Uncle Henry were out in the field, cutting the oats with cradles. A cradle was a sharp steel blade fastened to a framework of wooden slats that caught and held the stalks of grain when the blade cut them. Pa and Uncle Henry carried the cradles by their long, curved handles, and swung the blades into the standing oats. When they had cut enough to make a pile, they slid the cut stalks off the slats, into neat heaps on the ground....It was very hard work, walking around and around the field in the hot sun."

Harvest has come to the Big Woods. To make the work lighter, the families trade labor; Uncle Henry helps at Pa's and Pa helps Uncle Henry. The wives work in the house and the children have a wonderful time playing in the yard.

It's a wonderful system that everyone enjoys but the men working in the field...until it develops a fatal flaw for one selfish boy. There is a storm threatening, and Cousin Charley is told he must leave the frolicking children and help the men in the fields. He can fetch them water and bring the whetstone when the blade needs sharpening. Charley is not pleased.

Out in the field, Charley gets in the way as much as possible. He hides the whetstone so they can't find it, and doesn't bring the water jug until his father shouts several times for him. But then he gets an even better idea on how to punish his father. He goes across the field and screams loudly.

Pa and Uncle Henry drop everything and sprint across the oats to where they heard his cries, only to find Charley laughing and saying, "I fooled you THAT time!" This was repeated three more times.

Then Charley screams one more time. Uncle Henry says to Pa, "Let 'im scream." But the screaming goes on and on. Charley jumps up and down and screams and screams. At last Uncle Henry decides to see if there is really something wrong.

Charley is covered in yellow jackets and has been stung from head to foot. Pa and Uncle Henry help him get the yellow jackets off, then send him back to the house for some first aid from Ma and Aunty Polly.

Thoughts:
This was a very enjoyable chapter for me. At last we find out that not all of the sturdy pioneer children were complete angels (even if none of the naughty ones lived in the cabin with Pa and Ma). In fact, some of them acted a lot like naughty children I happen to know personally! How refreshing.

For this chapter, I have chosen to bring in a guest blog participant. For no particular reason. I just randomly thought of him as someone who could fill the roll of Charley as I recreated the frontier remedy for acute wasp stings. I invited Young Devon out to my house to be the first featured guest in my blog!

When he arrived, he strode through the door, singing out, "Oh, Aunty! I have come to model for your blo-og!"

We drove down to the nearest slough where I was sure to find a plethora of mud just ready for any wasp sting victims that might happen by. Devon was still a little puzzled as to what his role would be. Just to add spice to his life, I didn't tell him ahead of time, nor did I tell him why I was doing it when I started. "You will get to read the blog and be surprised."


We walked down to the water and chose a nice swampy spot. "What are you doing, Aunty?"

Splurt!

"Never mind, Aunty, I've changed my mind!" Devon tried to hurtle to freedom, but wasn't quite fast enough to escape his destiny.

"But Devon, think of the honor! You are the first guest in the whole blog!"

Devon was unimpressed by the honor. I was unimpressed with Devon's lack of impression and went to work with a will, though in the interests of hygiene and kindness, I did leave his face free of muck.




After a thorough coating of mud to take the poisons out, it was time to wrap the squirmy little bundle. I think the real Charley was in too much pain to hop around and squeal quite as much as Devon. Plus he kept trying to tip over backward every time we wrapped a little too vigorously.







Tempting as it would have been to leave him for several days until the "poisons" were completely gone, Laura and I set him free after taking his picture. Then it was time for the fun part....at least, the fun part for Devon. My fun part had happened several moments before!





I'm not sure that Devon would appreciate this as a treatment for bee or wasp stings, but when there's no ER or antihistamines for, oh, a hundred more years or so, it's a better alternative than dying. The chapter ends before we find out if Charley learned his lesson, but let's hope so. I'd hate to see what it would take to get his attention of this experience failed to do so.

Chapter 10: Summertime

"Now it was summertime, and people went visiting. Sometimes Uncle Henry, or Uncle George, or Grandpa came riding out of the Big Woods to see Pa...Sometimes a neighbor sent word that the family was coming to spend the day. Then Ma did extra cleaning and cooking, and opened the package of store sugar. And on the day set, a wagon would come driving up to the gate in the morning and there would be strange children to play with."

Summer is a pleasant time in the Big Woods. The grass is long and thick, the breezes soft and refreshing, and the days long and warm. It is the perfect time for visiting back and forth and Laura and Mary enjoy having friends to play with. Of course Mary is much better behaved and angelic with her long blond hair.

It is the difference in hair color in fact, that leads to a sad moment in Laura's day. After a special visit from their aunt, who prudently declares she loves BOTH blond and brown hair best, Mary whispers to Laura, "Aunt Lottie likes my hair best anyway. Golden hair is lots prettier than brown."

Laura is so filled with indignation that she slaps Mary right on her angelic little face. Pa sees what happens (not that Mary wouldn't have told!) and gives Laura a whipping, after which Laura must sit in a chair. Laura feels very sorry for herself, but deep down is somewhat comforted by the knowledge that Mary now has to fill the chip bucket all by herself.

Summer days and good fresh feed for the cows means that it's time for making cheese. First a calf must be killed, one that has never had any other feed but milk. Laura is relieved to hear that Uncle Henry is going to kill one of HIS cows and will share enough of the stomach for Ma to get the rennet she needs to make cheese.

Cheese making is a complicated process, and Ma works for many days making a wheel each day until her pantry is full of enough cheese to last another year. Meanwhile, Pa has an adventure of his own when he finds a honey tree and brings back tubs and buckets full of sweet, sticky comb, plenty of honey for the family to enjoy during the long, cold winter to come.

Thoughts:
It has taken me quite some time to get this chapter done. I decided early on that I wanted to make cheese, but had some difficulty finding the ingredients, and once I had what I needed, had difficulty finding a two day stretch where I had the time. As it turned out, cheese making was a much shorter process than I anticipated.

"Pa went again to Uncle Henry's, and came back with a piece of the little calf's stomach. It was like a piece of soft, grayish-white leather, all ridged and rough on one side."

I tried to find a calf's stomach, but nobody around here butchers their calves. If I'd been on this chapter a couple weeks earlier when we had the late blizzard, I could have found calves a-plenty since so many of them died in the storm. But now there was none available, and perhaps that is just as well. I think I am developing a weird enough reputation in the town as it is.

Certain well-intentioned family members suggested the stomach of a full-grown cow, but that was quickly rejected by me. Not even I want to tackle such a large and unwieldy organ. Especially since the preserving instructions require inflating it, salting it, then hanging it in a dark closet for about three months.

I searched for rennet tabs to no avail, but my mom finally found some in Plentywood. No one had recognized them by the term "rennet" because the brand name is "Junket". Now I was set and only needed to find the time. Last night, I found it.

The first step in making cheese is to inoculate your milk with live cultures. This is done by heating it to room temperature, pouring in a bit of buttermilk, then leaving it to sit out overnight. At 11:00 last night, I was sterilizing a pot and preparing to add culture to my hitherto uncouth Vitamin D milk.

Wrapping the lid with plastic to keep the flies out, I went to bed mildly disgusted by a food that required rotting in order to produce it. I didn't wake up until 9:00, in part because of my late bedtime the night before and in part due to it being the first night home for our new kitten, who decided to cry at various intervals. When he wasn't sneaking up on me and poking me with his cold nose to see if I was dead.

"A bit of rennet, tied in a cloth, was soaking in warm water."

The next step in making cheese is to gently heat the milk and pour in the rennet, which has been dissolved in water. I did this, noting with pleasure that the buttermilk had definitely made a difference in the milk, which was showing signs of curdling already, even before adding the rennet.

When the milk was just the right temperature (about 86 degrees), I added the rennet and left the milk to sit. It is critical that the milk not be jostled at this stage in order to achieve that Shangri-la state known as "a clean break". This is where the milk solidifies into a jelly-like mass of curds ready for cutting. I left it extra long to make sure it had plenty of time for the magic to work.

"When the milk was heated enough, Ma squeezed every drop of water from the rennet in the cloth, and she poured the water into the milk. She stirred it well and left it in a warm place by the stove. In a little while it thickened into a smooth, quivery mass."

At the end of the time, it didn't look quite right to me, but I cut it anyway and then plunged my unwilling hand into mix the curds like the instructions said. The mass disintegrated into a sodden pot of soured milk. This was not looking good, and I did what any pioneer woman would in that situation. I rushed to my computer and looked up cheese making articles.

What I found was the death-knell to any hopes that there was a fix to this. On a page devoted to the problems associated with getting that clean break, I read that "If you add too little starter, the milk will not be acid enough for the rennet to work. If you add too much, the milk may get over acidified and curdle. Over acidified milk is recognize the by a slight thickening (clabbering) of the milk. The milk should look exactly like regular milk when the rennet is added. If the milk is even slightly clabbered, you will NEVER get a clean break." I remembered the slight curdling of the milk before the rennet was added and I knew my buttermilk must have been too acidic for the job.

Like so many traditional tasks of the home-maker of yore, cheese-making is one that is simple if you know how and have been taught the mysterious sense of rightness that only experience can give. How am I supposed to know how acidic my buttermilk is? Send it to therapy? But the accomplished farm wife would simply "know".

"Then Ma wrapped each cheese in paper and laid it away on the high shelf. There was nothing more to do with it but eat it."

Alas, there was nothing left for me to do but throw the batch out. Perhaps I will try again someday, since I am ever loathe to let anything defeat me, but it will have to be a task for another day. For now, I am content to admire the skill of the farm wife and acknowledge her superiority over her modern sisters.