Farmer Boy

by Laura Ingalls Wilder

  Spareribs, backbones, hearts, livers, tongues, and all the sausagemeat had to go into the woodshed attic. Father and Joe hung the quarters of beef there, too. The meat would freeze in the attic, and stay frozen all winter.

  Butchering was finished that night. French Joe and Lazy John went whistling home, with fresh meat to pay for their work, and Mother baked spareribs for supper. Almanzo loved to gnaw the meat from the long, curved, flat bones. He liked the brown pork-gravy, too, on the creamy mashed potatoes.

  All the next week Mother and the girls were hard at work, and Mother kept Almanzo in the kitchen to help. They cut up the pork fat and boiled it in big kettles on the stove. When it was done, Mother strained the clear hot lard through white cloths into big stone jars.

  Crumbling brown cracklings were left inside the cloth after Mother squeezed it, and Almanzo sneaked a few and ate them whenever he could. Mother said they were too rich for him. She put them away to be used for seasoning cornbread.

  Then she made the headcheese. She boiled the six heads till the meat came off the bones; she chopped it and seasoned it and mixed it with liquor from the boiling, and poured it into six-quart pans. When it was cold it was like jelly, for a gelatine had come out of the bones.

  Next Mother made mincemeat. She boiled the best bits of beef and pork and chopped them fine. She mixed in raisins and spices, sugar and vinegar, chopped apples and brandy, and she packed two big jars full of mincemeat. It smelled delicious, and she let Almanzo eat the scraps left in the mixing-bowl.

  All this time he was grinding sausagemeat. He poked thousands of pieces of meat into the grinder and turned the handle round and round, for hours and hours. He was glad when that was I finished. Mother seasoned the meat and molded it into big balls, and Almanzo had to carry all those balls into the woodshed attic and pile them up on clean cloths. They would be there, frozen, all winter, and every morning Mother would mold one ball into little cakes and fry them for breakfast.

  The end of butchering-time was candle-making.

  Mother scrubbed the big lard-kettles and filled them with bits of beef fat. Beef fat doesn’t make lard; it melts into tallow. While it was melting, Almanzo helped string the candle-molds.

  A candle-mold was two rows of tin tubes, fastened together and standing straight up on six feet. There were twelve tubes in a mold. They were open at the top, but tapered to a point at the bottom, and in each point there was a tiny hole.

  Mother cut a length of candle-wicking for each tube. She doubled the wicking across a small stick, and twisted it into a cord. She licked her thumb and finger, and rolled the end of the cord into a sharp point. When she had six cords on the stick, she dropped them into six tubes, and the stick lay on top of the tubes. The points of the cords came through the tiny holes in the points of the tubes, and Almanzo pulled each one tight, and held it tight by sticking a raw potato on the tube’s sharp point.

  When every tube had its wick, held straight and tight down its middle, Mother carefully poured the hot tallow. She filled every tube to the top. Then Almanzo set the mold outdoors to cool.

  When the tallow was hard, he brought the mold in. He pulled off the potatoes. Mothers dipped the whole mold quickly into the boiling water, and lifted the sticks. Six candles came up on each stick.

  Then Almanzo cut them off the stick. He trimmed the ends of wicking off the flat ends, and he left just enough wicking to light, on each pointed end. And he piled the smooth, straight candles in waxy-white piles.

  All one day Almanzo helped Mother make candles. That night they had made enough candles to last till butchering-time next year.

  Chapter 23

  Cobbler

  Mother was worrying and scolding because the cobbler had not come. Almanzo’s moccasins were worn to rags, and Royal had outgrown last year’s boots. He had slit them all around to get his feet in them. Their feet ached with cold, but nothing could be done until the cobbler came.

  It was almost time for Royal and Eliza Jane and Alice to go to the Academy, and they had no shoes. And still the cobbler didn’t come.

  Mother’s shears went snickety-snick through the web of beautiful sheep’s-gray cloth she had woven. She cut and fitted and basted and sewed, and she made Royal a handsome new suit, with a greatcoat to match. She made him a cap with flaps that buttoned, like boughten caps.

  For Eliza Jane she made a new dress of wine-colored cloth, and she made Alice a new dress of indigo blue. The girls were ripping their old dresses and bonnets, sponging and pressing them and sewing them together again the other side out, to look like new.

  In the evenings Mother’s knitting-needles flashed and clicked, making new stockings for them all. She knitted so fast that the needles got hot from rubbing together. But they could not have new shoes unless the cobbler came in time.

  He didn’t come. The girl’s skirts hid their old shoes, but Royal had to go to the Academy in his fine suit, with last year’s boots that were slit all around and showed his white socks through. It couldn’t be helped.

  The last morning came. Father and Almanzo did the chores. Every window in the house blazed with candle-light, and Almanzo missed Royal in the barn.

  Royal and the girls were all dressed up at breakfast. No one ate much. Father went to hitch up, and Almanzo lugged the carpet-bags downstairs. He wished Alice wasn’t going away.

  The sleigh-bells came jingling to the door, and Mother laughed and wiped her eyes with her apron. They all went out to the sleigh. The horses pawed and shook jingles from the bells. Alice tucked the lap robe over her bulging skirts, and Father let the horses go. The sleigh slid by and turned into the road. Alice’s black-veiled face looked back and she called:

  “Good-by! Good-by!”

  Almanzo did not like that day much. Everything seemed large and still and empty. He ate dinner all alone with Father and Mother. Chore-time was earlier because Royal was gone. Almanzo hated to go into the house and not see Alice. He even missed Eliza Jane.

  After he went to bed he lay awake and wondered what they were doing, five long miles away.

  Next morning the cobbler came! Mother went to the door and said to him:

  “Well, this is a pretty time to be coming, I must say! Three weeks late, and my children as good as barefoot!”

  But the cobbler was so good-natured that she couldn’t be angry long. It wasn’t his fault; he had been kept three weeks at one house, making shoes for a wedding.

  The cobbler was a fat, jolly man. His cheeks and his stomach shook when he chuckled. He set up his cobbler’s bench in the dining-room by the window, and opened his box of tools. Already he had Mother laughing at his jokes. Father brought last year’s tanned hides, and he and the cobbler discussed them all morning.

  Dinner-time was gay. The cobbler told all the news, he praised Mother’s cooking, and he told jokes till Father roared and Mother wiped her eyes. Then the cobbler asked Father what he should make first, and Father answered: “I guess you better begin with boots for Almanzo.”

  Almanzo could hardly believe it. He had wanted boots for so long. He had thought he must wear moccasins until his feet stopped growing so fast.

  “You’ll spoil the boy, James,” Mother said, but Father answered:

  “He’s big enough now to wear boots.”

  Almanzo could hardly wait for the cobbler to begin.

  First the cobbler looked at all the wood in the woodshed. He wanted a piece of maple, perfectly seasoned, and with a straight, fine grain.

  When he found it, he took his small saw, and he sawed off two thin slabs. One was exactly an inch thick; the other was a half inch thick. He measured, and sawed their corners square.

  He took the slabs to his cobbler’s bench, and sat down, and opened his box of tools. It was divided into little compartments, and every kind of cobbler’s tool was neatly laid in them.

  The cobbler laid the thicker slab of maplewood on the bench before him. He took a long, sharp knife and cut the whole top of the slab into tiny ridges. T
hen he turned it around and cut ridges the other way, making tiny, pointed peaks.

  He laid the edge of a thin, straight knife in the groove between two ridges, and gently tapped it with a hammer. A thin strip of wood split off, notched all along one side. He moved the knife, and tapped it, till all the wood was in strips. Then holding a strip by one end, he struck his knife in the notches, and every time he struck, a shoe-peg split off. Every peg was an inch long, an eighth of an inch square, and pointed at the end.

  The thinner piece of maple he made into pegs, too, and those pegs were half an inch long.

  Now the cobbler was ready to measure Almanzo for his boots.

  Almanzo took off his moccasins and his socks, and stood on a piece of paper while the cobbler carefully drew around his feet with his big pencil. Then the cobbler measured his feet in every direction, and wrote down the figures.

  He did not need Almanzo any more now, so Almanzo helped Father husk corn. He had a little husking-peg, like Father’s big one. He buckled the strap around his right mitten, and the wooden peg stood up like a second thumb, between his thumb and fingers.

  He and Father sat on milking-stools in the cold barnyard by the corn-shocks. They pulled ears of corn from the stalks; they took the tips of the dry husks between thumb and husking pegs, and stripped the husks off the ear of corn. They tossed the bare ears into bushel baskets.

  The stalks and rustling long dry leaves they laid in piles. The young stock would eat the leaves.

  When they had husked all the corn they could reach, they hitched their stools forward, and slowly worked their way deeper into the tasseled shocks of corn. Husks and stalks piled up behind them. Father emptied the full baskets into the corn-bins, and the bins were filling up.

  It was not very cold in the barnyard. The big barns broke the cold winds, and the dry snow shook off the cornstalks. Almanzo’s feet were aching, but he thought of his new boots. He could hardly wait till supper-time to see what the cobbler had done.

  That day the cobbler had whittled out two wooden lasts, just the shape of Almanzo’s feet. They fitted upside-down over a tall peg on his bench, and they would come apart in halves.

  Next morning the cobbler cut soles from the thick middle of the cowhide, and inner soles from the thinner leather near the edge. He cut uppers from the softest leather. Then he waxed his thread.

  With his right hand he pulled a length of linen thread across the wad of black cobbler’s wax in his left palm, and he rolled the thread under his right palm, down the front of his leather apron. Then he pulled it and rolled it again. The wax made a crackling sound, and the cobbler’s arms went out and in, out and in, till the thread was shiny-black and stiff with wax.

  Then he laid a stiff hog-bristle against each end of it, and he waxed and rolled, waxed and rolled, till the bristles were waxed fast to the thread. At last he was ready to sew. He laid the upper pieces of one boot together, and clamped them in a vise. The edges stuck up, even and firm. With his awl the cobbler punched a hole through them. He ran the two bristles through the hole, one from each side, and with his strong arms he pulled the thread tight. He bored another hole, ran the two bristles through it, and pulled till the waxed thread sank into the leather. That was one stitch.

  “Now that’s a seam!” he said. “Your feet won’t get damp in my boots, even if you go wading in them. I never sewed a seam yet that wouldn’t hold water.”

  Stitch by stitch he sewed the uppers. When they were done, he laid the soles to soak in water overnight.

  Next morning he set one of the lasts on his peg, the sole up. He laid the leather inner-sole on it. He drew the upper part of a boot down over it, folding the edges over the inner sole. Then he laid the heavy sole on top, and there was the boot, upside-down on the last.

  The cobbler bored holes with his awl, all around the edge of the sole. Into each hole he drove one of the short maple pegs. He made a heel of thick leather, and pegged it in place with the long maple pegs. The boot was done.

  The damp soles had to dry overnight. In the morning the cobbler took out the lasts, and with a rasp he rubbed off the inside ends of the pegs.

  Almanzo put on his boots. They fitted perfectly, and the heels thumped grandly on the kitchen floor.

  Saturday morning Father drove to Malone to bring home Alice and Royal and Eliza Jane, to be measured for their new shoes. Mother was cooking a big dinner for them, and Almanzo hung around the gate, waiting to see Alice again.

  She wasn’t a bit changed. Even before she jumped out of the buggy she cried:

  “Oh, Almanzo, you’ve got new boots!” She was studying to be a fine lady; she told Almanzo all about her lessons in music and deportment, but she was glad to be at home again.

  Eliza Jane was more bossy than ever. She said Almanzo’s boots made too much noise. She even told Mother that she was mortified because Father drank tea from his saucer.

  “My land! how else would he cool it?” Mother asked.

  “It isn’t the style to drink out of saucers any more,” Eliza Jane said. “Nice people drink out of the cup.”

  “Eliza Jane!” Alice cried. “Be ashamed! I guess Father’s as nice as anybody!”

  Mother actually stopped working. She took her hands out of the dishpan and turned round to face Eliza Jane.

  “Young lady,” she said, “if you have to show off your fine education, you tell me where saucers come from.”

  Eliza Jane opened her mouth, and shut it, and looked foolish.

  “They come from China,” Mother said. “Dutch sailors brought them from China, two hundred years ago, the first time sailors ever sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and found China. Up to that time, people drank out of cups; they didn’t have saucers. Ever since they’ve had saucers, they’ve drunk out of them. I guess a thing that folks have done for two hundred years we can keep on doing. We’re not likely to change, for a new-fangled notion that you’ve got in Malone Academy.”

  That shut up Eliza Jane.

  Royal did not say much. He put on old clothes and did his share of the chores, but he did not seem interested. And that night in bed he told Almanzo he was going to be a storekeeper.

  “You’re a bigger fool than I be, if you drudge all your days on a farm,” he said.

  “I like horses,” said Almanzo.

  “Huh! Storekeepers have horses,” Royal answered. “They dress up every day, and keep clean, and they ride around with a carriage and pair. There’s men in the cities have coachmen to drive them.”

  Almanzo did not say anything, but he did not want a coachman. He wanted to break colts, and he wanted to drive his own horses, himself.

  Next morning they all went to church together. They left Royal and Eliza Jane and Alice at the Academy; only the cobbler came back to the farm. Every day he whistled and worked at his bench in the dining-room, till all the boots and shoes were done. He was there two weeks, and when he loaded his bench and tools in his buggy and drove away to his next customer, the house seemed empty and still again.

  That evening Father said to Almanzo:

  “Well, son, corn-husking’s done. What say we make a bobsled for Star and Bright, tomorrow?”

  “Oh, Father!” Almanzo said. “Can I—will you let me haul wood from the timber this winter?”

  Father’s eyes twinkled. “What else would you need a bobsled for?” he asked.

  Chapter 24

  The Little Bobsled

  Snow was falling next morning when Almanzo rode with Father to the timber lot. Large feathery flakes made a veil over everything, and if you were alone and held your breath and listened, you could hear the soft, tiny sound of their falling.

  Father and Almanzo tramped through the falling snow in the woods, looking for straight, small oaks. When they found one, Father chopped it down. He chopped off all the limbs, and Almanzo piled them up neatly. Then they loaded the small logs on the bobsled.

  After that they looked for two small crooked trees to make curved runners. They must be five
inches through, and six feet tall before they began to curve. It was hard to find them. In the whole timber lot there were no two trees alike.

  “You wouldn’t find two alike in the whole world, son,” Father said. “Not even two blades of grass are the same. Everything is different from everything else, if you look at it.”

  They had to take two trees that were a little alike. Father chopped them down and Almanzo helped load them on the bobsled. Then they drove home, in time for dinner.

  That afternoon Father and Almanzo made a little bobsled, on the Big-Barn Floor.

  First Father hewed the bottoms of the runners flat and smooth, clear around the crook of their turned-up front ends. Just behind the crook he hewed a flat place on top, and he hewed another flat place near the rear ends. Then he hewed two beams for cross-pieces.

  He hewed them ten inches wide and three inches high, and sawed them four feet long. They were to stand on edge. He hewed out their corners, to fit over the flat places on top of the runners. Then he hewed out a curve in their underneath edges, to let them slip over the high snow in the middle of the road.

  He laid the runners side by side, three and a half feet apart, and he fitted the cross-beams on them. But he did not fasten them together yet.

  He hewed out two slabs, six feet long and flat on both sides. He laid them on the cross-beams, over the runners.

  Then with an auger he bored a hole through a slab, down past the cross-beam, into the runner. He bored close to the beam, and the auger made half an auger-hole down the side of the beam. On the other side of the beam he bored another hole like the first.