Farmer Boy is a book that reveals Laura Ingalls Wilder’s abiding love for the land and farmers. What makes the story so remarkable is that it contradicts what Laura often wrote when she said she would never marry a farmer because they were always grubbing in the dirt.
In the final book of the Little House on the Prairie series, The First Four Years, Laura considers refusing Manly because “I don’t want to marry a farmer. I have always said I never would. I do wish you would do something else. There are chances in town now while it is so new and growing.”
A Homey Story
Farmer Boy is the warm and homey story of Almanzo Wilder as a young boy. It opens with young Almanzo, who is almost eight, going to school with his three older siblings. The extreme cold of upstate New York is vividly depicted and the warm homespun garments of the children are described in great detail. And so the reader enters the story of a small family farm where everyone worked hard but where life was comfortable and rich.
Food – Food – Food
Lovers of Farmer Boy will warn you not to read the book while hungry. As a boy, young Almanzo, who didn’t stretch taller than 5’3” as an adult, ate and enjoyed such quantities of food that one would have expected him to be as tall as Paul Bunyan. Not only did Almanzo eat the food, he relished it and dreamed about it.
Barbara M. Walker who wrote, The Little House Cookbook: Frontier Foods from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Classic Stories, suggests that this apparent obsession with food actually reflects the poverty of food in Laura’s own childhood. She posits that because Laura was always hungry as a child, the richness and quantity of food from Almanzo’s childhood fascinates her.
Descriptions of a multitude of meals fill the book and the relish with which the meals were consumed, is vividly described, “Almanzo went on eating. He was listening, but he was tasting the good taste of roast pork and apple sauce in every corner of his mouth…He cut off the quivering point of golden brown pumpkin, dark with spices and sugar. It melted on his tongue and all his mouth and nose were spicy.”
Central Concerns
However, while food pervades the entire story, it is not the central theme of the book. Farmers and farming are at the center of the story. The first year of the story is full of farm life and activity. It records the cycle of the seasons and the rewards and trials that accompanied every turning of the year.
The second year of the story opens with the three oldest Wilder children going away to Academy. When the children return, Royal has decided to become a shopkeeper. He tells Almanzo “You’re a bigger fool than I be, if you drudge all your days on a farm.” He prefers to dress nice and let other people perform manual labor.
At the end of the book, Almanzo is offered the opportunity to become a wheelwright’s apprentice. When his mother hears of the offer she becomes livid. She argues that it silly for Almanzo to work at a job where he as always at the beck and call of others. She believes that those who spend their lives meeting the needs of others are never able to call their soul their own.
Almanzo quietly listens to his parent’s discussion but he already knows that he wants to be like his father. When Almanzo’s father decides to allow Almanzo the freedom to decide his own way he shares with Almanzo all the benefits of being a businessman.
A Love of Farming and A Love of the Land
He then shares with Almanzo the benefits of being a farmer. His speech is a beautiful declaration of a farmer’s love of independence and of the land. “A farmer depends on himself, and the land and the weather. If you’re a farmer, you raise what you eat, you raise what you wear, and you keep warm with wood out of your own timber. You work hard, but you work as you please, and no man can tell you to go or come. You’ll be free and independent, son, on a farm.”
A Revelry
When Laura wrote Farmer Boy, she allowed herself to revel in the enjoyment that good food brings to those who work hard. She also gave free reign to her passion for the land and farmers. For those who love descriptions of food or who appreciate farmers, Farmer Boy is sure to be a treat.
Read more about Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House Books at Suite101.
 |
