Growing up on his family's farm in New York, Almanzo Wilder wishes for just one thing — his very own horse. But Father doesn't yet trust him with such a big responsibility. Almanzo needs to prove himself — but how?
While Laura Ingalls grows up in a little house on the western prairie, Almanzo Wilder is living on a big farm in New York State. Here Almanzo and his brother and sisters help with the summer planting and fall harvest. In winter, there is wood to be chopped and great slabs of ice to be cut from the river and stored. Time for fun comes when the jolly tin peddler visits, or best of all, when the fair comes to town.
This is Laura Ingalls Wilder's beloved story of how her husband Almanzo grew up as a farmer boy far from the little house where Laura lived.
The land was theirs, but so were its hardships. Strawberries—big, ripe, and juicy. Ten-year-old Birdie Boyer can hardly wait to start picking them. But her family has just moved to the Florida backwoods, and they haven’t even begun their planting. “Don’t count your biddies ‘fore they’re hatched, gal young un!” her father tells her.
Making the new farm prosper is not easy. There is heat to suffer through, and droughts, and cold snaps. And, perhaps most worrisome of all for the Boyers, there are rowdy neighbors, just itching to start a feud. But Birdie won’t give up on her dream of strawberries, and her family won’t let those Slaters drive them from their home!
Join Birdie and her family as they tackle the challenges of frontier life and strive to make their dreams come true.
In a rural Kentucky river town, "Old Jack" Beechum, a retired farmer, sees his life again through the shades of one burnished day in September 1952. Bringing the earthiness of America's past to mind, The Memory of Old Jack conveys the truth and integrity of the land and the people who live from it.
Through the eyes of one man can be seen the values Americans strive to recapture as we arrive at the next century.