Farmer Boy (17 page)

The judges tasted it; he could not tell from their faces how it tasted.

Then they talked together for a long time. He could not hear what they said. The tall, thin judge shook his head and tugged his whiskers. He cut a thin slice from the yellowest pumpkin and a thin slice from Almanzo's pumpkin, and tasted them.

He gave them to the big judge, and he tasted them. The fat judge said something, and they all smiled.

Mr. Paddock leaned over the table and said:

“Good afternoon, Wilder. You and the boy are taking in the sight, I see. Having a good time, Almanzo?”

Almanzo could hardly speak. He managed to say: “Yes, sir.”

The tall judge had taken the red ribbon and the blue ribbon out of his pocket. The fat judge took hold of his sleeve, and all the judges put their heads together again.

The tall judge turned around slowly. Slowly he took a pin from his lapel and stuck it through the blue ribbon. He was not very near Almanzo's big pumpkin. He was not near enough to reach it. He held out the blue ribbon, above another pumpkin.

He leaned, and stretched out his arm slowly, and he thrust the pin into Almanzo's pumpkin.

Father's hand clapped on Almanzo's shoulder.

All at once Almanzo could breathe, and he was tingling all over. Mr. Paddock was shaking his hand. All the judges were smiling. Ever so many people said, “Well, well, Mr. Wilder, so your boy's got first prize!”

colt that won the prize was not so good as Starlight. Almanzo did hope that Father would bring Starlight to the Fair next year. Then they watched the foot-races, and the jumping contests, and the throwing contests. Malone boys were in them, but the farmer boys won, almost every time. Almanzo kept remembering his prize pumpkin and feeling good.

Driving home that night, they all felt good.

Alice's woolwork had won first prize, and Eliza Jane had a red ribbon and Alice had a blue ribbon for jellies. Father said the Wilder family had done itself proud, that day.

There was another day of the Fair, but it wasn't so much fun. Almanzo was tired of having a good time. Three days of it were too much. It didn't seem right to be dressed up again and leaving the farm. He felt unsettled, as he did at house-cleaning time. He was glad when the Fair was over and everything could go on as usual.

Wind's in the north,“ Father said at breakfast. ”And clouds coming up. We better get the beechnuts in before it snows."

The beech trees grew in the timber lot, two miles away by the road, but only half a mile across the fields. Mr. Webb was a good neighbor, and let Father drive across his land.

_ ^ p Almanzo and Royal put on their caps and warm coats, Alice put on her cloak and hood, and they rode away with Father in the wagon, to gather the beechnuts.

When they came to a stone fence Almanzo helped to take it down and let the wagon through.

The pastures were empty now; all the stock was in the warm barns, so they could leave the fences down until the last trip home.

In the beech grove all the yellow leaves had fallen. They lay thick on the ground beneath the slim trunks and delicate bare limbs of the beeches. The beechnuts had fallen after the leaves and lay on top of them. Father and Royal lifted the matted leaves carefully on their pitchforks and put them, nuts and all, into the wagon.

And Alice and Almanzo ran up and down in the wagon, trampling down the rustling leaves to I make room for more.

When the wagon was full, Royal drove away with Father to the barns, but Almanzo and Alice stayed to play till the wagon came back.

A chill wind was blowing and the sunlight was hazy. Squirrels frisked about, storing away nuts for the winter. High in the sky the wild ducks were honking, hurrying south. It was a wonderful day for playing wild Indian, all among the trees.

When Almanzo was tired of playing Indian, he and Alice sat on a log and cracked beechnuts with their teeth. Beechnuts are three-cornered and shiny-brown and small, but every shell is solidly full of meat. They are so good that nobody could ever eat enough of them. At least, Almanzo never got tired of eating them before the wagon came back.

Then he and Alice trampled down leaves again, while the busy pitchforks made the patch of bare ground larger and larger.

It took almost all day to gather all the beechnuts. In the cold twilight Almanzo helped to lay up the stone fences behind the last load. All the beechnuts in their leaves made a big pile on the South-Barn Floor, beside the fanning-mill.

That night Father said they'd seen the last of Indian summer.

“It will snow tonight,” he said. Sure enough, when Almanzo woke next morning the light had a snowy look, and from the window he saw the ground and barn roof white with snow.

Father was pleased. The soft snow was six inches deep, but the ground was not yet frozen.

“Poor man's fertilizer,” Father called such a snow, and he set Royal to plowing it into all the fields. It carried something from the air into the ground, that would make the crops grow.

Meanwhile Almanzo helped Father. They tightened the barn's wooden windows, and nailed down every board that had loosened in the summer's sun and rain. They banked the walls of the barn with straw from the stalls, and they banked the walls of the house with clean, bright straw.

They laid stones on the straw to hold it snug against winds. They fitted storm doors and storm windows on the house, just in time. That week ended with the first hard freeze.

Bitter cold weather had come to stay, and now it was butchering-time.

In the cold dawn, before breakfast, Almanzo helped Royal set up the big iron caldron near the barn. They set it on stones, and filled it with water, and lighted a bonfire under it. It held three barrels of water.

Before they had finished, Lazy John and French Joe had come, and there was time to snatch only a bite of breakfast. Five hogs and a yearling beef were to be killed that day.

As soon as one was killed, Father and Joe and John dipped the carcass into the boiling caldron, and heaved it out and laid it on boards. With butcher knives they scraped all the hair off it.

Then they hung it up by the hind feet in a tree, and cut it open and took all the insides out into a tub.

Almanzo and Royal carried the tub to the kitchen, and Mother and the girls washed the heart and liver, and snipped off all the bits of fat from the hog's insides, to make lard.

Father and Joe skinned the beef carefully. The hide came off in one big piece. Every year Father killed a beef and saved the hide to make shoes.

All that afternoon the men were cutting up the meat, and Almanzo and Royal were hurrying to put it all away. All the pieces of fat pork they packed in salt, in barrels down cellar. The hams and shoulders they slid carefully into barrels of brown pork-pickle, which Mother had made of salt, maple sugar, saltpeter, and water, boiled together. Pork-pickle had a stinging smell that felt like a sneeze.

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 Ihe 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.

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 laprobe 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. Alreacfy 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.