Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in... Farmer Boy?

Yesterday Brian threw some 3-week-old taffy we made away in the pig's bowl. Emily said, "Don't feed candy to pigs. Remember what happened in Farmer Boy?" Brian responded that they wouldn't have fed candy to pigs back then because people didn't get candy that often. Emily said they did too feed it to the pig and came to me for back up. I verified that Almanzo had fed his pig some taffy while his parents were out of town for a week, the pigs teeth got stuck together and they had to pry them apart. We read the chapter over lunch and found that Brian was also right - even Alice, the "cool" sister, was horrified Almonzo had wasted candy on a pig.

You can learn a lot from Farmer Boy. In that chapter alone we learned how to make ice cream, to make and pull taffy (doesn't work in the summer), not to procrastinate your chores till the day before your parents come home, not to lose your temper and throw things at your mean sister and that mean sisters can be nice after all.

We have referred to the Little House books more than I care to think of.

• When we tried to figure out how to kill Big Pig. No help, Laura covered her ears until the squealing was done and the pig was dead.
  
• When we talked about a friend's smoke house and tried to figure out if we could do something like that we read about how Pa smoked venison in a hollow log.
  
• How to make butter. If we can ever get our cows to let us touch them let alone milk them.
  
• Unfortunately, to get any advice on chickens you have to delve into the Rose books which are just not as good.

Then there are the moral lessons to teach your kids:

• Always obey your mother when she asks you to do something and don't ask questions (the bear Ma thought was the cow in the barnyard incident).
  
• Never cry wolf and work hard (the cousin on the wasps' nest incident).
  
• Don't see what you can do without actually disobeying your parents (almost falling off the foot bridge and drowning in Plum Creek).
  
• "Dogs are awesome," says Brian (the panther at the water hole story).

If you don't know what I am talking about go to your local library because, quite honestly, everyone needs to read these at least once. At least Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy. Make sure when you read Farmer Boy you have a lot of food in the house because between learning how to make shingles, grow prize winning pumpkins and learning the value of money, the whole book is an ode to his mother's cooking. My friend Tara has the Little House Cookbook (I totally covet it-but she covets my Little House Songbook) and I bet half of the recipes in it come from Farmer Boy.

Summing up this Little House ramble, it cracks me up that Emily refers to Farmer Boy for backup on pig raising and I LOVE those books.