What strikes me, soon into this chapter, is that it is told mostly from Almanzo’s perspective. I always have liked that. As a fellow horseperson, I could relate to how he felt when he thought he may have lost Lady for good.

We have a break between blizzards. A sunny day with new hope as Pa hurries into the house telling the family that a herd of antelope has been sighted west of town.  The men were gathering, excited, to plan their strategy. When Laura looks out of the window, she sees several men on horseback and notices that Almanzo and Mr. Foster are riding the beautiful Morgan horses.

The Ingalls girls begin planning a meal of roast venison with gravy. Ma, ever the realist, warns, “We must not count chickens before they are hatched,” while at the same time admitting that she would be glad to have meat to go with the brown bread.

The men head out, following Pa’s suggestion to go slow until they’re within gunshot. He tells them that if they work it right they should be able to get one apiece. Mr. Foster is anxious and overly excited. He doesn’t seem to know how to ride a horse and Almanzo is already regretting letting him ride Lady.

They should have the herd surrounded in a few minutes and as Almanzo turns to speak to Mr. Foster, he hears a shot. As he reins Prince in, he sees Lady running away.  Mr. Foster has jumped off of Lady, let go of her and fired at the antelope when they were too far away to get a good shot. The antelope run away and Lady overtakes them and goes with them. Almanzo hollers not to shoot, he doesn’t want anyone to hit Lady.

In a few minutes, the prairie swallows the antelope herd and Lady with them. They are gone. There’s not much to be said now. The antelope are likely not to be seen again. Almanzo says that he won’t risk his life, looking for her, but maybe he’ll just circle around to see if catches sight of her, or maybe she’ll find her way back. The other men head back to town, empty-handed.

Almanzo rides on alone, over each prairie swell with nothing in sight except for the blowing snow. He feels sick at heart losing her, but not intending to jeopardize his life for a horse. He chastises himself for being such a fool to lend her to a stranger and keeps riding, looking for Lady. There’s always another slope and the sky remains clear so he goes on. He rides until he looks back and does not see town, nothing but the white land and the blowing snow, and the wind and the cold. He feels very alone.

He decides to go over one more slope and then turn back if he doesn’t see anything. From the top of that slope he sees the low edge of a cloud in the northwestern sky. And he sees Lady, very far away, but she is looking eastward, away from them. His whistle that has called her since she was a young horse is carried away on the wind, as is Prince’s call to her. Then she turns, sees them and starts galloping toward them. Almanzo waits until she gets a little nearer and then he turns and rides toward town.

He reaches the stable behind the feed store and is taking care of Prince when Lady rattles at the door and he lets her in. I love his conversation with her, reprimanding her while taking blame by letting someone else ride her. He’s a very dedicated horseman and takes proper care of his horses before he leaves them.

Meanwhile, Pa has arrived back home without saying anything. There is no need. They know. There will be no meat. After a few minutes he tells the story of what happened. They console themselves thinking that the antelope would have been poor eating this time of year anyway. But it would have been something. Things can only get worse!

Pa decides to head over to the feed store to see if Almanzo has returned while Ma is getting dinner ready. Royal is making pancakes and bacon and Pa tells him how lucky he is to have brought in supplies. While they are talking, they see Lady streak past the window. A few minutes later Almanzo comes in and both he and Royal urge Pa to eat with them. He does.
As I read this, I always had mixed feelings. Does Pa feel bad for his family as he fills himself up? But then, as I have read, Pa often ate smaller portions so that the family would have enough to eat, while still doing chores and hauling hay. Maybe he deserved this one fine meal. But still he must have felt guilty as he headed home and ate brown bread and potatoes with his family.

Guest post by Sommer Sorenson

We open this chapter with Pa busily working to keep his family warm. His brilliant idea for hay sticks has a price… they must continually be keeping it in supply and so when Pa is not doing chores, he is twisting more hay for the fire. It is so cold in the lean-to where the hay is kept that he must pause to warm himself from time to time and he declares that, “My fingers get so numb, I can’t make a good twist.”

Laura offers to help Pa, but he doesn’t want to let her. However, he has to admit that there is just too much work for just one man to do… hauling hay and keeping the stove going. So he lets Laura help once again and shows her how to twist the hay.

It isn’t easy work and the lean-to is so very cold. But even so, Pa and Laura work at it for a time. The first stick Laura makes is “uneven and raggedy, not smooth and hard like Pa’s,” but he encourages her and says that she’ll do better the next time. And sure enough, after six sticks she finally makes one as it ought to be.

Now it is time to warm up again. Laura is numb from cold and her hands are red and irritated from the sharp blades of the hay. But this is nothing when she reflects on being able to help Pa. This is a lovely quality that Laura has that has always warmed my heart. She is willing to do the hard things, when she knows it will help her family.

The day continues on with burning hay and twisting it. Their supplies of food are dwindling and yet they are able to reflect on the goodness of hot, tasty food. Yet, they have run out of flour and Ma comments that they need to have some flour. Pa says he will get some no matter the cost as soon as the storm stops.

The little moments of opening the stove to throw on another hay stick causes the darkness to retreat for a moment and Ma wishes she had some grease so she “could fix some kind of a light.” She states, “We didn’t lack for light when I was a girl, before this newfangled kerosene was ever heard of.” Both Pa and Ma reflect on the dependence they find themselves having on these “newfangled” things. Makes me think of those things I depend on a tad too much and get frustrated about when they are unavailable.

The next morning, though the winds are still howling, there began to be a strong wind and the sun was shining, so Pa headed out to find some flour. After a time he came back with a bag of unground wheat…not exactly ready-to-use flour. The last flour was bought up at an extremely high price and Pa knew that he would not have been able to afford much at such a high cost. So, unground wheat it is! Pa and Ma begin thinking how they can best use it… boil it? Pa says it is too bad they don’t have a grist mill in town and Ma (brilliant woman), states, “We have a mill.” She reaches for the coffee mill and they try it out. Sure enough, there is a small portion of ground wheat in the little drawer. Pa asks, “Can you make bread of that?” and Ma optimistically answers, “Of course I can.” But this too will have a price… they must keep the mill grinding so that there will be enough to make a loaf for dinner. Hard work, but they will eat.

Remembering Ma’s desire for a light, Pa gives her some axle grease before heading out to do the chores. He knows she can figure something out. They will need something as the train is still stuck and they must continue to wait for it and the supplies it promises.

Chores must be done, hay must be twisted and wheat must be ground. The Ingallses continue in this way until Pa returns late from chores. He has had a tough time of it, but Ma sees (once again) the silver lining by noting that it will be better to have dinner at that time every day, so they can save on fire and light.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not, since it is Ma) the brown bread is very good. Ma does not need milk or yeast to make it tasty and Pa states quite nicely, “Where there’s a will there’s a way.” And it is for certain that this little family surely has the will to make it through.

This chapter is full of “out of the box” thinking and we have one more example as Ma comes up with a light. As Pa is doing the final chores, Ma gets out the axle grease and rag bag and has Carrie find a button from her button bag. And as the girls look on, she makes a little button lamp. As they do so often, they wait for Pa to show the big surprise. I love how they want to include the whole family in their ideas. And when Pa came in, Ma lit the little end of the button lamp and they watched as a “tiny flame flickered and grew stronger” and the “little flame was like the flame of a candle in the dark.” Just like the flame of hope that they each held onto during this long winter. Such ingenuity, such hope and such pioneer spirit to keep them going.

The Little House books are full of cherished Christmases, each uniquely special. It takes a real gift to make a charming Christmas out of this paltry holiday celebration, however.

The chapter begins full of hope and joy; the spirit of Christmas is alive and well in spite of the hard toll this still-young winter has already taken on the Ingalls family. Although they’re on the last of everything — the last of the coal, the last of the flour, the last of the kerosene — they still hold out the hope that finally, the train will come.

Laura shows the spirit of Christmas more than anyone else in the family, of course, as she comes up with ideas for presents she could give to each member of the family. Has it ever bothered anyone else that everyone got something for Christmas that year except Laura? Excluding the Christmas candy, of course. But Laura knows that the joy of giving outweighs the joy of getting, so I guess in the end, she came away with the better gift after all.

The Loftus Store in De Smet still brings in tourists in droves, largely because of their brief mention in this chapter. Pa’s beautiful suspenders, lovingly purchased by the women who love him. (In fact, for quite a bit more than 25 cents, you can own a miniature pair of blue suspenders of your very own!) Why, I wonder, did everyone else feel the need to get Pa something for Christmas, but not any of the rest of them, except of course little Grace? Why Pa and not Ma? Laura of course has plans for gifts for everyone, but none of the rest of them know this. Why did Ma, Mary, and Carrie all think it perfectly appropriate to put all their money in to buy a gift for Pa and not the rest of the family?

It’s a good thing the mail came in time for Christmas, for there was little else to be happy about. I find it ironic that Pa announces that Mary, of all people, gets the letter, and he even hands it to her. Um, yes, let’s give the letter to the blind girl and just make everyone painfully aware of the fact that she can no longer read it…

I love Mary’s reasoning for why they should save the Youth’s Companions for Christmas. Not something logical like, “We’d best save them because we have nothing else to make the day any different from the rest” but “It will help us to learn self-denial.” Like this winter isn’t enough to teach them plenty of self-denial as it is.

Of course, even Christmas hope isn’t enough to bring a happy ending, with the long-awaited train as its reward. Instead, the final gift of the day is the onset of another blizzard.

I’m fascinated with the artistry Laura uses to describe the blizzard, tying into it all the howls of long-ago dangers — the wolves, the panther, the Indian war cries…  With the last of their staple items used up, and the blizzard preventing them from getting any more, Laura recognizes just how dangerous the blizzard has become to the survival of the family within the walls of their little house.

Guest post by Dr. Laura McLemore

Céad míle fáilte

I have to tell you people that it is very difficult to write about blizzards as I am sitting only a few hundred feet from the Alabama coastline.  And before I begin, a Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all of you.

Seed Wheat is another short chapter.  The cold and the dark have come again and the days are long and monotonous.  It is difficult to imagine how cold the house must have been without insulation and only board walls standing between the family and the cold.  Pa must continue his twice daily trek to the barn to care for the animals despite the raging blizzard and bone numbing cold.  He returned so chilled that it was difficult to get warm again.  He held Carrie and Grace close, I assume not only to reassure them, but to borrow from their warmth. What would Ann Romines have to say about this?

Eskdale and Liddesdale in Scotland

Pa shared the stories of bears and panthers with the little girls just as he had with Mary and Laura so long ago in the Big Woods.  At bedtime, the girls dreaded going up to the cold attic so Pa “played” them up the stairs with a Scottish Tune called “All the Blue Bonnets are Over the Border”.  As Pa played, the girls marched up the stairs to bed.  It is touching to read that Laura guided Mary up the stairs with Mary’s hand on Laura’s shoulder.

The recurring theme “and the trains didn’t come” crops up again as Laura worries that they have no meat, no lamp oil, no flour, no coal and no chance of the trains getting through.  It seems a lot for a 14 year old to have to carry on her shoulders.

Meanwhile, Almanzo was busy in Royal’s feed store.  Almanzo studded a frame for a wall on one end of the store and then built a wall part way up.  Once the wall was up, he hoisted a 125 lb bag of wheat on his shoulder and poured it into the space between the walls.   This always fascinated me that he thought to do this and later, that Pa could tell (oops that was a spoiler, wasn’t it).  A good natured brotherly argument ensues as Royal thinks that Almanzo should sell his seed wheat for a profit, not necessarily for the humanitarian good.  Almanzo refuses.  He wants good seed to plant a good crop once the winter is over.  He knows that Royal would sell his wheat if the price were right.  They argue back and forth as Almanzo continues to build his wall and pour his wheat.  You know, as I write this, I wonder why he didn’t just toss the bag behind the wall or lay them straight and build the wall in front? Wouldn’t it be easier to take it out in the spring if he had left it in the bags?   Did he want to be able to just take a little out at a time should he and Royal need it?  Does it make a better story to have the wheat loose in the wall?  Ah well.

There is foreshadowing at the end of the chapter.  Royal wonders what will happen to the town if the trains don’t come.  Almanzo speculates that everyone should be fine since they brought supplies out in the summer.  Oh, what he doesn’t know.  And the trains didn’t come.

Slainte!

Guest post by Karen Witham

After the dreariness of the last chapter, “Fair Weather” opens with the blizzard over but the after-effects lingering. The lack of a train is beginning to strike a somber note, and while Mary is her usual Biblical self, Laura is grumpy and so is Carrie. A reminder of the authority parents held at the time comes early on, when Ma gives the girls permission to go outside – after their morning chores are done. (I’m also reminded that I can’t think of a time where Ma actually leaves the house or the homestead claim area to do anything social! “An angel in the house” indeed!)

While the three older girls are outside enjoying the fresh air, Mary and Laura tell Carrie about the Big Woods (I love at this point that I’ve made the whole journey with them!) and then Pa rides up on a new sled. He brings yet another optimistic update about the train getting through the Tracy cut (“… they’ll have the train running all right.”) I just want to cry for them knowing how much worse it will get, yet if they didn’t have the hope all along of the possibility of the train’s arrival, where would they all have been?

Pa heads out to the claim to get hay and is late returning, leading his girls to worry. (Their lunch of bread, potatoes, and tea has me thinking – how did they survive on nothing but carbs for so long, with such physical labor part of daily life?! As a mother of two little ones, I think of my regular angst over DHA, vitamin D, protein, etc., and wonder if ignorance is bliss or if we are just crazily neurotic at this point in our society’s evolution.) Well, what has kept Pa will prove to be an issue later on in the story as well – the horses kept falling through the slough grass. I can’t even imagine how frustrating, frightening and exhausting this must have been for man and beast. Pa shows uncharacteristic impatience with the horse Sam, who basically freaked out when he fell through the snow (I’m kind of like, I sure the heck would, how terrifying!), while the other horse, David, followed Pa “like a dog.”

Pa then goes to Fuller’s for the news, which is that the train will probably come through “by day after tomorrow” and “we’re going to get the mail, train or no train.” Ah, the precious letter! Ma brings out one she’s been writing “to the folks in Wisconsin” and they send, via Ma’s hand, a family update until the paper “held all the words that it possibly could.” Sweet Ma, with her little red pen, and her little red purse, and her china shepherdess – so few womanly treasures to call her own, and yet those she had were obviously cherished.

The family longs for a cat, which reminds me of darling dog Jack and his loyalty to the Ingalls family. One thing I so admire about this family is their tenderness toward animals in what was a somewhat brutal time – animals were food or property, and yet they are sensitive enough to be horrified at the prospect of cows suffocating on their own frozen breath, or to consider that after death, Jack has gone “where the good dogs go.”

Grace is reassured that Santa Claus will, in fact, come this year, and Pa goes the next day to mail the letter. The chapter closes with the arrival of yet another blizzard, and Pa’s exclaiming, “I hope Gilbert has made it safe to Preston” (with the mail).

Guest post by Erin Blakemore

Now it starts to get GOOD, people.  And by good, of course I mean bad, because to Laura it’s not even worth the effort to get up in the morning (sacrilege to a group of women and men whose lives revolve around being useful and doing their chores).  She does drag herself out of bed, only to give in to the psychological angst of having to contend with the endless snow and her fear of being unable to help support her family and send Mary to college.

Ma listens to Laura’s wail and reassures her that her math studies will keep her busy through this next blizzard.  While the girls have been sleeping upstairs, she’s been her usual resourceful self, pushing the table to the kitchen to conserve heat.

As Pa prepares to go to Fuller’s store, there’s a moment of fear:  Pa warns Mary that he may have to use some of her college money to get supplies.  “You can depend on me paying you back,” he says, but we get a sense of the girls holding their breath as they watch Pa leave the house with the red leather pocketbook that holds the family’s savings.

Carrie is the next to break — she watches Laura pour the last of the kerosene into the lamp and gasps in fear.  The girls try to do their lessons while waiting for Pa, but the room is cramped and poorly lit.  We get a sense of claustrophobia and anxiety that is heightened, not assuaged, by Pa’s entrance with bad news:  no kerosene, no meat, no coal, no school until there is coal.  He has, however, bought two pounds of tea, which Ma characteristically paints as a blessing.

As Pa does the midafternoon chores, the girls work inside.  Mary is braiding a new rug, which she does by touch; when she asks Laura to sew it up for her, Laura initially says she’d rather finish the lace she’s working, but then feels bad at Mary’s cheer in the face of her desperation.  She agrees to sew the rug whenever Mary wants.  While they wait for Pa, the girls sing for lack of light.  You can tell things are getting really bad when Ma insists Laura go to bed without washing the dishes.

The next day repeats the monotony of the one before it, only this time Laura sews the rag rug.  Same old story on the next day, but on the third afternoon the blizzard abruptly stops and Pa heads over to Fuller’s to find out how the neighbors weathered the storm.  He doesn’t have good news — there’s a rumor that the Tracy train is ensconced in thirty plus feet of snow.  A group of men will head out to dig it out, a task Ma insists “won’t take very long in pleasant weather.”

While you have been discussing the chapters of The Long Winter, Dr. Laura stated that another family lived with the Ingalls during that winter. I have not heard that information before and would love to know more about this fact.
Joan Cresimore

In Laura’s unpublished autobiographical manuscript, Pioneer Girl, she writes that George Masters, the brother of Genevieve Masters who is one of the prototypes for the character of “Nellie Oleson,” came through De Smet on his way out west and stopped to see them, as the two families had known each other in Walnut Grove. He asked if they would allow his wife Maggie to come out and stay with them so she would not be so far away from him, and Ma agreed.

The Ingalls family boarded Maggie (and her newborn baby) throughout the summer of 1880, and when winter set in and George’s work with the railroad ended until spring, George came and joined them.

Laura writes that though the Ingalls family neither asked nor wanted them to stay, they had no money and nowhere else to go — and so they stayed. Although Maggie was pleasant and they all liked her, George was lazy, greedy and selfish. It was a long hard winter indeed…

They were omitted from The Long Winter due to concerns that they would “mess up” the story that Laura wanted to tell.

Guest post by Laura McLemore

This is a relatively short chapter and serves as bit of reprieve from the tension of the story.  In this chapter, the blizzard of the previous days has subsided.  Laura is awakened suddenly.  She lies in her bed listening and realizes that she was startled awake by the silence.  There is no howling wind, no scouring of snow and ice hitting the house.  The sun was shining.  Downstairs, Ma and Pa are beginning their day.  Ma comments that the blizzard was over and that it only lasted two days.  She contradicts Pa (Ma!) by saying, “It may be that your hard winter may not prove to be so hard after all”.  But with a smile like sunshine and a happy voice, we can forgive Ma for criticizing Pa.

Ma is sure there will be school on such a bright day and she hurries Laura and Carrie back upstairs to get ready.  The girls come back to the cozy kitchen to wash their faces and fix their braids.  The kitchen is a merry place.  When Pa comes in he must notice that Laura is scrubbing her face because he comments that Old Sol had his face well washed by the snow.  Ma’s breakfast makes me hungry.  Hash browns, cherry preserves, and toast, lots of carbs to keep the body warm.    Even Ma gets in on the good humor.  She said that the frozen bit of butter is “what the cobbler threw at his wife”.  The big girls and Ma laughed but poor Carrie and Grace didn’t understand.  Mary said, “No, that was his awl”.  The puns and laughter continue with Laura adding, “Oh no!  It was his last.”  Ma cautioned the girls because they were laughing too much at the table.  The merriment was over but the coziness of breakfast and the good cheer continued when Ma told Laura and Carrie to run along to school and that she would do their chores.

The snow on Main Street sparkles in the sun.  There is a ridge of snow running down the street that was taller than Laura, meaning it was about five feet tall as we know Laura was only four feet, eight inches or so.  Later in the winter the snow reached the second stories of many buildings but at this point, it was still navigable.  Laura and Carrie make their way over the drifts to the school.  Mary Power and Minnie are standing in the winter sun watching Cap and the Wilmarth boys sliding on the ice.  Apparently, Mary Power and Minnie made it safely through the storm on Saturday.

At recess Laura laments that she isn’t a boy as she would like to run and play with the boys.    She states, “I don’t think it’s any fun being a young lady.”  Mary Power, who is so Ma-like, says that they can’t help growing up.  Minnie Power cryptically turns the conversation toward her fear of being caught in a blizzard.  She asks the girls what they would do.  Mary says she would keep walking.  Laura stoically says that she wouldn’t get caught in one.

Lunch time arrives and Laura and Carrie scramble over the drifts to find steaming hot potatoes and fluffy biscuits on the table.  Just as Ma is lamenting that she wished she had some butter for them, a knock sounds at the door.  Carrie runs to open it and there at the door is a big furry bear who looked a lot like Mr. Boast.  Mrs. Boast had stayed home to do the laundry as she couldn’t waste a bright, sunny, blizzard free day.  However she had sent…Butter!  Mr. Boast says he’s in town to get the news and supplies.  I believe that Laura uses a little foreshadowing here as the conversation turns to whether there are any shortages at the store.  Pa says, not that he knows of, except for meat.  We of course know that there will be shortages later.

Laura and Carrie joyously return to school and Laura is happy that all the weekdays would now be school days (or was it because Cap Garland’s smile included all of them?)  That night, Laura dreams that Pa is playing his wild storm music again.  She awakes and knows that it wasn’t Pa’s fiddle that was making the wild music.  It was a blizzard.

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Update: Please read the comments below about the cobbler’s last. A new picture has been included. Thank you, Dennis, for this information.