Plot Summary
Farmer Boy is based on the childhood of husband, Almanzo Wilder, who grew up in the 1860s near the town of Malone in upstate New York. The book covers one year in Almanzo's life, beginning just before his ninth birthday, and describes in detail the endless chores involved in running the Wilder family farm. Young as he is, Almanzo rises before 5 a.m. every day to milk several cows and feed stock. In the growing season, he plants and tends crops; in winter, he hauls logs, helps fill the ice house, trains a team of young oxen, and sometimes—when his father can spare him—goes to school. The novel includes stories of Almanzo's brother Royal and his sisters Eliza Jane and Alice.
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, where he and his brother and sisters work at their chores from dawn to dinner most days-no matter what the weather. In winter there is wood to be chopped and great slabs of ice to be cut from the river and stored. There is still time for fun though, when the jolly tin peddler visits, or best of all, when the fair comes to town and especially with the horses, which Almanzo loves more than anything. Farmer Boy chronicles his growing-up years: getting used to school, getting along with his siblings (as well as getting in trouble with them a few times as well), and finally getting his very own horse.
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