“Time to get up,” Mother called. “There are too many exciting things to see and to do to stay in bed. Breakfast is almost ready. Your play clothes are on the foot of your beds.”
No one needed to be coaxed. As they hopped out of bed, it felt surprisingly chilly after the hot weather they had left in the city. The sun was shining brightly and a rooster was crowing. Birds were singing everywhere, as though they wanted to outdo one another.
As the girls hurried into their clothes, they looked about their room with interest. It looked and even smelled new — a nice woodsy smell. The walls were roughly sawed boards, and overhead for a ceiling there were two-by-four rafters with planks laid across them to make a low attic.
“Look! The wall between this room and the big room doesn’t go clear up to the ceiling,” Helen noticed.
“I think that’s so the warm air from the other room can come in here, too. There’s no stove in here,” Naomi observed thoughtfully. “There, I’m ready. Here, I’ll help you with your buttons, Peggy. Don’t bother with your shoes. I think we can go barefoot.”
Mother was making pancakes as she greeted them. “Everyone is busy, and there’s work for you girls, too. Father is splitting wood and Uncle Bob is milking. If you want to go watch him for a few minutes, the barn is right down the hill behind the house — you can’t miss it. You’re a big eight-year-old girl, Naomi, so you’ll soon have to learn how to help with the milking.”
She paused to put a plateful of golden brown pancakes into the warming oven up above the black cook stove. “Naomi, you can bring a pail of milk up to the house when you come, and Helen and Peggy, take this basket along and stop at the chicken house and get us some nice fresh eggs on your way back to breakfast. Hurry now and don’t take too long. You’ll have lots of time later to explore.”
The barn was made of logs, and at first it seemed dark inside as they peered through the open door.
“C’mon right in. We were thinking you’d be stepping in right now.” Uncle Bobby was sitting on a funny little one-legged stool, milking the biggest black and white cow the girls had ever seen. As his hands moved smoothly up and down, two steady streams of milk went singing into the pail he held firmly between his legs and feet.
“Do the cows have names?” Helen asked.
“Sure they do. This is Betsy, and that other cow not quite so big is Star. You can always tell which one she is by the white star on her face. The horses are out back already; you’ll be seeing them soon. Their names are Queenie and Jenny.”
“Now then, this pail of milk is ready. Who is going to carry it up to the house for me? Think you are strong enough, Naomi?” Uncle Bob chuckled, “Just wait, you’ll soon be as tough as a boy!”
Helen and Peggy wanted to stay longer, but remembering how good those pancakes had smelled, they ran to the chicken house. Most of the chickens were already scratching around in their fenced-in chicken yard, but the few still inside the hen house flew about squawking loudly and stirring up dust and feathers when the girls stepped in. It was scary! They stood still, holding on to each other for a few moments.
In seconds, they were alone, for each hen had found the little door leading out to the chicken yard, where they joined the others. Stepping carefully to the wall, the girls looked into a row of boxes lined with straw. There were the eggs, big white eggs, most of them still warm. As they carried them carefully into the house, Mother smiled happily, and in no time, she had them sputtering in the frying pan.
“My! I’d almost forgotten how good a woman’s cooking tastes, Lu,” Uncle Bob was saying to Mother, as she filled his plate again with pancakes. “Only one thing could be an improvement, and that’ll be taken care of when we tap our maple trees come next spring and make maple syrup. Just wait till you all taste that — there’s nothing better.”
“That surely will be nice to have our own maple syrup and maple sugar,” Mother agreed. “Father, I was looking at that lovely big screened porch clear across the front of the house. Why don’t we put our beds out there during this nice summer weather?”
“That sounds good to me,” Father answered. “Bob and I can do that in just a few minutes right after breakfast. How would you like a table so we can eat out there too? I’ve been thinking of making one we can fold up and fasten to the wall when we don’t want it in the way.”
Everyone liked the idea. “It will be almost like living outdoors with the birds and the squirrels, and at night we can look right up at the stars,” Helen said.
As soon as the girls finished their breakfast, they ran out to see the porch. It was pleasantly cool, for it was screened on all three sides. In no time at all, the beds were in place. Mother brought out a few chairs and Father was already starting to make the table.
“When your father gets a good idea, he doesn’t waste any time,” Mother said, smiling.
“When you girls get those dishes done, who wants to help me take the cows to the lake for a drink of water before they go to pasture?” Uncle Bob asked.
“I do! I do!” three voices chorused together.
“Bring Mollie with you. It’s time she learned how to help with the cows,” Uncle Bob added.
The cows were eager to get to the water, and the girls almost had to run to keep up with them. They went down what Uncle Bob called the “swamp road,” which led through thick woods. It felt cold and wet under their bare feet, and the cows’ feet made sucking sounds with each step. Before they knew it, they were at the lake and the cows waded right in and drank thirstily.
At first the girls stood and stared. They hadn’t expected the lake to be so big and so blue. “It’s about a mile straight across and about three miles down to that end,” Uncle Bob pointed, “but there is more than you can see from here. The lake is shaped like a big letter S, and it is about ten miles long from one end to the other. You’ll see someday when we go to town in the launch.”
“Will we go fishing sometimes and swimming?” Naomi asked eagerly.
“I should say you will, and skating and ice fishing in the winter. There’s no better fishing lake than this one anywhere. But let’s get these cows to the pasture now. C’mon, Mollie, bring them along! Let’s see what kind of helper you’re going to be — get the cows!”
Mollie circled about the cows and with a few sharp barks soon had them heading back up the swamp road. She waved her plumy tail as though she were proud of herself.
“Good girl!” Uncle Bob praised her. “A body would think you’d been herding cows all your life. We’ll go behind the barn here now, the pasture is just a little piece further on through the woods. Here we are. Do you girls want to take the gate bars down? Just pull each one back and drop it on the ground -that’s the way. The cows will step right over them. Now put them up again.”
There were about a dozen sheep already in the enclosed pasture. There was also a ram with short horns who stopped grazing and came over toward the gate to look at them.
Uncle Bob chuckled, “He thinks he’s the boss of the barnyard, that ram does! He knows you’re new folks, and he’s curious as to why you’re here. It’s best to have a fence between you ’n him. He’s got a quick temper.”
When they got back to the house, they found their mother was out in the garden and she called them to come pick beans with her for dinner. It was fun to find the clusters of slim, long green beans hanging below the leaves, and she showed them how to hold the plant with one hand so it would not be pulled from the ground when they tugged on the beans.
“The weeds are dreadful. You girls will have to help me get at them as soon as we can. The men were so busy building our house that it’s a wonder they had time to plant a garden, let alone to weed. This is good soil for vegetables, and with a little work we’ll have plenty for now and all winter, if I can do some canning. Just look! That corn is almost ready, and I think there are still peas. The early potato tops are drying. Wait until you taste new potatoes and peas creamed together — fresh out of the garden!”
Mother loved to garden, and her eyes sparkled as she pictured how nice it would be when it was weeded and the many stones were picked out.
“But these mosquitoes are awful,” complained Helen, stopping to slap at them. “Look at how they fly up in clouds when I pull on the beans and shake the plants.”
“I agree,” Mother laughed, “but even they won’t be quite so bad when we get the garden cleaned up. By the way, girls, those are bee hives that your father has over on that side of the garden. They won’t bother you if you leave them alone and don’t go too close to them. There now, I think we have plenty of beans for dinner. Let’s take them in and sit on the porch while we snap them. Let’s run now and see if we can leave the mosquitoes behind us.”
After dinner, Father shoved his chair back and wiped the edges of his big red mustache with his napkin. “That was a good dinner, Mother.”
Father’s hair was almost black, and his eyes were a soft brown. Mother’s were an even darker brown that seemed to match her hair, which waved softly away from her face and partly hid the long, smooth braid she wound around her head like a crown.
“But I’m wondering if it isn’t my turn to have these three hired hands helping me this afternoon?” He continued, “I’ve got just a bit more to do on that table out on the porch. Your girls can be getting a little rest while I do that. Then I’ll show you how to become lumberjacks!”
“What’s a lumberjack?” Peggy Jean wanted to know.
“You’ll find out,” Father promised. “You know, we are what they call homesteaders. We can have this land for free if we live on it and do what the government calls improvin’. That means clearing some of it, putting up buildings, planting a garden and living here.”
“But scoot now and get your rest. I’ll be ready to have you help me with some of that improving in just a little while.”
It all sounded mysterious to the girls who had come all the way from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a big city in the East, to live now in the north woods of Minnesota.
“I’m going to wear my shoes,” Helen announced after their rest. “My feet aren’t tough enough yet, I guess. They got sore this morning, and I think lumberjacks work right out in the woods, which will hurt them even more.” Helen usually thought of things like that.
The others felt this was a good idea and put theirs on too.
The nice new table was finished, and Mother was sweeping up the shavings when they ran out onto the porch. Some of the shavings made beautiful yellow curls, which Helen and Peggy picked up and laid carefully in a little box to use when they would want to play dress-up on a rainy day.
Father was not far from the house. They could hear where he was by the sound of chopping.
“So you’re here!” he greeted them. “All ready for hard work? It’s good you’ve got your shoes on. The stubs left after the brush is cut can be pretty sharp. Now, here’s a brush hook you two bigger girls can take turns using. Peggy and whichever one isn’t cutting can drag the cut brush over to that pile I’ve started over there,” he pointed a short distance away.
“See here, now, this is the brush hook.” It looked something like an axe, but the handle was a little longer and the blade curved into a rounded hook.
“And this is the way you use it.” Father gave a short, sharp swing and a small tree slithered to the ground. “Chop close to the ground, but try not to strike any stones or rocks. Watch out for your feet because the hook is sharp. Keep out of each other’s way when you’re picking up brush. Think you can do it, Naomi? Just take the smaller brush; I’ll take care of the bigger stuff.”
“Another thing, you know what the evergreens look like. Don’t cut any of them. These with this pretty leaf are maples, and they’ll be a nice red color this fall, so your mother wants us to save them. Most of this other brush is popple, hazel brush and tag alder. When we get it cleared out, we’ll get more breeze and less mosquitoes. All right now, let’s see how much you can clear before Mother calls us to supper.”
It was hard work, but it was nice to feel they were doing something to help and fun to see the brush pile grow into a small mountain.
“Daddy says we’ll have a big bonfire some night after the brush has dried awhile,” Naomi told them when they stopped to rest a moment. “Won’t that be fun?”
“I want to explore all around in these woods as soon as we can,” Helen said, looking around. “I know the lake is that way,” she pointed toward the swamp road, “but what is back of these woods, and over that way, and that way, and ... ?”
“More woods and more woods!” Naomi laughed. “Beyond the road we drove up here on, I heard Daddy say it’s all Indian land for miles. I don’t think Indians are living on it right now, but they hunt there. We’ll probably see Indians every once in a while. But come on, let’s clear some more brush.”
Peggy Jean was glad she could hear the ringing sound of Father’s axe not far away. The thought of Indians was still a scary one to her.
“Supper’s ready! Yoohoo everybody!” Mother called. The girls were surprised that the afternoon had gone so fast.
When everyone had washed up at the kitchen sink, they found another surprise waiting for them. The new table was set for supper out on the porch where a cool breeze made it the nicest place in the house. A handful of clover provided a pretty bouquet in the middle of the table. The three girls sat on Mother and Father’s bed, for the table was right beside it. The three grown-ups sat on chairs across from them.
After prayer Father said, “Do I smell fresh fried fish? Well, look at that! Who had time to go fishing around here? My, that smells good!”
“I had a visitor who brought it to welcome us to our new home,” Mother said, smiling. “I’m sure you men know him, for he lives by himself in a little log cabin back in the woods west of us, half a mile further up the trail. His name is John Anderson.”
“We know him,” Uncle Bob nodded. “He’s been around a few times and brought us our mail when he’s been to town by launch. We do the same for him when we go. It helps a lot, for we don’t go to town all that often.”
“Oh, I’m glad you spoke of town — I know everyone is busy, and I hadn’t expected to need to go so soon, but could we go tomorrow?” Mother asked anxiously. “There are vegetables in the garden that will go to waste if I don’t can them, so I need a lot of canning jars. Also yeast, so I can bake bread - and a few other supplies you men didn’t think of.”
The children waited almost breathlessly for Father’s answer. When he said, “I guess we can do that, I need a few nails myself and an axe handle ... ”
“Oh, goody, goody!” they interrupted. “Can we go too? Oh, please!” they all begged together.
“Well, seeing you were such good helpers and ‘lumberjacks’ today, I don’t see why not, do you, Mother?”
“I think if they can do the dishes quickly after our Bible reading and then get right to bed, they can go. We’ll have to get an early start if it takes all day to get to town and back by launch,” she agreed.
“We’ll have to see in the morning if it’s a good day, for we don’t want to go if it is windy and the lake is too rough.” Father stepped to the door and looked toward the west. “There’s a nice sunset so it should be all right.”
The dishes were quickly finished and as Peggy Jean settled into her little cot, the stars were already beginning to wink down at her, and the big pines not far from her side of the little house were making soft sighing whispers. She thought of the exciting time they would have tomorrow going to town by launch, and of the happy day they had today. God was so good to have let them come up and live in these big woods. She whispered her own thank-you to Him just before she fell asleep.