Farmer Boy

We're going to take a tour of Almanzo Wilder's boyhood home.

You know it from the book Farmer Boy in Laura Ingalls Wilder's classic series Little House.

And it was the best thing I've seen in years.

I can't wait to share it with you.

It didn't work then.

But it did work this past week in 2026.

To my astonishment, I stood in the very house that I knew and loved from the book Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

That book recounts the boyhood of Laura's husband, Almanzo, years before they met.

My good friend Holly, you know her from her writing on Substack, figured out that Almanzo Wilder's boyhood home is not only still extant, but has been restored and is open to visit from the public.

Yes, if you've read Farmer Boy, it's that house.

It's still there.

The farm is there.

painting.

And I stood about this far from it and looked at it and it was just overwhelming, just tears.

That happened to me when I went to the Wilder Farm this week, because I've had an image of the house, the little house itself, the little house in the big woods, the little house on the prairie, the Wilder Farm featured in Farmer Boy.

And I had no idea it was really there and here it is.

She calls him manly, affectionately calls him manly.

Farmer Boy is the book about him in case anybody wants to read about Almanzo's life.

Yeah.

Amazing.

And it really matched the idea of being independent and being strong.

And so it would just happen, right? I was really struck by the number of times in the book Farmer Boy that the ideas of independence came up and were really part of the scenes.

So in the final version of Farmer Boy, there is a wagon maker named Mr. Paddock.

who has invited Almanzo to become his apprentice, right? And we all love that scene.

I'm sure we all remember that scene.

Book one was Little House in the Big Woods.

Her second book was Farmer Boy, and in some ways, Farmer Boy, which follows the life of the childhood of her husband, Almanzo, is kind of the mirror image of Little House in the Big Woods.

Little House in the Big Woods is about a frontier family in the 19th century living and working on the frontier.

And Farmer Boy is also about a 19th century family, but they're a more prosperous family in the East, living and working their land.

So neither books really have the forward action that we kind of think about and associate with the Little House books.

That doesn't really come into play until Little House on the Prairie, and that book was number three in the series.