the not-so-little house from Little House

Yes, actually, I DID plan an entire family vacation around going to Malone, New York to visit the house from Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. And when we finally pulled into the gravel parking lot overlooking the yard and the house, I was as giddy as Christmas morning. So, so grateful to my husband for humoring me and letting me fulfill that lifelong wish to see the Wilder farm, when really, he didn't care either way.

I always pictured the red farmhouse to be a mansion on par with the behemoths we build today, but it's maybe 1000-1500 square feet. Compared to the tiny cabins Laura grew up in, which would probably fit in the kitchen, this was a mansion. Of all the Wilder Little House sites you can visit, this is the REAL one - this is the only original house from the book series. Everything else is a replica. Almanzo walked on THOSE floors. Almanzo ate in THAT room. Almanzo sat on THAT porch. Honestly, I may be a bigger Almanzo fan than a Laura fan.

I haven't read Farmer Boy in years and years, but I can still almost quote it. I love that the stories themselves were real - Laura didn't just make stuff up and set it on the farm. When the house was being restored, workers found a black mark on the wall under the wallpaper near the woodstove, validating that the story of Almanzo throwing the blacking brush at his sister was most likely real.

The heart of the house was the kitchen, which is bigger than my own current one. The pantry is AWESOME. I would love something like that for myself, just with electricity. And air conditioning, because we were there in July on a SUPER humid day and it felt like we were literally melting.

The quilt on the bed was made by Almanzo's mother, Angeline. Her own hands! I'm learning to quilt, so I could have stood there just looking at it for a lot longer than my kids let me.

I remember the section of the book when Almanzo wanders around their "huge" house to find his mother, and she's upstairs with the loom making fabric. It never occurred to me that the loom didn't have its own room - it's smack in the middle of an open area at the top of the stairs, which includes beds for the children.

The barns are all replicas, but figured so prominently in the novel that they were rebuilt according to Almanzo's diagrams for Laura when she was writing the book, and also his father's architectural plans that were located in archives. There are clips from the story posted throughout the barn. We loved being reminded about Almanzo's pet pig, Lucy, his team of small oxen, the sheep shearing when Almanzo dragged a sheep upstairs before it was sheared, and all the stories about the horses. The horses were my favorite.

My kiddos loved the hands-on activities - carding wool, pumping water in the pump house with a real pump (that water was COLD! and felt SO GOOD because of the humidity), and trying out the shoulder yoke to carry buckets of water ... running water because you run while wearing the yoke ... har har har ...

If you're ever in the area of Lake Placid, Malone is only about two hours north. It's only open during the warmer months of the year, so check the schedule before making the trek. If you are a Wilder junkie, it's well worth it.