Winter Nights: Then and Now
Anyone else out there a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books? I read them as a child and then again to my child. Ruby often comes back to them on audiobook, so I still hear snippets from time to time. Recently, as Farmer Boy played in the background, I found myself thinking about the cadence of farm life then and farm life now—the similarities, the differences, and perhaps what has been lost along the way.
Every evening in Farmer Boy, young Almanzo Wilder sat by the kitchen stove, rubbing his boots with tallow to keep them soft and waterproof. I’ve made tallow before, but mine turned out a little too beefy for my liking—and I wouldn’t dream of baking a sweet pie with it, as Almanzo’s mother did. James and I do occasionally waterproof our boots, though, because a good pair is still essential for farm life, whether it’s 1860 or 2025. But I wonder if Almanzo ever thought much about his boots beyond their usefulness—if he felt pressure to buy the “right” pair, if he worried they wouldn’t last.
Almanzo’s father spent his winter evenings chopping up potatoes and carrots to feed the livestock. We don’t keep a barn full of animals here at Trillium Hill anymore—just a handful of chickens—and we buy their feed from the store. Still, winter is a time of tending, making sure what we do have is cared for, whether that’s the animals, the hoophouse crops, or just ourselves. But I can’t help but wonder: was there a deeper kind of satisfaction in feeding the animals from the same earth that fed the family? Did Almanzo’s father ever worry whether he was using his time wisely, or did he just do what needed to be done, night after night, trusting in the rhythm of the work?
One of my favorite details in Farmer Boy is the simple pleasure of making popcorn in a wire popper over the coals. Many nights a week, Ruby asks if I’ll make popcorn—though ours comes from an air popper—and we settle in to watch an NCAA women’s basketball game. The butter is probably not quite as delicious as Almanzo’s was, since I’m not making fresh butter in my kitchen most days, but it’s still quite good. Yet there’s a difference, isn’t there? Almanzo’s popcorn was likely the only entertainment of the evening. For us, the popcorn is an afterthought, a snack to accompany a screen. We enjoy it, but are we really savoring it in the way that he might have?
While Almanzo’s mother knitted and his father carved an axe handle, our evenings look a little different. I might be texting a friend about skiing plans or posting on Instagram while James is filling out organic certification paperwork or emailing customers. The work is quiet but different, and I suspect there was a steadiness in those nights by the fire that we don’t quite have anymore. Our minds are never in just one place—half working, half consuming, half distracted by the latest notification. Even our quiet moments aren’t quite so quiet.
Eliza Jane read the news aloud from The New York Weekly. I, on the other hand, have a near panic attack every time my phone delivers a New York Times breaking news alert. Maybe bad news always traveled fast, but it surely didn’t arrive in an instant, in a dozen different forms, at all hours of the day and night.
And then, as the clock strikes nine, it is bedtime for the Wilder family. That I can relate to. Nine o’clock is when I start cajoling Ruby to brush her teeth and get into bed. Thankfully, she still likes a tuck-in, a short snuggle with me and the dog before the lights go out. The dog is not essential to her warmth, like perhaps Almanzo’s was, but is a comfort nonetheless.
Maybe we don’t rub our boots with tallow or carve axe handles by the fire. Maybe our evenings are noisier, more scattered, and full of distractions. The quiet labor of tending to things—boots, livestock, a pot of popcorn over the coals—has been replaced by notifications, emails, and screens. But even in our fractured evenings, some things remain: the comfort of a shared ritual, the glow of a lamp against the dark, the feeling of winding down together after another day’s work. Maybe the rhythm of farm life has changed, but the need for those small, steady moments of connection hasn’t. And if we pause long enough, we might just find them waiting for us, still.