Reading

I'm reading the Little House books. Many friends that are farming/gardening/homesteading say that they were inspired as children by Laura Ingalls Wilder and her books. I decided to check them out. So far I have read Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie. I'm reading Farmer Boy now. It's about her husband's childhood. I'm liking Farmer Boy a lot. It's all about Northern NY (near where we almost moved to) and farming there. The Wilder family was pretty prosperous. I've noticed with these books that the food is almost a character unto itself. I guess if you spend all your time trying to aquire food, grow food, prepare food, store food, sell food, etc., then eating it becomes more significant. All that work also makes for a huge appetite. I would bet that 5000 calories a day would keep you fighting trim if you were doing the physical labor of farmers in the second half of the 19th century.