So exactly why is she teaching the calf to drink?
Someone needs to let me in on this. It is only now, having actually lived around cows and calves and seen many bucket calves being fed, that it occurs to me that this scene does not make sense. Is Laura trying to wean the calf? I mean, the calf’s mother – Ellen – is right there, is she not? And Laura milks the cow, then brings the milk that she got from the calf’s mother over to the calf. Isn’t that an unnecessary step to play the middleman? As I understand it, mama cows aren’t necessarily all that nice when they’re ready to wean their calves. They might just, say, kick them off – literally. But Ellen is a caring mom: she “answered with a soothing moo” when her calf “bawled anxiously.” Her “baby calf,” no less. I don’t get it.
(I’m waiting for Sarah Uthoff to comment here.)
OK, I’ll back up. I love this chapter. Not only does it set the stage for post-winter happiness and contentment, it’s full of lines that have been seared into my memory for thirty years:
Pa looked at her. He knew how she felt. “I think, myself, it’s pretty nice,” he said.
Mary eagerly offered to do all the housework, so that Laura could help Ma. … “I couldn’t tell the difference between a pea vine and a weed at the end of a hoe, but I can wash dishes and make beds and take care of Grace.”
[Don’t you want someone in your household to offer to do all the housework? And not just offer but eagerly offer?]“Why Pa?”
Every time a bean popped up, Grace squealed again.
“You needn’t see it for me, Laura. I can feel how large and fresh and pretty it is.”
It was a beautiful room.
This is also the chapter where Mary and Laura have their “I wanted to slap you” discussion, which is always fun (and is where I finally decide to like Mary). Before that, “It really tastes a little like lemon flavoring, Laura,” Mary says, harshing Laura’s poetic mellow, but for some reason Laura lets this go. They then get into talking about inherent good and evil, an exchange that strikes me as very Rose in flavor. “‘But my goodness! How can anyone be good without thinking about it?’”Laura demanded. It’s the demanded that gets me. For a second, I feel like I’m reading Free Land.
Well, this is Little Town on the Praire; I guess there will be more of that to come.
Mostly this chapter is about, well, springtime on the claim. We hear about Ellen and the calves on their picket pins, and the garden, and adding onto the shanty, and spring cleaning combined with moving. We know that Pa has gotten a new plow that’s so handy he’s not too tired to joke at night. We see Mary sink down into the sweetness of the violets and hear her saying that she doesn’t want to eat the only bug in the whole of Dakota Territory. If The Long Winter was bleak, “Springtime on the Claim” is full of sharp color and vivid contentment, a reminder that the bleakness was temporary. Whenever I am on Ingalls Homestead, I think of this chapter.
Kind of makes me want to move right in with them.
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I love how in her later books she seems to show more about the relationships between the characters. Or maybe it just seems that way to me. Laura and Mary seem like more normal sisters here in this chapter.
I think they weaned the calf early so the family could have the milk and the cream for butter and cottage cheese. I’m not sure, though. I honestly never thought about it until you asked. Lol. Good question!
I worked at a dairy farm for a little while in another lifetime, so I’m pretty sure that I know the answer. Sarah has the experience and can explain it though.
This is one of my favorite chapters in the books and it contains what would probably be my favorite Garth Williams illustration. 🙂
Kim has it right, and I bet Laura would too. I was finally able to ask my husband. Greedy calves!
Lots to love in this chapter 🙂
1. “She felt she never could get enough sunshine soaked into her bones”. We’ve just had a particularly cold and gloomy winter by our standards (nothing like as bad as the US gets) and we’re now basking in an unusually pleasant spring (over 70 degrees is definitely unexpected in April) and this is exactly how I feel.
2. The bug joke. It’s really interesting to see Mary develop as a character.
3. The beans popping! I would be squealing along with Grace.
4. Extending the shanty – I love all house-building scenes.
It’s just such a lovely, warm, contented chapter, and so absorbing that I never once think “oh-oh, but that job’s going to wreck things” while I’m reading it.
I must agree, that these chapters always made me feel like they were breathing deeply for the first time. As you said Sandra, like they were recovering from the long winter. It feels to me like after that winter, things just get better for them. Pa even has a new plow!
I have to admit to being jealous about the whole bean-popping thing. I have never in my life been able to see the beans popping out of the ground. One day there was nothing, and the next….there they were! How rude! I even made it a point to watching for this after reading LTOTP when I was 10. We had a huge garden (several acres worth, anyway) and it seemed like most of it was beans. Oh-my-aching-back. I used to wonder why Laura would rather be in the garden instead of inside.
Growing up on a dairy farm I vividly remember the same experience as Laura. Calves are weaned from their mothers almost immediately after birth so that the milk can be used by the family. The cream is skimmed off and the calf is feed the more skim remaining milk. Since calves are naturally wired to nurse from a mother cow, they have to be taught to drink from a pail. Laura describes the process wonderfully.
Well, I got around to this late and it’s already basically answered, but I will add that this is a difference between milk cows and beef cows. Beef cows (like we raise) the cows primary responsibility is to raise the calf. Dairy cows or milk cows are supposed to raise the calf and provide milk for the humans. If the calves are pulled off, they will eat other things besides milk and the humans can have the milk. This was especially true with pioneers because their cows (dedicated purebred breeds were just beginning to come in) were more like mutts and didn’t produce as much milk as modern dairy cows. I think perhaps I will start working on the differences with how people experienced milk in the 19th century.
Our latest bottle calf http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5t-w40z8a8
I have a couple of family milk cows and milk every day so can add a little.
Any breastfeeding mothers out there? Remember the let-down reaction? If you need every possible drop of dairy cream (for nutrition, butter, cheesemaking, etc.), you want to remove the calf immediately after birth so that the cow lets down her milk for YOU, rather than holding up for the calf. Most of the cream is in the “hind milk,” meaning the last milk in the teats.
Most cows can be trained to let down for a milker, but they will never let down completely if they have a calf on them, so you won’t get all the precious cream.
I share-milk with my cows, meaning I take what I need and leave the rest for the calves, who are never separated from their dams. I get lovely cream in my milk, but when I wean the calves (remove milk from their diet, at four to six months) the cream content of my jars jumps from an inch and a half on a gallon to three to four inches.
Sarah is correct about the difference in pioneer cows and cows today. Which book is it when Pa tames a wild cow off the range? Surely that was a beef cow. My ten-year-old dairy cow raises a calf PLUS gives me six gallons of milk a day at the start of her lactation. I imagine Pa’s cow gave a few gallons of milk a day.
By the time any calf is a month old it will be drinking over a gallon. By the time it is three months old, left to its own devices it will be drinking three gallons… i.e. all the milk the family needed. Thus the calf was pulled off, the cow milked, and the calf fed day-old milk from which the cream had been skimmed.
I do not think Pa weaned the Ingalls’ calves (particularly a heifer calf, a female destined to be a valuable milk cow) before 3-4 months old. It is done today in dairies because calves are transitioned to grain. Pa obviously did not have this option and though calves eat grass from a young age, they can’t survive on it. However it would do fine on 2x daily buckets of skimmed milk, probably 2 gallons a day.
The other advantage of never allowing a calf to suckle is that weaning is a snap — just stop feeding the calf buckets of milk. However if your calf ever understands the location of the permanent milk bar, you will have a terrible time preventing it from drinking up the entire supply if there is any opportunity. In the 1870s this would have meant a huge hassle of constant fencing or tying. Today I wean my dairy calves by putting a prickly plastic calf weaner on their noses which prevents suckling.
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