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Alice and Eliza Jane were gathering roots and barks in the woods, and Royal was building huge bonfires in the yard They boiled the roots and the bark in big caldrons over the fires, and they dipped the long skeins of wool thread that Mother had spun, and lifted them out on sticks, all colored brown and red and blue When Al full of colored skeins

Mother wassoft-soap, too All the winter’s ashes had been saved in a barrel; noater was poured over the out of a little hole in the bottom of the barrel Mother measured the lye into a caldron, and added pork rinds and all the waste pork fat and beef fat that she had been saving all winter The caldron boiled, and the lye and the fat made soap

Al, he could have dipped the brown, slimy soap out of the caldron and filled the tubs with it But he had to go back to school

He watched the moon anxiously, for in the dark of the moon in May he could stay out of school and plant pumpkins

Then in the chill, earlyhe tied a pouch full of pumpkin seeds around his waist and went to the cornfield All the dark field had a thin green veil of weeds over it now The s well because of the cold

At every second hill of corn, in every second row, Almanzo knelt down and took a thin, flat puer He pushed the seed, sharp point down, into the ground

It was chill work at first, but pretty soon the sun was higher The air and the earth ser and thurow

Day after day he worked, till all the pued to hoe and thin the carrots He hoed all the weeds away fro rows, and he pulled the little feathery carrot-tops, till those that were left stood two inches apart

He didn’t hurry at all No one had ever taken such pains with carrots as he did, because he didn’t want to go back to school He made the work last till there were only threeterm ended and he could work all summer

First he helped hoe the cornfield Father plowed between the rows, and Royal and Almanzo with hoes killed every weed that was left, and hoed around each hill of corn Slash, slash went the hoes all day, stirring the earth around the young shoots of corn and the first two flat leaves of the pumpkins

Two acres of corn Almanzo hoed, and then he hoed two acres of potatoes That finished the hoeing for a while, and noas strawberry-time

Wild strawberries were few that year, and late, because frost had killed the first blossoh the woods to fill his pail full of srant berries

When he found the soreen and ate them, too And he nibbled with his teeth the sweet-sour wood-sorrel’s steht up to their frail lavender blosso squirrels, and he left his pail on the banks of strea the minnows But he never came home till his pail was full

Then there were strawberries and cream for supper, and next day Mother would make strawberry preserves

“I never saw corn grow so slowly,” Father worried He plowed the field again, and again Almanzo helped Royal to hoe the corn But the little shoots stood still On the first of July they were only four inches high They seerow