Welcome to Cranky Puppy Farm!

This blog belongs to two Gen X-er's smackdab in downtown Kansas City where we've been renovating and decorating two old Victorians built in the 1890's. Our life is filled with 3 demanding Pomeranians (1 of them cranky, of course), honking cars, noisy neighbors and the hustle and bustle of city life but we dream of the day when we can move to our 40-acre farm and hear nothing but the wind and the cows next door. Until then, we're chronicling our triumphs and mishaps here as we try to garden and preserve on 2 city lots, raise chickens, and learn all those things we should have learned from our grandparents. Welcome to our world - we hope you'll stay awhile!

Visiting Laura Ingalls-Wilder

Thursday, May 10, 2012

I suspect, if you're reading this, that you're familiar with and may have even read the Little House books (or even seen the TV series), so I doubt the name Laura Ingalls Wilder needs an introduction.  The house that Laura lived in and ultimately wrote the Little House books in is in Mansfield, Missouri and not far from the Baker Creek seeds location, so J. and I took an afternoon out to go visit her farm.  It has now been designated a National Historic Site and is being preserved, pretty much the way it was when she and Almanzo lived there.


For a small admission fee, you can tour the house and a museum that has a staggering amount of photos and personal items from Laura, Almanzo, Rose, Ma and Pa, Mary and Carrie.  The star of the show is Pa's Fiddle, which is still played annually at a local festival.

The house is a quaint little farmhouse with a large beautiful yard.  We toured through the downstairs (the upstairs bedrooms are off limits), and the entire house is filled with the furniture that Laura used when she lived in the house.  Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take pictures inside the house so I can only share exterior shots of the house.

Laura, 27, and Almanzo, 37, moved to this location in 1894 after a series of misfortunes left them in debt and in ill-health.  After a 6-week journey over 50 miles and with a $100 bill representing the last of their savings, they purchased the 40-acre farm and named it "Rocky Ridge Farm".  The tour guide told an interesting story about the trip from South Dakota in which they arrived and couldn't find the $100 that had been tucked away for safekeeping.  It ultimately was located hidden away in Laura's desk.

The "back porch".  The window to the left is the music room and library and to the right is the sitting room where Laura liked to write.  I am love with that stacked stone fireplace chimney, aren't you?

Another view of the screened in summer porch.  It's evident that the house began as a smaller one and was added onto as the farm grew and became more profitable. 

I wish I could share interior pictures with you, as I found the kitchen to be really fascinating.  Laura was just 4 foot 11 inches tall and Almanzo custom built all the cabinetry and countertops for her, so they are shorter than today's modern kitchen fixtures.  An accomplished woodworker, Almanzo also built much of the furniture and the built-in bookcases throughout the house.

We were very surprised to hear that there are actually two homes on the property.  Their daughter, Rose, was a very successful free-lance writer and had a more modern house constructed as a gift for her parents.  Laura never wanted to move and refused to visit the building site until the day they were to move in.  Rose moved into the old farmhouse until she ultimately left the farm for good 8 years later. 


Despite the fact that the house was within a 15-minute walk of the old farmhouse, Laura had never wanted to move from the house that she and Almanzo had built with their bare hands, and they moved back into the old house where they lived until their deaths in 1949 and 1957 respectively.


The stone used to build this house is gorgeous and I fell in love with the tool marks in the mortar.


Nestled among the trees and on the downslope of an Ozark hill overlooking an immense field, you can see forever from this house.  On the side overlooking the field, the entire wall of the living room is a bank of french doors that open up to take advantage of the view. Rose certainly knew how to pick a location!


Well, I hope you thoroughly enjoyed the visit to this historic landmark as much as we did.  I'll leave you with a quote from Rose, one of the most influential Libertarians in the 20th century:

"Everything that an American values, his property, his home, his life, his children's future, depends upon his keeping clear in his mind the revolutionary basis of this Republic. This revolutionary basis is recognition of the fact that human rights are natural rights, born in every human being with his life, and inseparable from his life; not rights and freedoms that can be granted by any power on earth."

I'm sharing this post as part of the Rural Thursday Blog Hop.  Hop on over and see what everyone else is up to!

15 comments:

  1. I would love to visit there! Thanks for all the information.

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  2. Oh that sounds fascinating. I would have loved to see inside too. I well remember watching Little House on The Prairie.

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    1. The house is nothing like the cabin on the TV series and neither were the folks in real life. "Pa" actually had a really long beard in real life. You can see his picture with "Ma" Caroline on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ingalls. Thanks for stopping by!

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  3. Very fun post to read! We live close to DeSmet, South Dakota where the Ingalls family homesteaded. We watched Little House on the Prairie every week when I was young, I will always think of Melissa Gilbert as Laura! Darn them for voting her off D.W.T.S.!

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    1. It's funny that you say that. Actors\actresses do get type-cast and I always think of her as Laura on the Little House series whenever I see her. Whenver J. isn't around, I flip it over to the reruns on the Hallmark channel. It's a guilty pleasure.. :-)

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  4. LOVE LOVE LOVE this post!! Now I want to go there myself! Thanks for a GREAT report on your visit. :)

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    1. Thanks, Lin! Let me know if you make it there to visit. We had a really great time and the country there is beautiful. So much so that we are considering selling our farm in northern Missouri and moving down there.

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  5. Of course I read and re-read all the Little House books... how interesting to go there and see the last house in person. You can't go upstairs in President Truman's house, either!

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  6. Interesting... never realized that the Wilders lived this far south. I'll have to go check out the house some time.

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    1. Hey, you made it by here. Great seeing you and Jeff last week. I'm looking forward to seeing you both again next week. Hope you have a great weekend!

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  7. Such a great post. I loved the Little House books growing up.

    Thank you for sharing at Rural Thursdays this week. :)

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    1. It was really neat to hear the story behind the books and see some of their personal items. I wish I could have taken pictures inside the museum, as they had some of the clothing that Laura and Mary had sewn themselves. We're talking delicate crocheted sleeves and necklines and pleated shirts - all done by hand! I think sometimes the books get idealized and we forgot about all the hard work. We have it so easy nowadays.

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  8. ohhhh i've been here many times while living in missouri! it's one of my favorite places!!

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    1. I see you're making beignets over there on one of your blogs - that made me really hungry for them, so I'm heading downstairs now to make some. Thanks for stopping by, Tanya!

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  9. What a wonderful post! Thank you for sharing this! I have always loved the Little House books and grew up watching the series :-) I would love to visit this site some day! I, too, am in love with those tool marks in the mortar!

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