Stormy Days

In De Smet, which had grown larger then, the Ingalls suffered through awful storms in the winter. Laura never forgot these, and they made it into the book The Long Winter. A horrible blizzard came in their second year there, and everyone in town had to do whatever they could to make it through, like making flour by putting their wheat into their coffee grinder when their supply ran out.

They had neither enough food nor wood and had to burn hay they gathered and packed together to stay warm. The storm was so bad that when Charles went out, he would follow the path of a string tied between the house and the barn. Otherwise, he may have gotten lost as he barely had any line of sight.

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