Free The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder

the sheep into the yard that had been built for them. There were a hundred
     good ewes and six old ones that had been thrown in for nothing. Every morning after that, Peter drove the sheep out onto the school section to graze, carefully herding them away from the grass
     that would be mowed for hay.
    The rains came frequently. It even seemed as though the winds did not blow as hard as
     usual, and the wheat and oats grew splendidly.
    The days hurried along toward harvest. Just a little while longer now and all would be
     well with the crop.
    Fearful of hail, Manly and Laura watched the clouds. If only it would not hail. As the days passed bringing no hailstorm,
    Laura found herself thinking, Everything will even up in the end; the rich have their ice
     in the summer but the poor get theirs in the winter. When she caught herself at it, she
     would laugh with a nervous catch in her throat. She must not allow herself to be under
     such a strain. But if only they could harvest and sell this crop, it would mean so much.
     Just to be free of debt and have the interest money to use for themselves would make
     everything so much easier through the winter that was coming soon.
    At last the wheat was in the milk and again Manly estimated that the yield would be forty
     bushels to the acre. Then one morning the wind blew strong from the south and it was a
     warm wind. Before noon the wind was hot and blowing harder. And for three days the hot
     wind blew.
    When it died down at last and the morning of the fourth was still, the wheat was dried and
     yellow. The grains were cooked in the milk, all dried and shrunken, absolutely
     shriveled. It was not worth harvesting as wheat but Manly hitched Skip and Barnum to the mowing machine and mowed it and the oats, to be stacked like hay
     and fed without threshing to the stock as a substitute for both hay and grain. As soon as this was done, haying was begun,
    for they must cut the hay on the school section ahead of anyone else. It was theirs if
     they were the first to claim and cut it. Laura and Rose went to the hayfield again. Laura
     drove the mower while Manly raked the hay cut the afternoon before. And a neighbor boy
     was hired to herd the sheep while Peter helped Manly stack the hay. They stacked great
     ricks of hay all around the sheep barn and on three sides of the sheep yard,
    leaving the yard open on the south side only. And the twenty-fifth of August came and passed and the third year of farming was ended.

Little House 9 The First Four Years
    A YEAR OF GRACE
    F
    
    
     all plowing was begun as soon as haying was finished, but the work was too hard for Skip
     and Barnum to do even with the help of the ponies. Trixy and Fly were small and could not pull with strength. They were
     intended only for riding. Fly objected strenuously at times, kicking savagely when her
     tugs were being hitched.
    Once when Laura was helping Manly hitch the horses to the plow and keeping watch of Rose
     at the same time, she lost sight of Rose. Immediately she stopped working with the
     harness, and looking quickly around the yard, said, “Manly, where is Rose?”
    And a little hand pulled Fly's tail away from her body, on the opposite side of the four
     horses abreast, a little face showed between Fly and her tail, and Rose's little voice
     said, “Here I am!”
    Now Manly's hands were not nearly so stiff and clumsy. Perhaps he could soon hitch the
     straps and buckle the buckles himself.
    The team was tired at night. Laura could hardly bear to see them at the unhitching, Skip
     with his gay head hanging and Barnum's dancing feet standing so patiently still.
    Manly said he would have to get another team, for he wanted to break the 60 acres of sod
     and have the whole 160 acres ready to seed in the spring.
    “But the three years are up. Do you call this farming a success?” Laura objected.
    “Well, I don't know,” Manly answered. “It is not so bad. Of course, the crops