- The first time I visited the Almanzo & Laura Ingalls Wilder Association in Burke, New York was in 2007 on the occasion of Almanzo Wilder's 150th birthday.

So it was a special occasion.

I had never been there before and I arrived and stepped onto this property and I was absolutely knocked out by it.

(upbeat music) - [Promoter] Production funding for "Upstate Attractions" is provided by Franklin County Development, Allegany County, Oswego County Tourism, and the Watkins Glen Chamber of Commerce.

With daily flights to Boston, Logan International Airport and Massena New York offers access to locations such as the Adirondack Mountains, the Saint Lawrence River and destinations in Canada, like Ottawa and Montreal.

Online at fishmassenany.com.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] In this episode of "Upstate Attractions," we take you back to the mid-1800s, to a simple homestead, located two miles outside of the town of Malone, New York in Franklin County, an area steeped in history.

Our hidden gem today is a story book location made internationally famous by a woman who never set foot on the farmland, author Laura Ingalls Wilder.

The Wilder Homestead is a boyhood home of her husband, Almanzo Wilder.

A little later in the show we reach out by video chat to Hollywood, to actor and producer Dean Butler, who played the character of Almanzo Wilder in the world renowned television series, "Little House on the Prairie."

What began as a historical project in 1987 is now a site on the National History Registry and is a literary landmark.

The Almanzo, Laura Ingalls Wilder Association have created an environment where visitors from all over can experience period lifestyle of Almanzo Wilder, who was born and raised here from 1857 to 1875.

A visit to the Wilder Homestead in Burke, New York, feels like stepping back in time.

Today, the historical site is an education center providing workshops, an artifact museum, nature walks, special events, and narrated tours.

- Welcome to the boyhood Home of Almanzo Wilder.

My name's Bea and I'm gonna give you a tour today.

Follow me.

Almanzo would milk the cows all by himself.

He'd bring in the milk at night, and mother would pour them in a pan like this one right here.

You can see the lovely China on the table.

We know that Mrs.

Wilder was a big collector of her blue China, so it was something she could take pride in.

- The reason why we exist here is because of Laura Ingalls Wilder's second book, "Farmer Boy", which was written about her husband's life when he was nine-years-old here on this farm.

The house actually being the house that he lived in, that his father built.

- We have guests that come from all over the world here to see where Almanzo Wilder actually lived.

Almanzo Wilder grew up here in Burke, we're about Almanzo, and we introduced the people to the place where he lived back in the 1860s.

- Our mission is that we present this farm that was in the book as part of the agricultural community in Northern New York during that period of time, which was the 1840s roughly to the 1875.

So it's that period that we're representing.

So people like Donna, one of our guides who was dressed in period garb, Dave, our master gardener too as well.

And when we have events here, a lot of our staff and volunteers will wear period uniforms or outfits of the time.

- [Narrator] Beyond the delightful homestead tours, The Almanzo Wilder Farm hosts many historical celebrations and showcases, including living history events such as Civil War reenactments, activities that draw thousands of visitors a year.

- [Ken] When we have a special event, especially when we have Dean Butler here, who was the gentleman who played Almanzo in the TV series.

we can get several thousand people here in a day.

We have three fields here that have been chockablock full of vehicles, just people coming to see Dean, basically, he's a huge draw.

- I played Almanzo Wilder on the NBC television series, "Little House on the Prairie" from 1979 to 1983, so it was five years, but I never imagined that I would remain connected to this material for now it's for me, 44 years that I have been associated with "Little House in the Prairie."

I started as a 23-year-old man.

I had just graduated from college and my purpose coming into the show was to be the man that Laura Ingalls, not Wilder yet, but Laura Ingalls fell in love with on the series.

(bright music) - [Donna] Almanzo Wilder, he lived here on this farm until he was 18-years-old.

When you see him on the television series, he's a grown man, a grown adult.

Here you get the feel of him as a boy on the farm.

- [Ken] One of the crucial things that we try to do here is have a good educational program.

What we do is we have school tours here, mainly in the spring and mostly fourth grade, so most fourth grade schools in the north country.

What they do is they read the book in advance and then come here and take a tour of where it took place.

And so part of that tour is our replica one-room schoolhouse.

And what school was like that was written up in the book and the way it was written up, the book was the family, the kids went through the woods, over the hill, over the bridge, all of that sort of stuff.

So we wanted to make a trail through the woods for them to get to the school.

So this trail, it's a short little trail that takes 'em through the woods and brings 'em up out to the school.

- We are sitting in a parking lot at the Almanzo farm, and it is usually filled with cars when we have events here.

Behind me, you see a replica schoolhouse that was built in 2011, started the building, it was finished in 2013.

Dean Butler, who played Almanzo on the television series actually came here in 2013 with Lucy Flippin who plays Eliza Jane on the series, and they dedicated this schoolhouse behind me to Laura, to Eliza Jane, and to all school teachers.

The children when they attended their school would have walked a mile and 1/2 through the woods, and we thought that it would be awesome if we were able to have a schoolhouse here for them to actually go to school or have the visitors coming go to school.

And so there's no way that they'd be able to walk a mile and 1/2 through the woods.

So it was decided to have a five-minute walk through the woods and up to the front of the school with a teacher ringing the bell.

And then from then on it's like what one-room schoolhouse is all about.

- [Dean] They've added a one room schoolhouse that I think, you know, probably, you know, it's certainly not a Hardscrabble School, but of course in "Farmer Boy" there is the Hardscrabble School and where, you know, where Big Bill Ritchie, you know, got what was coming to him from Mr.

Corse and with the bullwhip.

And I think they recreated that to be able to help tell that story and to add to something physical that people could enjoy when they come and visit there.

When you go and visit the Wilder Farm, you get a piece of Almanzo's life and a very special piece of Almanzo's life that is so beautifully captured in the "Farmer Boy" book that Laura wrote to honor him.

- [Narrator] Not only did Dean Butler play the role of Almanzo in the "Little House on the Prairie" TV series, he also wrote, executive produced and directed a critically acclaimed documentary entitled "Almanzo Wilder: Life Before Laura."

His supporting research for these roles led him to learn about the Homestead Act of 1862.

A significant piece of legislation in US history.

Signed by President Abraham Lincoln, the Homestead Act allowed families, like the Ingalls, to establish their homes and livelihoods on the American frontier, shaping Laura's experience and providing the backdrop for her captivating stories of family life on the prairie.

And Dean found a most striking revelation in the process.

- The prairie would never have been settled had it not been for women and children.

Women and children are the key to civilization as we know it.

Men go out and, you know, capture the land, plunder across the land, you know, capturing territory, but holding it and developing it is about women and children.

Laura was 65-years-old when she began writing these books, so, you know, she was thinking back through her life as she's culling these stories.

Now, Laura never visited Almanzo's home, as she was writing "Farmer Boy" "Little House in the Big Woods" was the first book.

And since she didn't know where this was going and the first book was an enormous success, since she didn't know where it was going, she decided very quickly that the second book should be, if the first book was about her childhood, that the second book should be about Almanzo's childhood.

So that's how she came to the idea of writing "Farmer Boy."

- [Narrator] As Dean said, Laura Ingalls Wilder never visited Burke, New York and beyond conversations with her husband about his youth, it wasn't until her daughter Rose came to see the property in the 1930s.

It was Rose who got the feel of the place of the farming life, of the look, of the community of Malone.

And she was able to help communicate all those things to her mother.

- Now, it's very clear that Laura and her daughter Rose were very powerful partners in the creation of the "Little House" books.

So, alright, coming all the way forward.

So now I am doing the show, I'm done with the show years past and I'm starting to get invitations to go to these various places, to Walnut Grove, to De Smet, South Dakota, to Mansfield, to Mansfield, Missouri, where Laura wrote the books to go to all these events.

And one of those invitations was to the Almanzo Wilder Farm in Burke, New York.

And so I come in 2007 on the occasion of Almanzo's 150th birthday, and I'm just knocked out by how beautiful it is by how you know, when you hear that this house, this beautiful idyllic house set on this beautiful piece of land is the only property that Laura wrote about that's still standing on its original foundations.

It has a resonance that you don't get anywhere else in laurel world.

This house in Burke, New York is the house where Almanzo grew up.

It's the house where he was raised, it's the house where he got all the lessons that we read about in "Farmer Boy."

It's the place where he ate all the incredible meals that his mother prepared.

There's never been such food as there is in "Farmer Boy."

It's this incredible ongoing spread of wonderful, wonderful food.

And it's because Almanzo's parents were really, truly successful farmers.

So when Laura had the opportunity to talk about food, she just didn't waste anything.

She poured every bit of food she could onto the pages of these books.

So it it was wonderful.

- [Narrator] Staying true to these stories in "Farm Boy" and to its mission statement, the Almanzo & Laura Ingalls Wilder Association has even restored homestead features, like the kitchen garden.

- This, it's called a kitchen garden because it's close to the kitchen where the housewife could come out and she could gather things that she would want for meals like onions, peppers, perhaps peas, lettuce, radishes, things like that.

And so it's handy.

So my aim in this kitchen garden is to keep it appropriate to the time period and so on a few different levels.

From what I've read, they would certainly have had a fence.

And this is my third year here, in the second year I built a fence around here.

And they also would've at that time been encouraged to plant in beds, which was good news to me because that's the way I've always gardened is in beds like this.

And I have been able to find varieties that were available when the Wilders were living here, they were here until 1875.

So everything that I've planted here was available in 1875 and earlier.

There's herbs, along this side of the fence are flowers, bee balm, black-eyed Susans, and behind you is a big giant herb plant, lovage.

And then there's other herbs along this side and another herb bed there.

And off that way is a hop pole.

So the Wilders grew a lot of hops, that was a big cash crop for them.

Well, hops are a flour and I think they harvest them just before they get dry and brown and they use them most commonly it's used in beer to make it bitter or for flavoring and bittering.

All the plants are of the era that the Wilders lived here, this yellow crookneck squash, which is one that's widely available in almost any seed catalog.

And it was in in America before European settlers were.

Some of the varieties that are 170-years-old or older, and some of them you have to search for to find them in specialty catalogs, but a lot of them are widely available still after all these years.

- [Ken] Dave, our master gardener, has done an absolutely amazing job at maintaining virtually all anything that's planted here on the property.

We have a couple of other exhibits, gardening exhibits.

Out there we have planted a Aboriginal Three Sisters bed, which sort of goes along the lines of the way they used to grow at the time.

Very, very collaborative thing.

There's actually three plants all growing simultaneously - [Narrator] As an education center, every aspect of the fully-restored heritage site is part of the visitor experience.

All designed to help guests recognize and understand the region's bucolic history.

- [Donna] We have scheduled tours for 10, 12, and two.

We show them all the different things like in the museum that we have and then we continue on and their tour goes through all the barns and to the house.

And that is the original house, by the way, that James Wilder built.

He started building in 1840.

He was able to purchase 88 acres of land at that time.

We always tell our visitors here that this is the real deal.

It is the original house.

It is sitting on the original foundation.

There are still stone stairs down into the cellar and still a dirt cellar.

The barnes were reconstructed, but so how did we know where to put them or what they look like?

We had an archeology dig here in 1988.

1989 students from Potsdam State College in Potsdam, New York came here and they actually found parts of the old foundation of the barn.

So we knew the location.

We were able to get copies of sketches that Almazo drew for Laura when she was ready to write the book.

So we knew the location, we knew what it looked like.

So as close as possible, that's what our barns look like.

And this is what we tell our visitors when they come here.

- Well, the house is is the one thing here that's actually original.

It's the house that James Wilder built.

Almanzo's father, and it's been restored to the condition that it was when they were here.

It's the only house, it's the only building out of all the Laura Ingalls Wilder sites that still exist on the foundations.

So we're very conscious of keeping it in good, healthy order, but also allowing people in through.

- [Dean] When you walk into the house, you see the house as Garth Williams illustrated it, you really feel like you're stepping into the book, which is just incredible.

(bright music) - The big thing that everyone always asks when they come into the parlor is where is the black spot on the wall?

When you read "Farmer Boy," there's a part of the story where Almanzo gets really mad at Eliza Jane while stove blacking the stove with one of these, and as any 9-year-old boy would do to his bossy older sister, he threw it at her.

I know, luckily she grew up with many siblings, so she knew how to dodge.

It hit the wall instead, much like we read in the book, right?

And naturally Almazo ran away and hid in the barn.

The next time he went into the parlor, nothing was on the wall, nothing.

It was perfectly clean.

After when the guests had left, he snuck up to the wall and he looked and he saw a little line he could see cut around the mark in the wallpaper was where Eliza Jane had cut out the wallpaper and glued it right over.

No one ever found out.

But I mean, I guess the whole world found out, 'cause we all read the book.

- I think there's just so much a about the place about this farm that resonates for people.

When you come in September, there are apples on the trees and the, you know, when you maybe get a little sense of the leaves changing and you know, the beautiful river right across the road you can go down and where Almanzo and his brothers and sisters, you know, bathed and where they swam and cooled off in the summertime.

It's a really, really special place.

And because of that, and because this is a unique, the farm has such a unique connection to Almanzo, this is his childhood home.

And so when I started coming there, I realized that there was, there was a natural connection to it.

I felt a connection to it.

- Every single thing on this farm, wherever you go, schoolhouse, museum, Barnes House, it's all been donated by people that wanted to make the experience real for the visitor as they came.

Stipulation is, it has to be between the years of 1860 and 1890.

So when people come and walk through our museum, they're walking back in time and that's what we want them to feel.

- [Narrator] The Wilder Farms Visitor Center is where the past and the present meet.

In the Artifact Museum, you'll find displays of period items such as spinning wheels and housewares, original construction designs, tools used to work the farm and even sets of original nails extracted during the archeological digs and restoration.

Then there's the store with of course, all the Laura Ingalls Wilder's books and more.

While you're at it, you can book a narrated tour, a workshop, or check on the special events calendar.

Everything so that you can experience the period lifestyle of the agricultural community of Northern New York in the mid-1800s.

- We get approximately 5,000 people that come here in a year's time.

Before Covid we actually had 17 countries, we're international and that's really exciting when we can share the actual place so they can kind of match it up with the book that they've read.

- In the book, they refer to all the time things that happen on and around Malone.

So the county fair is a big portion of it.

It's one of the chapters in the book and Almanzo bringing his pumpkin in and winning first prize for it.

- [Narrator] The fairgrounds still exist and some of the town remains as it was, including one of the churches the Wilder family attended.

The town and village of Malone were incorporated in 1805 and 1853 respectively.

And at that time, the burgeoning community boasted a population of over 2,000 people and enjoyed early industries, including sawmills, tanneries, and carting mills and one of the few operating iron mines in 1815.

The Almanzo Wilder homestead brings you back to that time steeped in Northern New York history.

Join us next time as we explore the north country to discover another upstate attraction.

(upbeat music) - [Promoter] Production funding for "Upstate Attractions" is provided by Franklin County Development, Allegany County, Oswego County Tourism, and the Watkins Glen Chamber of Commerce.

With daily flights to Boston, Logan International Airport, Messena New York offers access to locations, such as the Adirondack Mountains, the Saint Lawrence River and destinations in Canada, like Ottawa and Montreal.

Online at fishmassenany.com.

(bright music) (upbeat music)