Wild Heart on the Prairie (A Prairie Heritage, Book 2) by Vikki Kestell Page A

of the
wagon, they drove far up the creek to a stand of saplings growing on the creek
bank.
    They cut three dozen saplings and set to work trimming the
branches from them. Jan showed Søren how to use the hatchet to bump little
branches from the trunks. When they had the poles ready, they loaded them in
the wagon. Then they scoured the creek banks for more rushes. After they had filled
the wagon they returned to the women.
    Because the soddy backed against the hill, they dug holes for
the poles in the hill just above the roof line. Jan and Karl hammered the poles
into the holes until they were solidly anchored.
    It would not be a flat roof; they hammered the poles into
the mound about six inches higher than the outside walls and rested the poles on
the front wall of the soddy, making a slope. Rain would run off the roof toward
the front of the house. After the roof was done, they would fill the gaps on
the sides left between the top of the wall and the rise in the roof.
    Early in the morning, Jan and Karl began to lay the bundles
of rushes between the poles. Elli and Amalie had worked tirelessly to tie
enough bundles to fill all the spaces.
    About noon they drove to their field and began to cut sod in
long lengths they would lay across the poles. It was difficult to handle the
long, heavy swathes of sod. They wrestled them into the wagon and drove back to
the soddy. Then the men stood in the wagon bed to hoist the thick lengths onto
the roof. Little by little, they covered the roof’s frame with sod.
    When they finished laying sod on the roof, the poles stuck
out about a half a foot over the edge of the walls but the sod stuck out only a
couple inches. Karl mixed mud in a bucket. He and Jan filled the gaps along the
top of the wall where the thatch lay between the poles. Then they chopped sod
bricks to fit into the gaps on the side between the roof and the wall.
    “Tomorrow is Sunday,” Karl reminded Jan. “We should rest and
spend time with God.”
    “ Ja , sure.” Jan’s response was half-hearted. He wouldn’t
admit it, but it irritated him to stop before the job was done.
    Lord, I am enjoying this land you have given me! he
thought. I just want to work it and see a harvest .
    The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few . . . Unbidden, those words came to him. Jan felt conviction under the
implications of those words.
    Ja, Lord, you are right. I do need to spend time with
you. Your harvest is more important than my harvest. Ja, I see this.
    With the roof complete, the men and Søren set to leveling
and packing the house’s dirt floor. They scraped away uneven places and used
mallets and rocks to pack the dirt. They then poured water on the dirt and created
a mud slurry that they spread evenly across the floor and left to dry.
    The house was done but the floor needed to cure for a few
days, so the men worked on pens for the animals. For two days they cut and laid
sod. Off one side of the soddy they built a chest-high wall that followed the
curve of the hillock; Karl built a crude gate across the end of the pen.
    That evening Søren spread newly cut prairie grass inside the
pen. After he and Jan watered Molly and the oxen at the slough, they led the
animals into the pen. Their five beasts had enough room to turn about and to
lie down. The sod wall provided them good shelter from the wind.
    The oxen could not break out of the pen and, if a wolf or
coyote came near, Jan and Elli would be sleeping on the other side of the pen’s
wall. They would hear the oxen’s distress.
    For the pigs, the men laid a shorter wall, perhaps three
feet high, off the other side of the soddy. They built a wall to divide the pen
in half and gates for each pen. Next spring after they mated the boar and the
sow, the dividing wall would keep the boar away from the sow and her piglets.
    Jan reinforced the chickens’ house and placed it at the end
of the pigs’ enclosure. He and Søren built a strong coop around the