Nine-year-old Almanzo lives with his family on a big farm in New York State at the end of the nineteenth century. He raises his own two calves, helps cut ice and shear sheep, and longs for the day he can have his own colt.

After Almanzo helps with the chores on his family's farm in the New York countryside, he joins his parents, brother, and sisters for dinner and a winter evening at home.

After moving from Malone, New York, to Spring Valley, Minnesota, in the 1870s, fourteen-year-old Almanzo Wilder, who would grow up to become the husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and his family must decide whether to stay out west or return home to the life they have always known.