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A pregnant Laura (Melissa Gilbert) insists that she can take care of the Wilders' farm in the absence of her husband, Almanzo (Dean Butler). Unfortunately, the land is hit with a drought, and Laura is felled by a heat stroke. It's up to the local schoolchildren to save the crops -- not to mention Laura's own, carefully tended orchard. The title of this episode refers to the famous fable of the same name, used in the story as a means of instilling maturity in perennial classroom troublemaker Willie Oleson (Jonathan Gilbert).