It's possible that I read an abridged version, because I don't remember the details of all this nonsense, but I do remember that it was an old-timey book with illustrations I liked and that it had a lot of nonsense, so I suspect I read the full thing and just have forgotten most of the details.

I definitely went into it expecting something a lot more like My Side of the Mountain or The Boxcar Children book 1 except with a nuclear family, and definitely got... not that.