THE AMISH COOK
BY LOVINA EICHER
We feel blessed to have received some much needed rain tonight. It wasn’t that much but it will help. We haven’t had any rain in quite some time, so everything was dry.
Today daughters Susan and Verena and I went to sister Emma’s house to assist them in preparing for the upcoming church services they will host at their house. Lord willing daughters Elizabeth and Susan will be baptized that day. Susan’s special friend Mose will also be baptized with them. What a blessing to see them want to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior.
Last Friday we had 4 calves delivered here. All four together weighed 785 lbs. We put them in the barn. When Joe came home he moved them to an outside pen. With it being a new place to the calves they were pretty wild and 2 of them escaped through the fence. Joe and Susan were able to catch one but the other one took off for the woods behind us. Joe and the children and some of our neighbors looked all over and only heard from one person that saw it. After 3 ½ hours of searching they finally gave up. In the next few days Joe and the boys kept looking and no sign of the calf.
Before we came home from helping Emma, the neighbor boy ran over to let Joe know he spotted the calf. Joe, Benjamin and Joseph took off to try to capture it. When they got closer the calf took off but Benjamin was able to catch up with it and wrestled it to the ground and took a rope and held it down until Joe and Joseph caught up.
So now 5 days later it is finally back in our barn and looks like it’s still doing okay. We had almost given up that we would ever see it again. I think Joe and I will sleep much better tonight knowing that calf is back in the barn. It was also a worry that it could get out on a road and cause an accident.
The reason Joe wanted the calves to feed out, is that we are getting 400 bushels of corn that we are trading with a nearby farmer for our beans. Whenever the calves get big enough we will keep 1 or 2 to butcher for our beef and sell the rest. I told the children not to give the calves names or to make pets out of them because they will be our food someday. I still remember when I was a young girl at home dad butchered one of our old milk cows named Whitey. Some of us children had a hard time eating the beef that year because we used to milk Whitey and we didn’t want to eat her. When daughter Elizabeth was younger and she saw us butcher chickens it dawned on her that that’s where chicken comes from. It took her a long time before she could eat chicken again. That’s farm life, I guess.
Pumpkin season will soon be here-try this fudge:
- 3 cups white sugar
- 3 tablespoons light corn syrup
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup milk
- ½ cup pumpkin puree
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
- ½ cup butter
- Butter or grease one 8 x 8 inch pan.
- In a 3 quart saucepan, mix together sugar, milk, corn syrup, pumpkin and salt. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly.
- Reduce heat to medium and continue boiling.
- Do not stir.
- When mixture registers 232 degrees F (110 degrees C) on candy thermometer, or forms a soft ball when dropped into cold water, remove from pan from heat. Stir in pumpkin pie spice, vanilla and butter.
- Cool to lukewarm (110 degrees F or 43 degrees C on candy thermometer.)
- Beat mixture until it is very thick and loses some of its gloss.
- Quickly pour into a greased 8 x 8 inch pan.
- When firm cut into 36 squares.
lorraine stoddard
When I was 10 years old we stayed at a relatives farm in Sawyer,Mi. I watched them butcher chickens. That evening chicken was served. I didn't eat it. It was several years before I was able to eat chicken. Great column! I understood how Elizabeth felt about eating chicken.
Theresa Pate
I have always told my husband if we had a herd of animals it was fine for meat but when you have one or two they get named and that means they are pets and we don't eat our pets lol
Yvonne Cook
Congratulations on the baptisms! That is wonderful!
Quick question about the pumpkin fudge....will it come out o.k. with fresh pumpkin puree versus canned?
Thank you in advance for your reply 🙂
Don Majors
Just wondering why Lovina's name doesn't appear either at start or end of column - - - -
Kevin
Inadvertent omission, but it is there now!
Carolyn
When I was a small child we had a guinea hen. It was very pretty, and us kids made a pet of it. Dad was out of a job with seven children to feed, so our guinea hen got picked for dinner. I do not remember any of us kids partaking of this bird at the dinner table. Daddy said he would never do that again. Later on we had a rabbit and chicken farm. We loved to pick up the baby rabbits from the hutch, they were so soft and cute but we never made pets out of them. There were too many.