The Amish Cook: Horses on the Run and Easy Peach-Custard Dessert

THE AMISH COOK

BY LOVINA EICHER

This week my husband Joe and the boys have been busy in the evenings trimming the fence rows. We have the posts, gates, and fence wire here to fence in the hay field. The horses and ponies will be glad to be back on pasture again. We put our pasture field into beans this year. Eventually we will want to put it back into a hay-field.  We were going to put corn in that field but the farmer has seed corn across the road. Field corn has to be a certain distance away from seed corn. The farmer offered to trade us corn for beans.

We had quite a rude awakening around 2:30 a.m. one morning.  A guy knocked at our door telling us our horses and ponies are out on the road. Everyone got dressed and grabbed flashlights.  The men in the truck helped by driving down the road to shine their headlights for us. We had them all headed for the barn when the leader of the pack, Stormy the pony,decided we needed more exercise. He headed past the house and of course the horses followed. We were able to head off the rest of the ponies and got them in the barn. It did look funny seeing the little Prancer (the miniature colt) coming down the road with all the big horses. The horses went around our neighbor Joe’s house and Elizabeth ran that way to head them back. When they headed back they ran across the road and around neighbor Irene’s barn and into the bean field across the road. We finally had every way blocked off and Elizabeth headed them towards the barn again. That time was successful. It was past 3 am. And Joe was glad he had the next day off. Someone forgot to shut a gate which was a good lesson for us to check all gates before going to bed.

Elizabeth tripped and fell while running after the horses. She has badly bruised and scratched knees and hands.

Two mornings after that the horses popped the hinges on the gate and were happily eating in the hayfield. It’s like they are telling us to hurry with that fence so they can eat the fresh grass. This time it was daylight and we were able to round them up and head them right through the gates by the hayfield. And of course we tried to bribe Stormy with a scoop of feed so he wouldn’t be a trouble-maker again.

Our neighbors have been over helping evenings to get the holes dug for the new posts.  Saturday we will have more help in hopes of getting everything enclosed for the horse and ponies.
We will have everyone that helped and their families over for a chicken barbecue Saturday evening.

Meanwhile the garden is still producing a lot of cucumbers and tomatoes. We have been canning more dill pickles and salsa.  I pulled the red beets last night.

Detasseling is done now. Verena and Loretta are still leaving around 3 p.m. to stay with 93 year old Vivian. They come home around 12:30 a.m. They want to bake cookies for her today when they are there. She said she would like sugar cookies.

We have a bushel of peaches here waiting to be worked up. Have two more bushels on order.  Try this recipe:

EASY PEACH CUSTARD DESSERT

2 cups sugar

4 tablespoons flour

2 eggs

2 cups milk

2 teaspoons vanilla

4 tablespoons melted butter

4 cups fresh peaches, cut fine

Pour into a 9 X 13” pan. Sprinkle cinnamon on top.  Bake at 325 until the center is almost set.