This is early Monday morning and I want to get this column written before I wake the children. Today they will start their two weeks of swimming lessons. I just feel safer, especially during the summer, knowing that my children know how to swim. This is 5-year-old Joseph's first time taking lessons. It seems the older ones are more daring, more advanced and faster in their level.
My husband Joe is off for two weeks from the factory. Last week flew by so fast. Joe had oral surgery to have three wisdom teeth cut out. He had quite a bit of pain. The stitches are dissolvable but he has to go back just to make sure the stitches are doing well.
Hopefully he'll have no infection. He has to really watch what he eats so nothing gets back in the holes where the teeth were. My wisdom teeth never came in so I am glad I don't have to worry about that.
Our plans for today are to start butchering our chickens. Nothing tastes better than the chickens a person raises on her own.
These chickens are almost 6 weeks old and need to be butchered. They sure grew fast and it is hard to believe how fast these six weeks went by. We wanted to butcher them last week but due to Joe being limited from the surgery we put it off. These are our broiler chickens and will supply us with quite a bit of meat.
After the children come home from swimming lessons they will help Joe and I with butchering. Then the work will go much faster. The younger ones go out and pull the feathers and the older ones help us with cleaning it up. The younger children bring the chickens to the kitchen and we put them in big pans and gut them. Joe goes back and forth and helps with plucking and gutting. I usually do the cutting and the girls bag them up. This will be an all-day job but when we're done we'll have our chicken for the year.
Three of our laying hens have hatched their baby chicks. We all enjoy watching the little chicks hatch and grow. I think the boys found out how protective the mother hens are when they get too close.
This afternoon Joe plans to go help brother-in-law Jacob put up hay.
Our hay is ready to be cut this week for the second time. We had a bad storm last week one evening that caused some problems. A small tornado dipped down and did quite a bit of damage in some places. We were lucky with nothing much except for a limb down and my sweet corn was flattened. It has almost all stood back up now, which we are thankful for. The children went to the basement as the wind was getting pretty strong. Joe was out watching the clouds and he saw that the clouds looked really different. It was God reminding us how our earthly possessions won't be worth anything someday. Do we get too busy in life and not thank him enough for all our blessings?
Cucumbers are almost ready to use this week and I think my cabbage heads are bigger than they have ever been. We are also already enjoying a few turnips. Sister Emma brought us a taste of her broccoli which I used in this casserole recipe:
Broccoli Casserole
11/2 c. fresh lima beans
2 c. of fresh broccoli
1 c. water chestnuts
1 c. sour cream
1 package of dry onion soup
3 c. Rice Krispies browned in 1 stick oleo
1 10.5-oz. can cream of mushroom soup
Brown Rice Krispies over low heat in butter. Set aside. Place lima beans, broccoli and water chestnuts in dish. Pour sour cream and mushroom soup over ingredients. Cover with dry onion soup mix and Rice Krispies. Bake for 45 minutes at 350˚.
Lovina Eicher is Old Order Amish. She hand-writes this column from her home in southern Michigan. Anyone with cultural or cooking questions can send them to: Lovina Eicher, The Amish Cook, P.O. Box 2144, Middletown, OH 45042. Read all of her columns online at www.record-eagle.com/amishcook.
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