Thanksgiving weekend my mind goes back again... to the Amish life.
And I love to reflect on all the things I have had in the past and how thankful I am to be where I'm at today,
I'm so thankful I am able to use a shower,  refrigerator , electric washer and dryer, especially in the cold winter it's  huge for me,  and let's not forget the CAR , yes!! the vehicle is the best to get around with ,  it's like living in .. what they call microwave world for REAL!! Every time I see a buggy without a windshield in the winter, I'm once again reminded of the bitter cold face it gave me driving that horse.
And then being able to bless my children with a different mindset and  things I didn't  have is such a blessing of freedom ,
I was taught i would go to the fire (hell) if I would have any of these modern things,  and disobey the promises I made with the church ,  (which will be another story for later, )
 so there was no way I could ever leave and not question if I'm doomed for hell,

Getting back to more about my home life,
I wanted to talk about Lovina and Abraham as I remember them at the Tennessee home,
    Perhaps they are both more quiet and sincere, I know lovina as a gentle soft hearted sister who is loving and giving ,  she was the Saturday pastry baker and the best cook ever,  she is the one who told me what female cycles are after my surprise showed up on my clothes,  😣   yes, why keep that a secret from girls who are old enough to go through it themselves ,  just tell your girls already,  for real!! it's a normal conversation at my house ever since my girls were little ,  no big deal. But
Lovina is married and has children and grandchildren.
Abraham was really good at milking cows and working on the farm forsure ,  he went into a health crisis in his teenage years where he had stafinfection and had to change his diet from the rest of us and it's been a tough road for him, but he is now doing well with holistic living and has a wonderful family of his own ,
Then it's my brother Ura which married to Abraham's wife's sister when I was 14,
He was a little ornery and mischievous , he loved trying out new things and draw attention to himself ,  that's right Ura , whether you like it or not you could be a good leader if you weren't trapped in the Amish religion ,  or wait,!! you could be a big leader right where you are at. 😉  I haven't seen Ura for so long that tears well up in my eyes as I write this ,  I really do miss our family talks and laughter ,  we used to have lots of fun just being silly and arguing about little things, and then life changes and we don't see each other for years.    Not that I regret my life choice ,  no, not at all, I just wish we could come visit you guys, and see some of your children  for the very first time.
To be continued . ...
Tennessee farm barn.

Coming back home from a stay at the Gaylord in Dallas Texas and being with my sister and lots of great friends, :) Then running into this couple presenting the candidates in costumes at a party reminded me again how important voting is this year,
Yes, I hear some people say it's a hard decision this year, 🤔 Really??? What do you stand for?? Life or death?? It's that simple 'I'm thinking'!!
But of course I don't want to argue....so I may quietly disagree or depending how well I know you I'll just straight out tell you to check the screws which connect your neck to your head, 🙄
Really if you vote for someone how is under investigation then ...... well I won't go there.
But I will say if we would not have illegal immigrants here then my cousin may have not been raped, he got deported after the incident but too late, and very sad, Yes, you can read her story by purchasing her book, 'the runaway Amish girl' by Emma Gingrich.

And if you disagree with both candidates and therefore you will vote secondary, well.....then you might as well vote for your own neighbor because those votes won't count, so please don't throw your vote to the pigs. 😣

Also if you consider yourself so spiritual that you will just pray and believe hat God chooses the right one for this country, 🙏 Nothing against praying and believing, I've been there done that. But I have a question for those who still live in that mindset,
How does food get on your table? Do you just pray and believe it shows up? I highly doubt it, I bet you go to work and prepare that food, you do what you can physically to receive your outcome.
So shouldn't you do your part in voting for whoever supports your morals ??
Think about life or death in more than the physical body, it's also life of being free and keep our country safe, life of prosperity and not welfare government.
What do you choose??
Make the choice tomorrow if you haven't already voted. 😍 we are His people to make a change for this nation. God bless America.

'Chickens and chores'

Back to my childhood of canning, chores and chickens.
Canning slowed down around September as school started, until winter came around then we would butcher chickens, beef and pork.
Yep!! The whole shubang of meets. :)

Chores with my brother Jacob would get quite interesting as we gather the eggs and see rats running, or find opossums in the nests which made me scream me guts out.
Telling mom that we saw a rat in the chicken house and her not believing us, was enough to prove it to her, saying we'll go ketch one and show her,
Of course I wasn't going to do the ketch,, Jacob assured me that I get to chase the rat by kicking the wall and he would ketch it when it runs through the broken wall,
Sure enough,' it worked'!! :-D
He caught it by its neck and in we go as proud as ever to show mom.  Lol..
Finding mom sitting at a quilt and stitching it , she jumped up screaming and telling us to get out with that thing and kill it. :)
Not sure how Jacob got rid of that thing then but....
 her laughing with us afterwards was always a good feeling of accomplishment.

So... as I talked about sister Lizzie, plus more to come,  first I'll tell ya about Lovina the calm and good girl, always soft spoken and gentle, seriously don't remember her ever yelling. :-D she was the baking queen as I remember her and definitely there to please anyone and everyone!!!
Was I ever lucky when she was the oldest at home as I never got a spanking from her.
But she ended up dating Mose G. which has had left the amish at one point in his teen age years, was he gonna get her to turn to a wild side? Curiosity streamed my little 11 year old mind.
They got married, I worked at their house as a 13 year old maid once when  Lovina was unable to cook for themselves and they had little Saloma about a year old already, that's when I learned how to cook breakfast because usually at home I would go out to milk cows and mom would cook breakfast, so my chance to learn and fail was at hand. :-P
I'd say I didn't do too bad, other than my nerves were sky high because I didn't dare to act like it wasn't normal for me to do breakfast, , like,,, I'm 13 I should know everything by now.  Haha. .
Let's continue with Abraham. . .

Summer at home

So....before I say more about sister Lizzie, there's lots of other things to talk about, Yep! Y'all gotta wait longer for my love story. :)
As a child in Tennessee we  would Cann up to 200 quarts of green beans at this time of the year,   As we carried many jars up an down the basement steps I would help pack the beans in the jars with my little hands that fit just perfectly in the hole of a jar, not to mention the disaster of washing and canning peaches, oh how I hated to see a huge tub full of peaches to be washed as that was one of my jobs, :/ we would Cann around 400 quarts of peaches, especially when we expected one of the sisters to get married the following winter, as peaches was a must have food item for the tables,  also should I mention the pile of sweet corn we had to do?! Ugh....  give me a break!!!
Canning seemed like a never ending job!! Did we really eat so much!?!?
Applesauce was a huge need at our house as well, and of course 400 quarts of tomato sauce, lots of okra, peas, lima beans, cherries, strawberries, blueberries, and what not all.    I guess with cooking 3 meals a day for 14 people should be a common thing, right,?
These  canning duties were all geared towards the women's job, although the boys would help gathering the vegetables from the garden in the mornings.

Then comes a lot of work on the farm as well,  in the hot summer sun my brother's would go out and bind the oats with a team of horses and a grain binder, then in the evenings we would make it a family event to go out an stack the bundles up into little teepee type houses for the oats to dry out so that the thrashing machine could do its job. Some nights we made neighborhood events for setting up the bundles of grain, that was the most enjoyable time of working on the farm when you could involve friends, the bishops kids were neighbors as well but I know we did a bit more evening work with Creek Enos'a kids as I remember Anna leaving something by a grain shock on purpose so that she could come back to pick it up and stay for the night, haha!! Some sly things going on.
My children better not think I don't know their tricks, because we all lived them. :)
Then this time of the year is when we would start thrashing the grain and all of us little ones had a part in something if we were old enough to go to school, as all the neighbor guys came to help out with their wagons we would get jugs of water or lemonade ready for each wagon, the women would cook a big meal of mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing, beans, chicken and applesauce along with fruit, cake an pies,  and then whoever had the best production of grain crop was usually expected to furnish ice cream from the store for an evening treat and we did that several times,      I  also remember one of my brothers catching a black snake while unloading grain and he wanted to save it as normal the people would kill snakes when they saw one, anyway. . He grabbed it ,stuck it in his pocket and took it to the corn crip for mouse catching, ugh!! The thought of a snake in the corn crip was something I was super scared of.  And this reminds me of the rats we had roaming around in our buildings dodging all the cats, so I'll talk about that in a later post..  :)

More home life

How greatful I am that we have freedom of our life as we celebrate 4th of July 2016, we've had a nice back yard picnic with friends and a great day yesterday spend with our children and some of their friends,
I'd like to say more about life back home as I was growing up,  Sister Lizzie was after Amanda and she was my 2nd. and 3rd. grade school teacher so I have tons of memories of her, I'd say most likely my favorite older sister as Saloma and I pulled pranks on her all the time, and she had fun and laughed with us, I always thought Katie and Amanda were boss over me, :-P

As we walked about a mile to school and back every day, the highlight of it was when the school bus went past us, , the scholars throwing candies out the windows for us and watching us run like chickens to  pick it up. :)
Oh how I dreaded to come home and get a glimpse of a pile of dishes in the sink for us to wash!!  Yep, it happened all the time as part of our all evening chores, we were allowed to have a snack and then wash dishes, gather eggs and feed chickens, milk cows, carry wood for the stove, and then eat supper, wash dishes again, wash our feet and get ready for bed, that's a normal evening after school.
In the mornings we got up around 5:30, went outside to milk cows and mom usually made breakfast while we were outside, and I'm tellin you, her breakfast was always graded A from me, delicious homemade biscuits and gravy, sausage and scrambled eggs,  or fried corn mush with tomatoegravy, or even cornbread and beans.
Then again, off to school at 8 a.m by walking,
So let's tell some stories of Lizzie',  She watched over us little ones quite often when mom wasn't there and we loved to jump out at her from behind a wall to make her scream or laugh, as she was of age (21 or older) she had her own sewing machine upstairs in her room, Saloma an I would quietly go upstairs and from under the bed we were able to reach out and touch her feet, she literally jumped off her seat screaming. :-D  I know Lizzie, that was terrible but we had fun!!
Lizzie now has about a dozen of her own children and also a grandchild, and I very seldom go see them because of our life differences, not that I wouldn't want to see them more often but also want to respect their wishes. .
When she got married in Tenn. with an Ohio boy, she ended up moving to Ohio after a few years of marriage,
so stay tuned for another story down the road of  how I ended up in ohio. :)
 'All because of Lizzie'.

Adventure to Vegas

Home life

....Continued ....

As I said, we worked hard on Hermans farm to help him get started, the weeds in his corn field seemed to overtake the corn if we didn't chop it out, me being 7 years old and able to handle a hoe to whack the weeds with the rest of the siblings seemed to feel like I'm a grown up, but as the sun got hot and my energy drained I told one of the older siblings that I needed water,  her reaction was No, we're not out here long enough for you to need water, you must be wanting to slip away from work!! So I tried my best to keep going, finally I said I just can't make it anymore, I was told I'm allowed to go to the well an get a drink but get right back out to the field,
As I started walking towards the well everything was getting blurry and I started walking on air , but before I knew it I was inside and mom was washing my feet and putting a cold towel to my head, I asked her what happened and why is she cleaning my feet?
My thoughts were...is she thinking I'm gonna die?   She assured me that I'll be ok but I didn't have to go back out to chop weeds,  whooo...what a relief!  I was delighted I got away from the hard work without a fight with my older siblings or a spanking.
 
 Grandfather Uria Gingerich passed away in this year, I remember lots of visitors came to our house and I realized as much as I disliked grandpa's hurtful actions I'm also really gonna miss him not harassing me, I remember a few of my run off cousins showed up for his funeral and everyone was talking about it, us younger cousin girls were saying that they will go in the fire forever if they don't come back amish, (fire, meaning hell)  that was really what we thought to be true, and we weren't supposed to talk to them but I did notice some men talking to them outside, it was shameful for women or girls to make an effort to talk to men.
 Continue. ....

Home life

What a gorgeous day in Ohio, my love coming home from a work trip to New York and me driving around taking care of appointments for our children, and the funniest thing is....my sister from another state seems to have a mind very similar to mine, could be scary or a good thing, right? :-P  We've been best friends growing up and many times taken as twins by the englishers, it seems like even now adays we mimic each other without talking about it, for instance, I start a blog, and she starts a blog at the same time, when I start writing she has just posted something, :-D  we even married brothers!! But one difference is she's a natural blonde and I'm brown, and she has 1 more child than I do. :)

Going back to our childhood, Saloma an I did everything together, or took turns with the things we weren't fond of,
We had lots of chores, such as washing dishes, carrying wood for the wood stove, gathering eggs, feeding chickens, calves, and milking cows by hand, yes!! Saloma did not start milking a cow at 9 years old like I did, :/ that's one thing I held against her for a long time, thinking our life isn't fair because I have to do things at a younger age then her. Haha, what a misery for myself!!

I also have many other sisters and brothers, there were 14 of us at home,but the 2 oldest got married before my youngest brother was born, I barely remember anything of the 2 oldest Katie and Herman, other then  their wedding days, and that Kstie was bossy when mom wasn't at home, :-/ I was only 5 years old when Katie and Herman got married.  
Then there was Amanda, I don't remember a whole lot of her at home either, the best memory was after she was married, Saloma and I got to spend a week a her house, I guess mostly to help pass her time as she didn't have a baby right away, now on the other hand Katie and Herman had a baby before my youngest brother was born, so guess what I did!? I went to Hermans house to help out with a fussy newborn after the baby was a few weeks old, and I got very homesick and they finally took me home, (not sure how long I was there)  
and I'm not done talking about Herman because we all worked very hard to help him get started in his married life, passing out in his corn field chopping weeds, etc.

There's still 11 other siblings to talk about. .....continued

       

Growing up Amish

As I'm sitting here at a vacation spot in North Carolina, my thoughts go back to my childhood in Tennessee, oh, how I loved to go spend time with my uncle Dannie's family, their daughter Fannie and son Jonas were my best buddies, they lived with grandma and grandpa Gingerich, so we got to go see them quite often, no offense to my 2 cousins but I did have another favorite that I often wished would live with the grandparents so that I could see her more often, my cousin Anna which was only 2 weeks older than myself, and we would get together for the night as often as we were allowed which seemed like maybe once or twice a year, as they lived quite a ways off by horse an buggy.

Grandpa Ura was getting older, he loved to tease me with his funny character, and poke me with his cane an pinch me to where I had to cry and then give me a penny to make me feel better, I really did not like to go to his house, I'd much rather sneak away and play with my cousin Fannie and Jonas.

Grandma on the other hand was gentle and didn't like when grandpa made me cry, she was hard to hear you talk so you always had to yell when you talked so that she could understand you,  but I always felt like I had to walk on needles around there so that I don't get in trouble,   

Loving life

     

We are a happy married couple with 4 wonderful children, We both grew up Swartzentruber Amish and left after we got married,    We all have a unique story of our own and i'd love to start sharing mine,  the children are a bit older and it feels like i can add a little a something else to my day sometimes,
We love traveling and helping young teenagers as they leave the amish and need help/advice to get started in a new world.