Amish Originals Furniture Co.: Miriam's Journal Sept. 29, 2009

Dear Reader,
Please be advised that the following journal entry contains graphic realities of Amish life.

Dear Journal,

We have been super busy this month. The weeks that were nice and sunny were used to do fall cleaning. The gardens are getting empty so we like to get them ready for winter and the house needs to be scrubbed to get all the fly dirt and canning residue off the walls and ceilings.

We have a two-story house with a basement so there are plenty of corners to clean. We started with the main floor which consists of a large kitchen with a pantry, a living room with a sun porch, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. We washed the walls, ceilings, windows, woodwork, furniture, floors, and some drawers. We also take down any knick knacks, dishes, etc. and wash them. The same is done with all the dresser scarves, doilies, sewing machine coverts, etc. The window screens and the porches get washed to a sparkling clean shine. We have a weekly cleaning but not this thorough.

The basement is almost finished. We had quit when we started butchering chickens. We raised 200 chickens this summer for a special function this fall. Our daughter, Marie, is getting married on October 8, 2009. We will be shutting down the shop so we can clean and set-up the many tables to serve our guests. We have a list of approximately 250 people who will be invited and it’s an all day function.
I will get more on this later.

As for the chicken butchering………it’s not an enjoyable thing to do for most people, but I grew up eating lots of chicken so I learned how to cut them up fast. The other two weddings that we had, we just bought leg quarters in bulk. This time I decided to raise them myself. I bought 200 rooster chicks in July so they were approximately two months old. We then only needed 150 chicks to get the 200# of meat that I wanted. We decided to butcher them in two days with the help of another family. The first day we had six women and two girls. They did 66 roosters with our daughter’s, Marie’s, help. The second day we did 84 roosters with five women and Marie. The method used for each day was slightly different; therefore, we got more done the second day. The rest of the roosters we will do on a later date.

We only kept the leg quarters, breasts, and 72 wings to fry for the wedding. The rest we cooked and picked the meat off the bones and canned it. Most was put in jars as broth but we do like to can some with all meat for sandwiches. We kept six quarts to freeze for dressing for the wedding.

The next entry or two will be on the wedding that will take place Oct. 8, 2009.

Miriam