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Lovina and Family Celebrate the Announcement of Next Family Wedding

By
tammiehoeme
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0

Lovina’s Amish Kitchen
Lovina Eitcher,
Old Order Amish
Cook, Wife &
Mother of Eight

 

July 27 was grandson Ryan’s fifth birthday. He was excited to be 5 years old. Our whole family gathered on July 24 for supper for son Joseph’s 22nd birthday. On the menu was mashed potatoes, gravy, barbequed chicken, tomatoes, sweet onions, green peppers, hot peppers, colby cheese, zucchini, brownies, and ice cream. We all ate on our front porch. Sister Verena also came for supper and stayed a few days. This was a short notice to have everyone for supper, and surprisingly it suited everyone.

I wish a happy belated 51st birthday to sister Emma, which was on July 19. Although we live four miles from each other, we didn’t see each other for a few weeks. We are both busy with our families and time has a way of slipping by.

Son Joseph and Grace’s wedding plans were announced at Grace’s church district, which is 10.5 miles from here. Our family attended, with Tim and Elizabeth having 17 miles (the farthest) to travel with horse and buggy. Our family and Grace’s family all spent the afternoon and evening at Grace’s house (where Joseph and Grace will have their future home). Joseph and Grace made supper for everyone, and we all ate before heading home. Everything was made on the grills, and we all ate outside.

Joseph is the first of our sons leaving home. We sure will miss him. He’s a great help here, and Joe depends on him a lot. The girls come home a lot for a day during the week, but Joseph works five days a week and will only be able to visit weeknights or weekends. Life goes on, changes come, and we must adapt to them.

On Saturday, Grace’s family assisted Dustin and Loretta (daughter) with preparations for the wedding. Joseph and Grace’s wedding will be held at Dustin and Loretta’s place, Lord willing. 

Sister Verena helped me freeze some sweet corn while she was here. We still have quite a bit in our garden. I was glad for her help. She is now staying with sister Emma for a few days. She spent a night and a day with daughter Lovina and Daniel, too. It makes time go much faster for her than to be home alone.

Last Sunday night our family gathered at Daniel and Lovina’s for supper. It was the first time I was there since Lovina lives there so I was glad to go. Lovina does well with having a crowd of people over. Daniel helped her make supper. I feel lazy when I get to sit around and not help. Haha! 

I was glad to take it easy though, as I slipped on a wet spot in the pole barn when moving the camp stove and hurt my back. I managed to wash laundry today but still have a sore hip and leg.

On Friday evening, Joe and I traveled the 11 miles to Joe’s sister Ruth and Chris’s house. Five of Joe’s siblings were gathered there for snacks after supper. It was good to see everyone. We had not seen or visited with Joe’s youngest sister Susan since she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has been taking chemo, and it sure has taken its toll on her health. It was good to spend time with her. She is a single mother of three boys and needs our prayers. The chemo is making her so sick. She was only 15 when Joe’s mother died at age 54. Please pray for her, and she would enjoy cards of encouragement, I’m sure. Expenses are high and life hasn’t always been good to her. 

Joe’s sister Mary Ann and Jake were also there. (Jake still isn’t the best health-wise and gets around with the aid of a cane.) Mary Ann is the oldest of the 14 siblings. Three have passed away, so six out of the 11 living siblings were there. Also there was Loretta and Henry, Salome and Morris (from Kentucky), and of course Susan, Ruth, and Chris. Chris and Ruth’s daughter Lydiann was there, as she lives with her parents. 

Chris and Ruth moved from Oklahoma several years ago and built a new place. They have a nice home. This was the first time we were at their new place. It was an enjoyable ride, and we arrived back home around 10:30 p.m.

Daughter Verena has supper almost ready. On the menu is tacos and sweet corn. Yum! God’s blessings to all!

Onion Rings

Makes 2 to 4 servings

This is a recipe from my new cookbook, The Cherished Table. We have very nice sweet onions from our garden this year. I pulled all my onions since I always abide by the rule to not let the August sun hit your onions. 

¼ cup milk

1 egg, beaten lightly

2 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil

½ cup all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoons salt

Oil or lard, for frying

1 large onion, sliced into rings about ½ inch thick

Mix together milk, egg, oil, flour, baking powder, and salt in a pie plate or shallow baking dish. Pour oil into a small heavy-bottomed pot to a depth of about 2 inches. Heat oil over medium heat until a deep-fry thermometer reads 375°F. Dip onion rings in egg mixture and fry in hot oil on each side until golden brown, about 2 minutes per side. Drain on a paper towel-lined plate.

Lovina’s Amish Kitchen is written by Lovina Eicher, Old Order Amish writer, cook, wife, and mother of eight. Her three cookbooks, The Cherished Table, The Essential Amish Cookbook, and Amish Family Recipes, are available wherever books are sold. Readers can write to Eicher at Lovina’s Amish Kitchen, PO Box 234, Sturgis, MI 49091 (please include a self-addressed stamped envelope for a reply); or email [email protected] and your message will be passed on to her to read. She does not personally respond to emails.

Thrown For A Loophole (Best Of)

By
Lee Pitts
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0
lee pitts

(1) Federal Tax: If your income was less than $3.75 in 2024 remit 15%. If it was greater than $3.75 but less than $39.99 multiply by 50%. If you made more than forty dollars send it.

(2) State Income Tax: For those of you living in most states cough up 12% of your “gross” pay to the state house. There is no state tax for residents of Texas and Wyoming which might explain why everyone is moving there.

(3) Sales Tax: In some states you will not be taxed on a loaf of bread. That is so that you will have sufficient energy to work and pay taxes. Other states will go ahead and charge a sales tax… for the loaf in their state capital. He already gets more bread than the bankrupt farmer who grew the wheat.

(4) Luxury Tax: This is to prevent you from doing anything that would detract from your ability to earn money to forward to the government. If you smoke…add 5%. If you drink alcohol….add 10%. And if you have sex add 15% in bed tax.

(5) Gas Tax: If you drive over 45 mph add ten percent. If you drive under 45 mph you can keep your federal tax money that was yours to begin with. Highway patrolmen and cars marked, “For Official Government Use Only”, are exempt from the tax and the speed limit. Gas Tax shall not be confused with the tax on your methane belching cows. You will find those charges listed under the all-new schedule C in the carbon credit section of your new climate-friendly and sustainable tax form.

(6) Corporate Tax: Television Church Conglomerates and non-profit foundations shall pay zero taxes. Bonafide exempt businesses shall be saved from the wrath of an IRS auditor if they tithe a third of what they make to the IRS. The IRS loves a cheerful giver.

(7) Self Employment Tax: Add 7% unless you are on food stamps or in Chapter Eleven.

(8) Property Tax: You shall be assessed one percent of the worth of your home in order that the Federal Government can maintain country club prisons to house federal judges, former dirty Congressmen, ex-United States Presidents. and their sons. (They need quiet and peaceful surroundings in which to write their memoirs they’ve already sold for twenty million dollars… tax free, of course.

(9) Schedule C. Miscellaneous permits and licenses for keeping dogs, building permits, business licenses and climate change penalties for breathing.

(10) Deductions: You may deduct the interest on your second home. This primarily applies to Congressmen who are the only people rich enough to have two homes.

Deductions for business meals shall be limited to 80% of their actual cost. Politicians getting fat at the public trough are exempt.

To compute your tax liability add lines 1 through 9 and subtract line 10 and divide by the square root of line 4. If your tax liability is greater than 100%… go directly to jail. Do not pass go. If your tax liability is less than 100% multiply the remainder by 50% and remit as Windfall Profits Tax (11).

Being deceased does not exclude you from filing. If deceased, remit whatever is left over as Estate Tax (12).

Send this form along with your money in a self stamped envelope to the IRS. That is unless you are a Congressman. Then you can mail it for free.

Living lessons

By
John Marshall
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0
john marshal

Mid-afternoon a couple of weeks ago in Salina and there it was on Debold Street, westbound and waiting at the light on 9th ‒ a pale blue GTO convertible, top down and spotless, showing cream leather upholstery. A flawless mid-60s retro that shaved years off the man ‒ gray crew cut, white T-shirt ‒ at the wheel.

A car like that gets a look.

Dozens like that one are expected to catch a lot of eyes on Saturday at the 24th annual Smoky Valley Classic Car Show at Lindsborg’s Swensson Park. The show has become legendary among car buffs, a magnet for authentic beauty that each year draws more than a hundred vehicles and streams of admirers.

“And they love it because of the shade,” said Ken Swisher, a car guru who has been involved with the show since its earliest days. The park’s grassy landscape, its gardens and high old trees give relief from the heat of an August day.

The Car Show is a memory siren for the older generation and a learning experience for the curious, a place of storied times. Scores of shiny vehicles, most of them cars, will seem in better shape than they were decades ago fresh on a showroom floor.

The most ardent fans at the show may seem akin to the cars they come to admire ‒ rebuilt with their own new shocks, struts, carburetors, transmissions, even electronics. In the crowd are many new knees, hips, shoulders, pace makers and valve jobs, among other restorations.

The show brings a comingling of flesh and machinery from a time when vehicles were steel and their paint, renewed by masters, holds that magnificent sheen particular only to a body of steel.

The Park will throb again with the lavish music of unadorned times, of the luster of doo-wop and Motown. The music is an anthem, an off-ramp to reminiscence. The old days and simpler times are not coming back, but they hold lessons of the past and the car show offers a ride.

Some vehicles ‒ ’30s and ’40s coupes and sedans ‒ are from a time when the best highways in Kansas and most of America were paved and narrow two-lanes. But the vehicles got bigger and so did the roads, bringing America the Interstate highway plan (1956), a national highway network of unbroken travel. America was put in the driver’s seat of a nation on wheels. Twenty years later, 41,000 miles of Interstate ribbon had become great roadways, adding countless new lanes over another 7,000 miles.

Classics at the event have been among the first to roll their tires along the superhighways that inspired a lot of delicious vehicles: ’50s Fords and Chevys, their T-Birds and ‘Vettes, the radical fins of Chryslers and Plymouths, two-tone coats, white over turquoise, pink over black, solid lavender or lavender over black, more combinations that only the gods of metallic pastels could imagine.

*

These vehicles and their people outface today’s newer, overcrowded, noisier, more hectic world. They speak of an America less complicated, of people who were easy going, less apt to squint at strangers, not so ready to take offense or to shout and blame.

If only we could get behind that old wheel again for another driving lesson. It might show us that it’s futile to long for that simpler and smaller world of the past, but we might revive the past’s better manners, those traditional modes of politeness, the grace notes that make living in a busy, jostling world more bearable and more promising.

Five Police Horse Units In The United States

By
Frank Buchman
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0

Mounted Police Units aren’t as prevalent as they used to be in the United States, but they are still an important part to some cities across the nation.

Many city police equine units have downsized since 2010, while some horse units are still growing and still a very prominent part of their community’s police force.

The Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Mounted Police Unit recently installed a new facility and stables for their horses.

It is one of the most widely recognizable parts of the city’s summer festival season.

The Houston Police Department revived the Mounted Patrol in October 1984.

Funds for the new mounted unit were originally provided through a grant from the Downtown Central Business District during the tenure of Mayor Kathy Whitmire and Chief of Police Lee P. Brown.

Houston’s Mounted Patrol is part of Strategic Operations, Homeland Security Command, Special Operations Division.

The downtown business district and Hermann Park are the primary focus of Houston Mounted Patrol, but occasionally the mounted unit is given assignments to work with patrol divisions who are having a particular crime issue in a specific neighborhood.

The Birmingham, Alabama, Police Mounted Patrol, created in 1970, consists of officers on donated horses that do regular patrol, crowd control and take part in public relations assignment.

This has included representing the department in the inaugural parades for presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush,

The Anaheim, California, Police Department Mounted Enforcement Unit was started in the 1990’s.

Major responsibilities include working crowds at the Anaheim Convention Center and Supercross at Angel Stadium. They’ve also participated in charitable activities such as visiting children’s hospitals.

The unit consists of eight officers, a sergeant, lieutenant and a deputy chief, and their horses.

It is part of the Orange County Regional Mounted Unit, which consists of the seven police agencies in Orange County.

The Camden, New Jersey, Police established a new mounted unit in the early 1990’s.

When the mounted police unit was resurrected, Camden Police Captain, Raymond Massi, donated the first horse for the presentation made to the city government to support the new unit.

+++30+++

Fall Gardens

By
Guest Columnist
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0

Have you ever tried to plant a fall garden? Fall is often overlooked because people have lost interest under the summer heat but it is a great time to grow vegetables! Crops planted during the late summer conditions ripen under cooler temperatures, which often make the bounty better than spring-planted crops.

Just imagine the taste of fresh lettuce, spinach or other crops ripe for the picking on a cool, crisp, autumn day. That dream can happen easily with a little planning in July, August, and September.

Crops that are best adapted to fall culture are mainly the cool-season vegetables, as well as cucumbers, summer squash and green beans. The first frost will damage some crops, but others will continue to thrive in the cool weather.

Planting dates are influenced by how long it takes for the crop to develop and its ability to withstand a freeze.

Late July through early August
Cucumbers, summer squash and beans can be planted from late July through early August. Transplants of broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage can be planted about the same time.

Early to mid-August
Carrots and beets are planted from early to mid-August.

Early September
Lettuce, spinach, radishes and turnips can be planted in early September.

Fall planting is different than spring planting
The main obstacles faced by fall gardeners are the extreme conditions under which the plants must establish. The use of transplants is one way to overcome this, as they become established more quickly than seeds do. Set seeds slightly deeper than recommended for spring planting. This helps keep them cool and moist as they germinate and develop roots. Planting a little thicker also helps to ensure a good stand. Thick plantings can be thinned for proper spacing. Placing a thin layer of mulch over the seed row will reduce the chance of seeds being washed out and of soil compaction from water. The mulch will help conserve moisture under the hot Kansas sun.

Water and fertilizer
Water on a regular basis or as needed as the garden becomes established. A light application of fertilizer may be helpful, as much of the spring-applied nutrients have been used. There are no other special requirements for fall vegetable gardening. In fact, there may be fewer weeds and also a decrease in insects and disease after the summer is over.

Plan for your fall garden. A small space in the landscape will be just right for a planting of lettuce or a patch of radishes. You will be sure to enjoy the fruits of your labor in the fall with a tasty treat from the garden.

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