Visit to Amish Country

We were short-staffed for 4 days this week while some of the full-time workers were on retreat. So Mark had to do pick-ups for 3 of 4 days, and Thea had to be the assistant cook for 2 days. Both cooks made soup, so Thea's job entailed chopping endless numbers of potatoes, onions and peppers one day and snapping green beans for 2 hours on another. It was with real relief that we had today free. Thea's former student, Brenda Sallee, is working in Reading, and suggested we contact her and she would take us around Lancaster County. There are about 37,000 Old Order Amish (drive horse and buggy), other Amish (drive cars ) and Old Order Mennonites (no cars) that live in the county. We went to a hand-twisted pretzel factory, a quilt museum, and drove down the small 1 lane roads through the orderly farms of the Amish and Mennonites. We saw a man drive with his daughter in a buggy to Walmart, where they have buggy parking for the Amish. We also were amused by watching a carriage go through the "drive-through window" of a bank. The weather was sunny and about 50 degrees, so it was a perfect day for a ride in the country. We enjoyed a lunch at a country restaurant, served family style. We sampled homemade sausages, ham loaf, potato stuffing and shoo-fly pie. It was only a little over an hour from our home to Lancaster County, yet we felt like we were in another era.