Pennsylvania Dutch Country

The locals were complaining about all the rainy weather in Pennsylvania when we first arrived this week, but we've had nothing but beautiful weather since we've been here. We've been looking forward to a driving day to Pennsylvania Dutch country, and we had another beautiful weather day for our one-hour journey to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Our first stop was one of those tourist traps that we always avoid. But the Dutch Haven store provides free samples of their signature shoo-fly pie. Denisa remembers trying this delicacy when she visited this area as a child. Sure enough, the employees at Dutch Haven offered us a tiny piece of shoo-fly pie with whipped cream shortly after we walked in the door. It was good, but we decided we didn't need to buy an entire pie to take home. So we can now put a check mark beside tasting shoo-fly pie.

While we are making touristy stops, we might as well stop in at the Bird-In-Hand Farmer's Market that is open on Friday and Saturday. This was a delicious stop, with free samples everywhere. At this rate we won't have to eat dinner today.

We also stopped at the Amish Canning Company, as well as a bakery. We had another food item on our list that we had to try. Supposedly the whoopie pie was invented in this part of Pennsylvania. The story we read was that women used their leftover cake batter and frosting to make these little cakes that they packed in their husbands' lunch. When he opened his lunch box with one inside, he reportedly exclaimed, "Whoopie!" because these treats are so delicious. At one of the bakeries, we bought a multi-pack with both chocolate and pumpkin whoopie pies. Check that one off the list too!

But the real reason we came to Pennsylvania Dutch Country was to drive the country roads filled with neat farmsteads that look as big as villages. We see that the resident buggy is pulling up the driveway as we drove by.

Denisa is fascinated with the muscular work horses on these farms that are the ultimate source of horse power. We found a few lounging in the pasture.

But most of them were working in teams up to six strong, pulling noisy contraptions for the harvest. We caught a corn cob flying out of the auger as this harvester went by.

It was like an agricultural history lesson of how our forefathers got the work done one hundred years ago.

We are always interested in crops that are unfamiluar to us. This farmer is driving his team through a field of tobacco.

It's toward the end of the growing season, and it looks like most of the tobacco has already been harvested. We could see it hanging upside down to dry in the white barn.

While we often saw it hanging in one-hundred-year-old barns, some farmers used new-fangled green houses for drying the large tobacco leaves.

While a team of horses is a powerful crew, sometimes harvest means the whole family is out with buckets picking the vegetables by hand.

That was so different than the massive machinery that a neighboring farmer was using to harvest his soy bean crop.

We drove by this field of alfalfa, with butterflies dancing over the tops of the blooms. Denisa was sad that her butterflies didn't show up in the picture. But it does show how close together these farms are to each other. At any one time we could see a dozen different barns at once, sprinkled across the country-side.

Another interesting crop to us were the acres of broccoli that are being harvested now. We bought the freshest head of broccoli of our lives at one of the road-side stands.

After the touristy stops in towns with names like Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse, we did the rest of our shopping in front of big barns on the side of the road. We definitely got rid of the middle-man in these transactions.

Many of the farm houses are now selling mums and pumpkins--both things that a couple living in a motor home don't need.

Because they don't have electricity, most of the farmhouses had laundry drying outside on this beautiful weather day. Most of the clotheslines were on big pulley systems that lifted the clothes up higher than the tree tops. You can tell it was a big laundry day from the long line of clothes on the left-hand side of the picture.

Besides the muscular brown farm horses, Denisa also likes the sleek black horses that usually pull the buggies.

We always knew we were on a good Amish road when we saw horse poop on the highway.

Not everyone had a horse and buggy, and we saw lots of young people on bicycles. Most of them were the two pedal models that we also own. But this boy's bike included a foot rest for his right leg, while his left leg  powered it with a skateboard kick. With the rolling hills, these bikers must have great leg muscles.

Some of those children were riding home from school. We drove by this country school house, already finished for the day. Earlier we drove by another school, with children outside enjoying noon recess.

Our last stop of the day was the Green Dragon Market in Ephrata. Only open on Friday, it is the social center of commerce in this small town. There was a large parking lot for cars, but also spaces for buggies and a covered hitching post for the horses.

We drove lots of miles today, enjoying a first-hand look at a different way of life. We also did our part to help their economy, as we did lots of shopping today. It's fun to buy fruits and vegetables from the hands that raised them, and breads and cookies from the hands that baked them. The brown bottle at the top of the picture is Amish root beer--interesting, but the only item we wouldn't buy again.

Next time we are in this section of America, we plan to stay longer in this beautiful Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Once we peeled past the touristy level, it was one of the most interesting and natural days of our journey.