Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Dutch Amish Country

Before heading home we swung over to Dutch Amish Country. We stopped at Kitchen Kettle Village in Intercourse, PA. It is a touristy little area with a bunch of shops. We did the buggy ride there that takes you around a little of the Amish area. The kids got to sit in front with the Amish driver and help drive the horses. We got to ask him questions during the ride. Interestingly enough, they don't use electricity but use diesel powered and LP powered appliances. Don't ask me why one is acceptable and one is not. Also, "Dutch" Amish Country isn't very "Dutch". We tried to find some Dutch treats but didn't find any. When we asked our driver about it, he had never heard of the Dutch treats we named. In fact, their native language is German, and they eat special treats like schnitz! Ummm, German! Our Dutch little family was a little disillusioned.
They stop on the buggy ride at an Amish house where some girls make treats to sell. We got lemonade, popcorn and a whoopie pie. When the ride was over I bought some yummy peaches to take home. One of Kent's favorite things about Pennsylvania was that there was finally radio reception for country music!


This is "Sarge" one of the horses who pulled us on the buggy. Their horse hair flew all over us during the ride...yuck! I don't know the Amish driver's name. He was missing at least four front teeth and it was hard to understand him sometimes.
The Amish are mostly dairy farmers in this community. The community is about 30,000 strong!
Here are some of the crops. He said this flowery plant (tobacco as far as we could tell from his toothless pronunciation) was the last of the cash crops. The other crops (corn and alfalfa) are for feeding the dairy cows.

And here is a picture for my quilt-loving mother. No, I did not step inside even one quilt shop though...sorry mom.
Another little buggy on the road.
The adolescents in Kent and I made plenty of quiet-voiced jokes about the city's name. What were they thinking?


It was a fun little stop, but we were glad we didn't make a special trip out just for Amish Country. I think we saw about as much as we could have seen in our short couple of hours there.
The kids had fun but were excited to get back home and to their toys! Hayden wanted to play his Playstation games, and Sawyer went straight to his Nascar cars and started racing.
It was a nice, short trip.
Pennsylvania---check!

2 comments:

Bowers Family said...

That would have been fun (minus the horse hair) to ride in the buggy. Snicker...snicker about you and Kent and the comments about the town name!

When I worked at Jacob Lake we had a family of Amish people come in with their driver...because they don't drive. Such a cute little family and the kids were fascinated with everything we showed them. Such a simple life they live.

James and Michelle's Family said...

I don't get it. What's so funny about the name?