Amish Country

Saturday was a "tourism" day. John and Beth took us to northeast Ohio where their son-in-law Rick had set up a booth at a Horse Progress Days exhibition. His booth promoted an upcoming plowing competition. Other exhibits sold farm products and held educational seminars. The day's finale was a parade of draft horses pulling surreys, wagons, stage coaches and buggies. There were beautiful teams of Percherons, Clydesdales, Morgans, Leopard Appaloosas, Friesians, Dutch Warmbloods and Spotted and Belgian drafthorses. Gene fell asleep.

The best watching of the day, however, was of the Amish families attending this event and the auctions taking place in a nearby town. These two annual events are social gatherings for the entire family, and literally hundreds of black buggies were parked at each location. All the women and girls wore their white bonnets and long dresses in varying shades of solid colors. The men wore home-sewn trousers, short sleeved shirts and suspenders. Married men had beards.

There were auctions underway all day hawking tools, Amish furniture and horses. But my favorite, and by far the largest, was held in the quilt barn. Hundreds of quilts were hung on rods for previewing, each with an identifying number. The Amish auctioneer described the quilt, including size, then opened the bidding. Most sold from $400 to $600. In a retail shop the best quilts would bring $800 to $1200. I'm sure many shop owners were in the audience.

We passed dozens of horse-drawn, black Amish buggies on the two-lane roads as we drove through the hilly farm country and made a few more stops . . . one for lunch at an Amish restaurant and another at a hardware store catering to Amish farmers. We stopped in Berlin and wandered through country craft stores, then hit a discount fabric outlet. Beth and her daughter Anne bought bolts of cloth to be used in making authentic shirts and pants for their Civil War reenactments. Beth and John's "Ezra Barnhouse Goods" business is gaining a good reputation as a source of supplies for this group. John's made a wagon they use for this purpose, and he and Beth have been featured in a documentary on the history of salesmanship.