I spent the morning and early afternoon at an Amish farm in Honeybrook, PA, which should be 25 minutes from me, but ended up being a 40 minute circular goose chase. I found the place with no help from Google or Mapquest, after first stopping to ask a gas station attendant, and finally an Amish youth pedaling a scooter down the road came to the rescue, turned out he knew the farmer. In western Chester County, the region feels more like Lancaster from the good sized smattering of Mennonite and Amish farms.
This was another workshop for farm interns/apprentices and the general public, that I coordinate for Maysie’s farm. What you may know about the Amish is that they don’t use electricity or drive cars. What you probably don’t know is how organized and savvy they are about farming. Why all the kids? To help farm the land. And these are polite, well mannered teenagers who dish out ice cream to strangers without attitude or any twinge of resentment for being made to work on a Saturday. I am duly impressed.Â
Benuel Stoltzfus and his wife Anna, along with their nine children, raise dairy cows, chickens, pigs, and offer organic raw milk, grass fed beef, cottage cheese, yogurt and various other hard cheeses as organic value added products from their farm. After a horse drawn wagon farm tour around the fields to visit the Jersey girls, we were treated to delectable homemade vanilla and chocolate ice cream.Â
I came away loaded with fresh – oh the yellow! – organic butter, glass bottled milk with cream settled at the top, organic yogurt with a stripe of cream near its lid, free range eggs and handmade soaps. Rose geranium and rosemary lavender. I got to see the hens scratching and new 6 day old piglets. Maybe that’s why I forgot to buy any bacon.
I’ll have more information available about the farm and its practices on Maysie’s blog tomorrow.
What handsome pictures! The Amish life, as you describe it, sounds appealing because it integrates things that have beceome dissociated in contemporary society. Food production, polite children and healthy landscapes all arise from interdepedence, the very opposite of alienation. Looking at it from another perspective, we may find the institutions that produce these qualities to be oppressive.
I think there is a lot the general American public could learn from the Amish. Their respect for the land and sustainable farming practices and the way they raise polite, respectful children are just 2 of the many things that come to mind. Plus I bet that was some darned good ice cream!
V-
When I was in Ohio in May. A group of Amish drove their buggies into the town for a farmers market. It was like going back to a simpler time and even the proximity to the modern stores nearby couldn’t change
that feeling. Wonderful pictures. They may have been mennonite
how can one tell the difference?
Arnold, their religions have similar tenets, but the cultures are different. http://www.welcome-to-lancaster-county.com/amish-and-mennonites.html
I would like to order food from the farm. I live on Long Island
How do I place an order?
This farm doesn’t offer online ordering as far as I know. You might be able to call them, but as I mentioned they’re Amish and are hard to contact. I no longer live in the area, but you might try contacting the farm that organized these workshops, Maysie’s Farm in Glenmoore, PA: http://www.maysiesfarm.org/ or ph: 610-458-8129