Day 8 Sunday 9/24/2023
Today being Sunday not many businesses are open today so we struggled to get our Latte fix today. It took three attempts and a stop at Dunkin Donuts in Wooster to finally get one.
It was overcast today and with most of the businesses closed it was a great day to explore the backroads and enjoy all the beautiful scenery of the Amish homesteads. The overcast skies kept most of the reflections out of the photos since Lena did most of the photography through the windshield or side window as I meandered down the country roads. There were very few cars or buggies on the backroads this morning so we could drive slow and enjoy the views.
Guggisburg Cheese Factory
Amish School House
Sugarcreek is referred to as Little Switzerland since some of the building fronts are styled like buildings in Switzerland and they have a Giant Cuckoo Clock they say is the Worlds Largest. I don’t know if that is true or not because we saw one in the Black Forest area of Germany that also claimed it was the largest in the World. Anyway they both were large and on the hour they became animated and music played and characters came out the clock and performed.
You probably have seen places in North Carolina that sells yard furniture that is made from rot resistant composite material. There are a number of Amish businesses in this area that made them and also the small storage buildings that are sold along with the yard furniture. Many of the Amish farm and raise livestock but land prices are so high that the younger Amish can’t afford to farm so many have ventured into other occupations off the farm.
We returned to the motorhome for lunch and then went out again in a different direction mid afternoon. This time there were lots of Amish buggies and young people out on their electric bicycles. We passed one building where there were a couple dozen buggies parked and we could see the Amish inside the building singing.
We did see one unexpected thing today. We have seen lots of cattle, horses, goats, sheep, hogs and free range chickens. Today we passed one pasture and there were 6-8 zebras grazing. Yep, you read that right, zebras.
There are lots of maples trees in this area and we saw several signs for maple syrup for sale. The maple trees have started showing their Falls colors already. And so have the walnut trees. This is a beautiful part of the country. I can see why a lot of Amish settled here.
Day 9 Monday 9/25/2023
This morning we went a few miles down the road to the Guggisberg Cheese Factory. Alfred and Margaret Guggisberg came to Holmes County from Switzerland in 1940 to produce cheese from the local milk of the Doughty Valley.
They have a glass window and an overhead TV where you can watch the cheese making process. We got there just after 9AM and they were cleaning the hugh vats in preparation for making the 84,000 pounds of cheese they make per day. We didn’t stay around until they finished the cleaning but we did sample several types of their cheese. Our favorite was their Baby Swiss which was awarded the US Grand Champion Cheese out of 2,555 entries from 35 states. We bought a 2lb round block of it to take with us.
Then we stopped just down the road at Miller’s Bakery for a loaf of their bread, and one each of the largest Cinnamon Buns and Apple Fritter I think we have ever seen. They were almost the size of our mid size dinner plates.
We had planned to tour the German Culture Museum in Walnut Creek but we didn’t know until we got there that they are only open Thursday through Saturday. It was on the brochure but we missed it.
Then it was on to the Amish & Mennonite Heritage Center n nearby Berlin. We paid for the tour and was ushered into a large room where there was an Amish man giving a talk about the history of the Anabaptist (Twice Baptized) people. The room was pitch dark except for the light that lite up sections of a 10’ high by 265’ long oil-on-canvas painting that illustrates the heritage of the Amish and the Mennonite people. The talk explained the persecution of the Anabaptist people. The painting is called a Behalt which means “to keep” or “remember “. The talk was about 30 minutes long and it is repeated throughout the day as people come in. It had to take a long time to do this large painting.
Then we toured the museum until it was time to do the tour of the One-Room School House and the reproduced Pioneer Barn.
Our tour guide for this was a Mennonite lady. She explained a lot about the school system the local Amish use. This area is unique among the Amish in that some of the Amish send their kids to the local English Public Schools until they have completed the 8th grade. Here they are exposed to more of the ways of the “outside world” than they would be in the Amish Schools. She also told us that land in Holmes County was very expensive. Recently a 150 acre farm sold for 9 million dollars. She expects they will turned into a house project or commercial buildings not farming. She said her husband and daughter teach at the Walnut Creel Elementary School and her husband had 20 Amish children in his class and only two live on a farm and their parents don't farm.
The Pioneer Barn had a couple of Amish buggies on display and she offered us the chance to get in one so I did. There was also a Conestoga Wagon on display and a wagon the Amish use to transport the benches they use in their service. They have Church ever other Sunday in one of the families home. They rotate the services around the community so they have to haul the benches around to the homes. The benches have no backs and their service is 2.5 hours long. The benches convert into tables for the dinner that is served after the Church Service.
By this time it was almost Noon so we headed four miles down the road to Mt Hope to eat at Mrs. Yoders Kitchen for lunch. This is a place that the locals, both English, Amish and Mennonite and the tourists eat. We decided on the buffet that had several selections plus a large salad bar. We were stuffed when we finished but our waitress began listing all their pies they have for dessert so I ordered one slice of the Blueberry Creme Pie for us to share. It was yummy with the biggest blueberries we have ever seen. They were the size of nickels.
Then we rode some more of the backroads before returning to the campground for the day. We saw another camel browsing in a pasture today. We have lost count of how many saw mills we have seen in this area and places that make and sell furniture. We have driven by serval homes that had woodworking shops where we could see the Amish men inside making different types of furniture. I would have liked to walked in and observed them but I wasn’t that brave to intrude on them like that.
Day 10 Tuesday 9/25/2023
We treated ourselves again this morning at the der Bake Oven Bakery in Berlin. They had an attached cafe and it was almost full of either Amish or Conservative Mennonite women having breakfast. We got one large glazed donut and an apple fritter along with our Lattes. A local lady in line behind us said the glazed donuts were delicious. I asked the salesclerk if they had removed the calories and she said no but they didn’t add any extra calories. Everything was delicious. I guess when we get to Stone Mountain we will work all these calories off.
Then we stopped at Kaufman’s Bakery near Mt Hope to check them out but we didn’t see anything there we wanted plus their prices seemed to be much higher than the much smaller Miller’s Bakery we stopped at yesterday.
We did some more back roads riding on the way to the Breitenbach Wine Cellars to check out their Riesling Wine.
Cutting corn for silage (cow feed)
Amish School kids playing baseball
We saw two more camels grazing in a pasture. Not sure why they would have camels here unless they use them in their school Christmas Plays. But that makes three we have seen.
We liked Riesling Wine in Germany and have never found one here in the USA that was as good. We tasted three different wines and bought one bottle of their Sweet Riesling even though it was not as good as we remember the German Riesling. Then we got a small brick oven pizza and ate it in their dining room. It was good but would have been much better if they had brought it to us as soon as it came out of the oven as it was not as hot as it should have been.
We bought ticket for the Amish Family Country Theater in Berlin to see their family show Utter Nonsense. This was advertised as a family comedy and it was. The theater was built in 2018 beside a large motel. They have two different family comedy shows and several other types of shows including Christmas Shows throughout the year. Several of their shows are tribute shows where different singing groups perform shows based on famous entertainers like Dolly Pardon Kenny Rogers, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, etc.
Our show included a ventriloquist, a singer, two comedy singers and a magician and a country bumpkin that said he was the smartest idiot in the world. The show was 2 hours and we really enjoyed it. It just proves comedy can be performed without all the vulgarity.
The adjacent hotel offers what they call a Land Cruise which is two day and three nights, that include the hotel room, all meals with all the food you can eat, shopping trips and the shows in the theater.
