Veer here, over yoder dare

the title meaning (in a comical way because so many people here have the last name of Yoder)....we're here, over there (in a Dutch German accent).

Here we are parked in Shipshewana Campground south.

We're lovin' Shipshewana. Alan and I have been coming here for 5 years and we still love it here. It's fun showing Ronnie and Fern all the neat places. We went to Lolly's, the biggest, bestest quilt store in the world. We went to Yoder's, a grocery store/hardware store, general merchandise store. They both loved it. Yesterday we drove to a cheese factory where we saw cheese curds being rinsed, flavored, scraped, etc into cheese logs. We bought enough cheese for a long time. It was all so good--they had samples of each variety. Then we drove to the harness shop, where harnesses are made for all the draft horses around here. The harnesses, bits, collars, etc were huge and absolutely beautiful, there were horseshoes for some mighty large horse hooves. I went upstairs to watch a fun loving, giggling Amish woman sew leather strapping for a customer. She was using a treadle machine and enjoyed her job so much. She was a delight to visit with and to listen to as she spoke in low German to 2 other workers there. Then we drove to Topeka, IN, about 30 minutes away to eat at an advertised diner. It was delicious, nothing fancy, but good food. We saw a table of 8 elderly Amish women eating. They had a driver with them--that's what Amish folk do. They can hire a driver to take them places, to the doctor, to another community, etc. Anyway, as these women were lined up to pay, I could see their waist bands were held together with straight pins. Most Amish here don't use buttons, zippers. They use hooks and eyes and straight pins. They were very creative how they had those pins in there so they weren't poked! Plus they never overeat!

Below are 2 pictures of an old bank barn (the ground is banked up to the barn so wagons can be backed up to it and loaded and unloaded. You can see the roof is being covered in tin--what a shame it's going to look so different in the future.

After lunch we drove to the bulk food store where most of the Amish and Mennonite families shop. Boy was that fun. I love all the bulk food and enjoy watching the little kids in their plain clothes with their mothers.

This is the parking lot on the side of the bulk foods store. Each buggy is driven by a woman who usually hitched it up at home and drove it to the store for Monday morning shopping.

I read in one of the magazines about a water powered flour mill near here. I had to see it so we drove to Greenfield Mills where we saw a huge mill where New Rinkel flours are made. We didn't take the tour but we could see the equipment and we were inside the very old mill. It was so neat. Of course I had to buy some pastry flour, bread flour, and a small sample of their buttermilk pancake mix and hearts of wheat cereal. Yummy!

I'll try to keep up better with the blog. We're having a great time. We're going to stay here until Monday when we move to Ohio Amish country.

But I'll leave today's blog with a great big HAPPY BIRTHDAY SISTA BERTE!!!! I love you.