Amish Country-- May 19

Okay, so we are still touring Indiana ( I have been teased about that). Today we visited the towns of Wakarus and Nappanee. John wanted to find the Dime Store first of all in the town of Wakarus. And, yes, that was the name of the store. It is famous for its jumbo jelly beans and various other sweets. We spent a wad of dough there for various sweets as the jumbo jelly beans (actually they did not look good to me at all, I could only cringe at the idea of all that pure sugar). Anyway, we did help the economy of that town! We then walked into the town hardware store to purchase a small item. As we were checking out the clerk urged us to pick up a copy of the Amish Country magazine of northern Indiana and to look at page 23. There we found his picture, and the note with it said that he was the proprietor of a hardware store famous for its 1,000 drawers of nuts and bolts and its tin ceiling. We then checked out a few more stores in town and before we knew it most of the afternoon had gone. We then drove to Nappanee. Through out much of this area we had been seeing Amish folk. Northern Indian has the second largest population of Amish people. And we saw them everywhere on the roads in their bikes and buggies. We also saw them out working in their fields. We saw one particular farmer plowing his field with a tiller drawn by four horses. Also on the tiller with him was two young bonneted girls ( I have posted here what that plow looks like). We then visited Amish Acres- a restored old order Amish farm. There on the guided tour we learned that it takes 100 hours for an Amish farmer to till, plant and harvest one acre of grain. Another farmer, who uses modern equipment, will only need a total of three hours to plant and harvest the same acre. Amish Acres had many interesting buildings to tour. One that intrigued me was the mint still. At the turn of the twentieth century Indiana was the largest producer of mint. After it was processed it was sent on to the Wriggley Gum company in Chicago. Before I close here, does anyone have a desire to see Indiana this summer? We were encouraged to come back for the Quilt Garden tour. It will run from May 25 until Oct. 1. There will be 16 gigantic gardens recreating traditional or contemporary quilt patterns. They willl grace seven communities in northern Indiana. If you are interested go to Quilt Gardens Tour.com. I wish we could be back here to see it!