I set my alarm for 7:00am so that we could look kind of responsible and like we were not utterly sleep-deprived. Alarm didn’t ring. We woke up at 9:00-ish. So much for looking remotely responsible for my husband’s family. But, shoot, better they know that we are just a wild bunch up front, right? So Brandon’s cousin Dana is my kind of girl. Her reaction time for clearing her entire day and planning an Amish Country tour extraordinaire was about 10 minutes. She was on a roll. She didn’t seem the least bit phased by the addition of 5 wild ones to her little bunch. Because of her, our day was exactly what we imagined. So, first the cheese factory. There were no tours when we got there, but it did not matter. The glass viewing areas were still there, and we could see the enormous vats and beaters. It was all so simple. We had seen the Tillamook factory many years back, and it was spectacular with it’s shining conveyer belts and busy workers and squared ropes of cheese oozing out onto the chopping block. But this was far more pleasant and personal. Cheese is a personal food. It is to be enjoyed while relaxing with a glass of wine. The workers in this small place would maybe have a glass of apple juice with friends after carefully pouring cheese curds into molds by hand. They would bring a cheese released from the mold that very day.
And Heini’s let us sample all of their cheeses. And their jellies. And their sausage sticks. And their cheese fudge. And everything else. Hundreds of samples. Maybe only one hundred samples. So much cheese happiness!
Of course we bought all of the cheese. If this cheese factory were the only place we went to on this trip, it would have been enough. But there was more. Dana next took us to an Amish farm. There we saw cats. Now, cats are an integral part of our lives at home. I like cats, and have always owned a cat. My kids have never lived without at least 5-10 cats, and right now we have more like 20. Our cats are working cats, and they do work hard to keep the rodents out of our house and off our property, but they are also kind of like family to us. So of course seeing a cat after no cats for the past 5 days was very exciting for them. They fought over the few farm cats, and the cats seemed very happy to comply with all the snuggles offered. My kids even allowed the cousins to have a turn holding the cats. Ha! Poor cousins think my kids are cat crazy. They are not wrong.
And then there were kittens. And puppies. And baby bunnies. And baby pigs. And baby horses. And baby goats. And baby chicks. And more cats. And, you see, this is how Ohio Amish Country is different than Southern California. The kids were allowed to pet and hold and love on all the animals they wished. Nobody freaked out over dirty hands. Nobody told them that the animals may claw them. Nobody worried that they may drop the animals. The kids were treated like intelligent people who could handle baby animals. In California, they think kids are far too dumb to handle a simple baby animal, and they believe that kids are certainly too unintelligent to explain such an activity to. Better to just avoid it or sanitize the whole situation such that it is not fun. There was so much joy and grit in this experience. And nobody got hurt. Amazing. We’ve got to get out of Southern California! It is sucking our souls dry.
Miss Bunny cried when she had to put the kitten down and go to the next part of the tour. “I want to be Amish!” I looked at her. “We all want to be Amish.” I wanted to explain that there is this weird Anabaptist rift between liturgical traditions and the Amish, and that they would need to wear dresses, and that they would not get to be as sassy as they are now. But maybe that wouldn’t matter. Maybe all of those things would become insignificant. Maybe we should become Amish. There was some kind of magic that made us all yearn for that kind of life.
We had to cross a creek in the yard to get from the barn to the farm house. We saw the simple living situation, the large rooms filled with almost nothing. We learned about house churches, we saw the kitchen in action as an Amish woman was baking bread. The kids were happy to taste the baked goods and pocket a few for later.
Of course, we went on a buggy ride around the field, as well. The man driving our buggy appeared happy to chat with us, but he also appeared to maybe be thinking about dinner, or maybe one of those cinnamon rolls the woman was cooking in the kitchen. Then it started to rain. It was a good, drenching rain, and the creeks running through the farm were suddenly filled and overflowing. This thrilled the kids.
Our last stop on the farm was the one-room school house. There the kids learned about the Amish school day, the kinds of things Amish children learn, and they found out that Amish children only go to school until they finish 8th grade. I could see their minds processing this. If we become Amish, we have only 3, or 2, or 1 more year of schooling. So many reasons to become Amish. They have cute kittens and cats, and you get to graduate school after grade 8, and there are creeks in the yard that overflow. Strong reasons. It was also interesting to discover that the local Amish school uses the same curriculum we use for our language arts.
We went for lunch after; all that eating of cheese and sweet baked goods had made the kids hungry.
Nobody likes to leave cousins. Cousins are some of those divine sparkles in life, and even if you have only just met the cousins, you feel that you have known them forever. My kids have so many connections across this great country, and so many more to discover! These two sweet baby cousins will grow up to be people my kids bring their kids to visit, and they will talk about that time we showed up in the middle of the night and spent the day being Amish together.
Now my kids are asking about the Phelps family reunions…I see far more road trips in our future!
Onward to Pennsylvania. We will get there before midnight. Maybe. Haha!
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