Blessed Are The Men Who Shop At The Quilt Stores With Their Wives.

Hubby and I traveled over to the Ohio Amish area on Thursday to explore the area. It’s only a 3 hour or so drive away but there’s enough to do in the area so we decided to spend a few days there.

We’ve been there before so we knew what shops were the good ones to visit and which ones are just commerical sight-seeing types of shops.

Now, I’ve always claimed my husband as a “keeper” but really how amazing is it that he’s willing to go into quilt shops and fabric shops with me and not complain? 

He even stopped the car at the shops without me asking!

Anyway, we explored the areas of Berlin, Sugarcreek, Mt Hope, Charm and Walnut Creek and had a wonderful, relaxing time.

Since we got up super early the next morning, way before any shops were opened, we took that time to do what we love to do the best .. visit the Amish farms . 

To do that, you have to get a good map of the area that shows all of the little roads… our gps would probably do it just as well, but we preferred the old-fashioned, look-on-a-map way.

The best way to see what Amish living is like is to get away from the main roads.  Get on the small country roads.  That’s where we always find the most interesting things.

The Amish are very friendly people so even though we are the only car on the road with horse and buggies in front and behind us, we are still welcomed with big friendly waves from every person we see along the way.

On the back roads, a lot of the farms are right along the road so we see lots of animals up close ….

These pictures were taken right out of my car window. 

The best part though is just seeing the farms.  A lot of the farms had little signs out by the road that let us know what they made and sold.

I wanted to see what a Wren house was so we drove down to this farm …

Here’e the cute little wren birdhouse that I bought from them.

Such nice people and so so friendly .. I wish I could’ve bought a clothes dryer from them, which is a large wooden rack that stretches out for drying clothes on, but it was much too big for me to use anywhere. 

Along our way through the country roads, we started noticing these large bird houses at just about every single farm …

They were like big apartment complexes for birds.

So my mission became to take pictures of all the birdhouses AND to try to find someone who had them for sale so that we could take one home!

The farmer that sold us the little wren house told us that these are purple martin birdhouses.  He told us to travel up the road a ways and we should see a sign in front of the farm that makes these.

So more pictures ….

These are Gourds that are used for the birdhouses!

But we saw no signs that would indicate that they were for sale, anywhere.

We finally stopped at a farm in Charm, Ohio and talked to a super friendly lady who was standing right out by her birdhouse. 

She explained that pretty much everyone made the birdhouses themselves, for their own use, but she did know of a few people that made them for the public to purchase. Her and her husband gave us general directions to find the craftsman who makes them.  She even offered to have her husband make one for us but I explained that we didn’t live in the area and was hoping to purchase one to take home today.

Hubby being the sensible, thinking one, told me that even if we did find one. they’re so big, it probably wouldn’t fit in the car anyway.

So we gave up our search and decided to get one on the next visit and take the pick-up truck with us!

So for the rest of the day, we shopped at the little stores and I took more pictures from my car window to remind us of the life of the Amish.

It’s nice to get away but it’s always nice to come back home too!

I will be continuing the rest of the Christmas in July celebration tomorrow.  I’ll have all of my Christmas patterns discounted and I will be offering very special prices for the wool kits to go with them too so be sure to visit my blog tomorrow.

Happy Day everyone!