We're comparatively late risers in this house, and on normal days I don't even start the day with the kids until about 9:00, so it's a bit of a scramble to get out the door this early. We do breakfast in the van to save time, so I usually pack things like applesauce pouches, nuts, string cheese, and raisins for the kids to munch on. I'm currently doing a round of Whole30, so this is what I grabbed for myself yesterday:
In addition to packing breakfast, I also need to make sure to pack all my containers to bring things home in. I bring fourteen glass half-gallon milk bottles, two glass pint jars (with lids) for cream, and empty egg cartons to return, along with any plastic containers I'd received butter in previously.
I also pack lids for the milk bottles. Always pack lids for the milk bottles!
I've forgotten lids a few times in the past, and have had to borrow massive buckets to haul all the milk home in. Like I said, always pack lids for the milk bottles. It was kind of a nightmare trying to figure out how to get these into the fridge.
Anyway. Once breakfast is packed and containers are rounded up and loaded, I get the kids wrestled into the van. We have a serious clown car situation going on.
Yesterday morning it was cold, but not as chilly as it was the week before, which was nice for two reasons: 1) because you do a lot of standing around outside and/or in woodstove-heated buildings once you get up there, so it makes for a cold morning, and 2) the front blower and defrost vent in our van isn't working right now. The kids stay warm in the back, but the front can get cold.
In order to use some of our drive to get something done for school, we listen to audiobooks on the way up. We've listened to Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, Mr. Popper's Penguins, and many of the Little House books during this time. Yesterday, we wrapped up On the Shores of Silver Lake.
I love the drive once we start entering Amish territory. It's peaceful, with open fields and pretty houses scattered around. All the houses and stores are white, and the barns and outbuildings are all red.
There's always something going on - many days there will be families hanging laundry or mending fence. We've gotten to watch construction happening on a barn, and have found ourselves in the middle of a community fish fry. Yesterday, many of the men were out cutting ice from the ponds into blocks, to keep in their insulated ice houses, which are essentially refrigerated outbuildings behind most houses. The ice blocks keep the ice houses cold all year, until the ice is replenished the following winter.
Our first stop is Irene's house.
It's been fun getting to know her. She's my age, with five kids right around the same age as mine. We get butter, cream and eggs from her, and frequently bring her things from town - most often it's white sugar, but I've also found myself trucking bananas, cottage cheese, pipe cleaners, and barbecue potato chips. I've gotten to see how she does laundry: with an old-fashioned, generator-run Maytag, which she fills with water heated in a huge tank over a wood fire. She then wrings it all out and hangs it on a line, even in zero-degree weather.
Our next stop is up the road a little way at a bakery run by The Maries.
Little Marie got married this fall, so we haven't seen much of her in the last few months, and most of our recent business has been handled by Big Marie. We bring our empty bottles (with lids! always with lids!) in a folding wagon I keep in the van for this very purpose. The empty bottles aren't all that heavy, but once they're full, they weigh about one hundred pounds in total. Hence the wagon.
In the summer, we unload the bottles on the ground outside the ice house and fill them there. In the winter, when they don't need to keep the milk in the ice house and when it's too cold to stand outside in the wind to pour it, we go inside the kitchen of the bakery. I hold the funnel while Big Marie (who is actually quite wiry and small) pours it from huge buckets. Finneas caps the bottles, and Atticus loads them back into the crates in the wagon.
In addition to the milk each week, we also get eggs and cream from her, depending on what she has and what we were already able to pick up at Irene's, and the girls get to go inside to pick out cookies for the car ride home. Then we load up and head out.
In all, we're usually only up there for about forty-five minutes other than driving time, unless I want to run into one of the bulk stores to pick up salt, or drive around in search of houses offering produce. Once we get home, I'm totally tuckered out, but I still have to haul all the milk into the house and get it put away.
While I'm doing that, Penelope makes tuna salad for lunch, and once all the kids have eaten and the little ones are down for nap, I basically lapse into a two-hour-long coma before one of my college gals comes over in the afternoon.
And that's how we end our typical-yet-unusual Wednesdays. If you're ever in the neighborhood on a Wednesday, you should join us!
10 comments :
That's so neat! How did you learn about the Amish near you?
A friend of mine that moved with the church plant used to shop at the Amish near Cedar Falls quite a bit when we lived there, so after the move she scouted out the new neighborhood down here! It's a large settlement - Irene estimated 300-400 families - so there are LOTS of stores and homes advertising what they have to sell, so once you're up there, it's pretty easy to find what you're looking for. They even have maps available for "the English" (us).
I Kalonais a community like this, but there might be a settlement closer to you. This sounds weird, but you could google it. The community down here comes up on a search for Amish in Missouri. Which I find hilarious.
Derrr. KALONA.
or you could always try amishmingle.com
:)
Have you gotten to know some families? I think that dialogue could be really interesting! Do they know you identify as a follower of Jesus?
I have gotten to know Irene pretty well, and while I don't know Marie as well, she did invite me inside her home to show me how 'her people' set up for weddings, which had an air of being insider info. But the few times I've tried starting spiritual conversations, they just kind of don't go anywhere. They're friendly about it, but it feels a little more guarded or private.
I would honestly struggle to purchase milk from the amish but that's because I have a taste for non-fat milk instead of the full fat stuff from the farm. BUT I would TOTALLY be on board with buying all of my Eggs and Bread from them because they would be so fresh and yummy. Do they have different kinds of breads that they offer or is it just wheat or white??
All kinds - cinnamon raisin, dill onion, sourdough (though the sourdough's always gone when we get there). It's all breadpan style, though, nothing fancy. :)
Sourdough ... oh that's the best stuff. BUT I wouldn't turn down cinnamon raisin as a breakfast bread ... not sure I could use it all day though. What time do they start selling their breads? Must be super early for it to be gone by 9am ish.
They make it once per week, and the Saturday rush beats me to it! But the nice thing is that most of what's left after Saturday gets marked down. (And the cinnamon raisin bread is goooooood. At least, I deduce it is by the smell and the kids' testimony- I'm gluten-free and languishing, breadless and destitute, and just get to watch them devour it all. :) )
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