Amish Country

On Saturday, we made our yearly pilgrimage to the Amish Country to pick up things for our veggie and flower gardens.  Every year we go out with my parents and make a day of it.  The weather even cooperated for most of the day.

As we usually do, we started with a trip to Sadie's Bakery.  Sadie's is one of those places where, if you're giving directions to get there,  you say something like: "Go into Churchtown; turn right after that one church.  At that one big farm, turn right.  Then after the field with the big work horses in it, go up the hill.  It's on the left.  You can't miss it."  Once inside, though, you just want sit down and start tasting each donut, pie, whoopie pie, cake, apple fritter....So good.  And fresh.  The creme-filled Long Johns are awesome.

We went to our usual greenhouses and stocked up on a bunch of tomato varieties, peppers, eggplant, herbs, melons, etc.  We don't have a very big veg garden, but it's big enough to supply us with goodies for much of the summer.  Luckily, we didn't have time to put them in the ground yet--with the freezing temps at night lately, they would have been in trouble.  So they sit on our porch with sheets over them until the weather gets better.  Just can't wait to be able to go out and pull off a delicious, fresh tomato.  Could very well be my favorite thing about summer--next to baseball, I guess.  Jake has asked for part of our veg garden as a "Jacob Garden"--we'll put green beans and other things he likes in there.  He's very excited about that.

It always amazes me how much earlier the growing season is out there than it is here.  And it sure is a beautiful area--the rolling hills and fields are something out of a postcard.  Not to mention the great produce and meats.  Next time we go out, we're planning on filling our pie holes with the Shady Maple Smorgasbord breakfast.  Now, where are those stretchy pants?