A Trip to the Amish

On Saturday the 30th a friend of mine and I went to visit our local Amish Community to learn a little more about their self-sufficiency and farming.
Our first stop was to the Community Market to purchase a dozen donuts for our families as they are SO delicious and then we went to one of the Amish homes.
They have a beautifully designed farmhouse with lots of windows and a couple of porches.  Inside the house was a nice Pioneer Princess wood cook stove which we found out our host's father and Uncle made the air tight design for this stove.  I also loved her sink that had 2 large sections and a small section in the middle.
We learned that a young woman who lived with them was learning how to make tinctures and salves. She was drying out cayenne peppers on top of the stove and cutting up more to use for her tinctures as well as for cooking.  She also makes her own teas out of the herbs they grow on the farm. This young woman is studying 2 different books learning how to make the tinctures and salves. These 2 books are being added to my must buy book list!
This year this family decided to try growing heritage wheats and may expand growing more next year. We had the privilege of eating some if it in her homemade pizza crust that was topped with homemade sauce,  homemade cheese, homemade sausage and one was topped with chicken from their farm. Dessert was Apple Dumplings. I had never had those before but they were very delicious!! Im going to look up a recipe online and make some for my family after we go apple picking this week. They put milk on their desserts but I was not brave enough to try milk on it.
On this farm they had several greenhouse with tomatoes grown in them. They also had a couple more greenhouses near a wood mill that were used for seed starting.  Their garden was really big and had lots of veggies, herbs and a few flowers. Made my garden look like a postage stamp. They do put plastic over their rows to help cut down on the weeds.
The had Cornish Rock Hens as their meat birds who had a cute bantam rooster outside the chicken tractor "taking care of" them. They had another tractor with turkeys in them.
Inside the barn is their laying hens, their ram, a few pigs and a calf. Out to pasture were their katahdin sheep. 🐑
They also grow their own blueberries, raspberries and have a small orchard started with apples, plums, cherries, peaches and cherries.
It was a fun and educational trip!