Amish land/Life on the farm

Amish farms are beautiful. Where I'm from in Indiana isn't far from Amish country. I love driving through it.
In case you haven't experienced it...Amish restaurants are GREAT! (yes they have electricity and plumbing!--usually they are the Mennonite cousins that own the Amish restaurants!) I have a friend whose family owns a famous one in Indiana and I worked for a family that owned one of them also while living there.
My family and I like one that is on a farm and the restaurant is in a HUGH Barn. Wood barn, not a metal pole barn. They have a petting zoo and an Inn on the property as well. Everything has electricity except the house there! Flawed thinking?...Oh well, it works for them and the restaurant is really cool.

Not far from there (within a few miles) there is an Amish auction barn called "Dinks". It's like a giant flea market/farmers market with house wears on one side and livestock on the other! They sell their jams and breads and cakes etc there too. It's a pretty neat experience. Very different from Oak Park Mall! :-)

Speaking of livestock have you ever been to a market where people are buying and selling livestock? It's pretty interesting, you have the auctioneer that's yelling out the prices and the announcer that's giving you the details as to why this pig/horse/pony/cow/sheep/goat should be bought. They tell you where it's come from, if it's thoroughbred, and how much it weighs. A lot of animals are bought by the lbs. Some by the head (cattle for instance) There are bleachers and you sit there with your number. Some animals look like they are very well cared for, others, not so much. I liked living on the farm and I even liked going to the sales with my dad. My mom usually stayed home. We usually would go on a Saturday morning. If we were selling the animals had to be there usually on Friday night. I guess it depended on the sale barn, sometimes dad would load them up on Thursday and mom and us kids would take them to the barn on Friday for him. We had a couple different ones we frequented I think it was based on what my dad got for his animals and how bad he wanted the cash, one paid you right then, one sent a check in the mail later that week, once they reconciled their books.

My dad is cutting hay this week. I told the kids how I drove the tractor for this when I was like 6 or 7. They were amazed! I then told them how the speed for the tractor can be regulated and I just guided it through the field, when real driving had to ge done my dad would run up and jump up on the tractor and move the gears and turn the wheel to direct it to the next area I was to guide it too. My sisters and mom were loading the trailer with dad. He has a big baler now so he doesn't do it the way we use to, had to switch when all his farm hands moved away! I use to carry 5 gallon buckets of feed to our pigs (I preferred pigs to cows at the time *highschool) but now, I like his cows better and I'm glad that he's not having to work with the pigs, they are much higher maintenance (better money over all----but more work.) Livestock is much preferred to grain farming. I love our farm it's so much nicer as pasture ground than a corn field! (Although it's fun to play in the corn fields--you can hide for a long time--better in long sleeves because it can cut you like paper.)