The Barns at Nappanee (formerly Amish Acres) was sold last week at auction – for the second time in five years. Via the Goshen News: NAPPANEE — The former Amish Acres property, later known as The Barns at Nappanee, has been sold. An auction for the property, which includes 10 buildings across 54,000 square feet of space on the west edge of Nappanee, ended at…
Today Jim Halverson takes us inside a market (and variety store) in the Cass City, Michigan Amish community, which he visited this past Saturday. We had a look at this community in Jim’s photo set from last year. It’s a community of around 1,000 people. Once you get over a few hundred Amish residents, there should be a nice variety of businesses in a settlement…
Whom will you see at an Amish auction? Last month Jim Halverson gave us a look at an Amish auction in central Michigan – in the Beaverton area of Gladwin County, to be precise. Jim is so prolific in his photo-taking that we have an additional dozen photos from the event. As mentioned before, the community is a Swartzentruber group, but the auction drew some…
Of all the Maine Amish communities (11 and counting), the Unity settlement has gotten the most media attention over the years – whether it’s about a beloved local market being rebuilt, “donut day“, ice harvesting, or a specialty meats business in the community. That’s why it’s neat to see this look at the community at Smyrna (Aroostook County) – and specifically some Amish food businesses…
The Amish Acres complex in Nappanee, Indiana was a long-running and popular tourist destination in northern Indiana Amish Country. It offered a restaurant, theater shows, and Amish-themed tours and activities. I think it’s fair to say it was one of the best-known Amish-themed tourist attractions in the country, maybe “top five” even. After a 50-year run, the property was sold by its original owners in…
Some of you might be familiar with the name Pioneer Equipment, the long-running Amish manufacturer of horse-drawn farm tools and wagons, based in Wayne County, Ohio. For decades, the Wengerd family operated what was the country’s largest producer of horse-powered machinery — serving Plain communities as well as a robust non-Amish market, in America and around the world, in fact. I haven’t spoken with them…
Most of us have been to a car lot or two in our days, whether buying a new or used auto. This neat photo set shows us the Amish equivalent – a “buggy lot” with many dozens of horse-drawn vehicles for sale. This little photo set is courtesy of Jim Halverson, taken in northern Indiana. The event was the Honeyville Consignment Sale at Yoder’s Auction…
As the Lancaster County Amish community has grown, it has sprawled beyond the borders of the county itself. And for years, readers have noted that Lancaster County Amish are living across the state line in Maryland. On a previous visit to Pennsylvania (Dec. 2023), I drove around a bit in the area of Rising Sun in Cecil County, MD. The county has a separate, small…
I dropped in on the Charlotte County, Virginia Amish community just before Christmas. I’ve been visiting this one since there were just a relative handful of Amish here. As the community has slowly grown over the years, the number of Amish-run stores here seems to be slowly increasing as well. One of the places I visited is called Country Corner Dairy. It’s one of the…
It’s not “goodbye” quite yet, but one Maine Amishman is soon closing down his – dare I say semi-famous – upscale meats-and-cheeses market. I call it “semi-famous” because Matthew Secich’s Charcuterie has been featured multiple times in newspaper articles. Part of the public interest has to do with his unusual background. Secich is a former big-city chef who joined the Amish in the Unity, Maine…