Spending the day with the Amish

A good friend of mine invited me to spend the day with her at a sale in Holmes County (Ohio). The sale was being held at a school for multi-handicap children in this Amish county. She had worked at this school many years ago. They have this sale once a year and it is quite big. I am sure that there were 400 Amish there and maybe more. There were very few Non-Amish. They had yummy food, activities for the children and an auction.

The first picture I snapped quickly. There was another area that there were many horse and buggies. I snapped the next picture as I steped out of the car also very quickly. Yes, it is blurry but I think you can still see the little children having fun with the steering wheels on the barrel ride. Okay, now in case you don't know this, the Amish do not like their picture taken. I knew this and my friend reminded me not to take any more pictures. She knew that was going to kill me and it did. Such cute little families. I wanted to sueeze those little babies. Their life is so simple but their work is so hard. They all know each other. Lots of Millers and Yoders. There were several children there that had Down syndrome and several others with disabilities.
After all this sale was for them. They wanted to raise money for a school bus that had a wheelchair lift.

To raise money they have an auction every year at this sale. They auctioned a couple of ponies, some farm equipment, beautiful handmade furnitures, some of this and that, organic plants for the garden, flowers and the biggie QUILTS. We took a seat for the quilts. The room was huge, hot and full of people. We found front row seats...........no wonder they were empty.........right next to the auctioneer and his workers.
A bit loud. There must have been 200 quilts. Some wall hangings and some table runners were added to the bunch. We kept track of what the quilts went for. My friend, who is a quilter, thought that the quilts went really really low. Mostly $200 to $400. One went for $800. We wondered if someone was buying some of the quilts to resale. The problem with sitting in the front, you couldn't see who was bidding. The families all sat there through the auction even if they weren't bidding. I am guessing to see what their hard work meant to those bidding. Beautiful works of art. They took great care displaying the quilts when they were being bidded on. I saw one person take a picture of one of the quilts on stage. That is the only picture I saw taken the whole day.

Anyhow my friend bought some organic lettuce.....I told her to tell her husband that she brought salad home for dinner, hah. I bought a tiny table runner. We did bid on other things. I'm not too experienced with auctions so I was a bit scared to bid alot. If I get to go again next year.....things will be different.

Probably the most fun I had was just being with my friend. Lots of time to talk about anything we wanted to. You know how she became my friend. She was my college instructor in Early Childhood. We are the same age and our husbands get along really well.

So there you have it, the story of my day with the Amish. Oh I wish I could share more pictures with you but I am respectful.

Hope you all had a wonderful week-end and I hope that our blogs are all back up and running.