Visiting an Amish dairy farm by buggy
If you spend time in Amish country you’ll see the black horse-drawn buggies all over the place. As we spent time in the Shipshewana Trading Place RV park in Shipshewana, Indiana you couldn’t miss them. But one that went by had signs on it - farm tours and buggy rides. We just had to.
It turns out we got to speak with John who runs these tours and arranged for a farm tour where we were promised that we could feed horses and baby cows, milk cows, and learn more about Amish farm practices. Let me cut right to the chase - this was money very well spent and our tour, $29 cash only, translated into a delightful afternoon.
It turns out that Buggy Lane Tours offers all sorts of tours from simple buggy rides to complete tours including dinner at an Amish household.
Leaving from downtown Shipshewana, a quaint farming town that has absolutely embraced tourism, we boarded our spacious six-passenger buggy and headed out. Drawn by Stormy, a 15-year-old Percheron horse, our path was comfortable and something I’ve never experienced. These buggies are not shy on space at all and were comfortable but I also really enjoyed riding behind Stormy and speaking with our driver, Jonah.
As Stormy clipity-clopped along with two other buggies including the one I saw with the information about the tours, I learned a lot from Dolf while enjoying absolutely immaculate farms and houses along the road.
After a 15 minute ride we arrived at the farm where we disembarked and got a lesson in farming. This started with seeing the various horse shoes from the different size horses with a gigantic draft horse shoe compared to the normal horse shoe that Stormy might wear.
The analogy of horse shoes is that horse hooves are essentially like fingernails. Walking on them on blacktop is like rubbing them on sandpaper so horse shoes provide protection and also some traction. Since the horse’s hooves have no feelings, just like our fingernails, they can nail the shoes in without the horse minding at all.
Next up we saw the milking operation and this was a fully modern operation with automated milking machines. This makes it possible to milk a cow in just a few minutes but the process is quite sanitary and follows modern health practices as dictated by the Indiana Dairy Association.
We also got to try our hand at milking a cow ourselves which I had to do, naturally. While I wasn’t so good at the job what I did enjoy was the farmer, Dean, shooting raw milk into my mouth which was wonderful and warm and delicious. Peggy, too, got a dose of the freshest milk you can get and loved it as much as I did.
The biggest surprise was that the milk was rather warm and, apparently, cows run between 100-104°F compared to humans at 98.6° so the fresh milk was also quite warm. It also comes out at a pretty decent pressure and tickled my tongue a bit.
Of course I asked for another shot.
From there we passed pens were there were a couple of baby cows, some just a few days old. Funny, there was also a cow-colored cat there. Not sure how those farmers managed to have the cat match the cows.
Upstairs in the large barn we saw the grain and hay operation which is also fully modern, but John explained how things used to work at this farm where the hay was loaded onto a sort of rope hammock that could be lifted into the barn using the same horses that pulled the wagons full of hay over.
The hay hammock would be lifted by rope from a wagon and then carried by another rope to where it would be dumped. Then the ranch hand would open the hammock and the hay would drop into a pile.
Today, at this farm, the hay is processed by machine into bales and stacked up as with any modern mechanized farm. Interestingly, when the bales come in to be stacked up one farm hand unloads the wagon and is able to keep three other hands busy in the barn. This unloader slings these 40 pound bales like they’re simple paper weights.
We also saw a manual wheat processing machine that was a relic of days gone by in terms of processing the wheat that’s also grown on the farm. This farm uses the same wheat to get seeds so it’s a heritage plant, but they also plant corn for the cows from seed they purchase.
Our next stop was back down stairs where we got to feed the new cows their mother’s milk which brought smiles to the visitor’s faces, and sheer joy to two little girls on the tour. Watching them feed the baby cows with gigantic smiles on their faces was such a happy experience.
Lastly we got to have a small taste of the milk from the dairy. This dairy provides the milk to a processor who pasteurizes it and makes it available for sale with the milk of many dairies so you don’t get to buy specifically this milk, but I can attest to how delicious it is as someone who absolutely loves milk.
The Amish
I learned a lot about the Amish community from John, the tour operator, and Dolf, our buggy driver.
From what they shared, each region of the Amish church sets their own standards and rules, essentially. You’ll see some members of the church driving in modern vehicles and others in buggies. The farm we visited was relatively mechanized with tractors and automated milking machinery.
But we also saw farmers in other parts of Indiana behind horse-powered farm implements.
The Amish very much seem to work together as a village and work is no stranger to the Amish starting from early on in life. I actually saw a teenage girl mowing a lawn - you would never see that where I called home.
And that lead me to ponder our own lives. The Amish seem very happy, they’re extraordinarily polite and the youngsters seem so well behaved and respectful. The families seem to spend time together and work as a team.
Now this is a huge generalization that borders on lumping all of a certain group of people into one pile and I don’t mean to do that at all. It just seems that they’ve figured out life pretty well and pass along tools for being successful in this world on to their children.
I’m sure there are challenges in raising children and day-to-day lives as any other humans experience. And each individual member of the Amish community is as different as each member of any community.
I will say the entire region was beautifully immaculate including the farm we were on. This compares to where I came from where pride in property ownership seems almost nonexistent and a yard is as good a place as any for things you just let rust back into the soil.
I wonder if our way of life with smart phones and clothing choices and so many other distractions is the better way after all.
In summary
Travel expands our views of other people and other places and different ways of seeing things from what we normally are immersed in. Some of my favorite ways of learning things are first-hand through experiencing things for myself and this trip to an Amish dairy farm, meeting the family that runs it and riding in the buggy was something I won’t forget.
While I truly enjoyed feeding the horses and cows and tasting the literal farm-fresh milk I also gained a lot of respect for a group of people who work hard and seem to really enjoy the life they lead.
The biggest disappointment was that we didn’t pop for dinner as part of the tour. This would have been $29 more and that’s about what we spent in a local restaurant. I can only imagine how great the food would have been and the company but it’s not too late for a do-over. Apparently many people on the tour were return visitors. I’ll be one soon enough.
