A lot has changed for Gary and me lately...
For the last ten years, we've had a bookselling business on Amazon which we are now in the process of closing. Gary also did quite a bit of Amish taxi work the first five years we lived here in Indiana, but he's retired from that in year six.
Our focus lately has been on the tour guide business (both private tours and step-on bus tour services). It has been a lot of fun, and we're expanding that business next year.
Between marketing the tour business and doing social media (see links below), I've got quite enough irons in the fire, thank you very much, so I'm afraid this blog is just gonna have to go. Blogs are the past, it seems, and social media is the future.
I've also published a book, and soon I'll begin work on a second one. About 80 of my posts from this website have already disappeared from here and reappeared in my book! And the same thing is happening again as I put together a second book. But there are still several dozen posts below.
So, go to Amazon.com if you like, and type "My Amish Indiana" in the search engine. You'll find my book(s) in both electronic and paper formats.
You can also follow me on Instagram and/or on Facebook--and I hope to see you on a tour some day!
He said that he lives a little bit to the west on 200 South, but he rents this space because it’s on the main road. He’s been at this location since 2011. The stand is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day but Sunday, and there’s plenty of good parking.
This stand is known for its pumpkins, mums, and apple cider, but they have much more. The small building had a variety of produce and locally made canned goods, and lots of other good things. If you’re looking for a break from all the sweets and baked goods Shipshewana is famous for, this is where you need to go.
Mr. Weaver said that his stand is open from mid-July until late October. I highly recommend it.
This is my third summer doing tour guide work (both bus and private tours). It’s been an interesting summer!
I’ve met a lot of interesting
people along the way, as has my husband, who also does tours—but I’ll stick to
my stories today.
It all started out when the local tourism board—the Lagrange County Convention & Visitor’s Board in Shipshewana—came across my website and gave me a call… Apparently there is what’s called a “gap in services” in this area of tourism. Nearly no one with my knowledge of the Amish culture is giving private tours! I had done a few every summer in recent years, so I had a “rack card” made up for the Visitor’s Center in Shipshewana.
Soon the tourism board for Elkhart
County was carrying my rack cards and recommending me also. Between that and also having cards at
Farmstead Inn, Essenhaus Inn, and a few other places, that got the ball
rolling.
My husband has a strong knowledge
of the local culture also (most of our friends are Amish), and he’d done a few
bus tours also, and done them very well—so before long, we were partners in
this project. Next year his name will be
on the rack card, too!
But back to my adventures:
I’ll leave out the names to protect
the guilty and/or clueless here, but there really were some amusing moments
this summer!
I remember the three folks visiting from Indonesia whose daughter had been a tour client the previous year. She wanted her family to have a buggy ride, since she had enjoyed it so much the previous year, and I can occasionally arrange one of those… But her elderly mother was having none of it! That buggy horse might as well have been a T Rex, as far as she was concerned. The others had to take the ride without her!
I bet you never thought of going to a junkyard on a tour!… But I’ve had more than one client who wanted that very thing—and they loved it! See if you can pick out my client in this photo of the wonderful antique stuff at my favorite place.
I had a wonderful extended family
of one man and seven women from Chicago this summer, on a very hot day. It was my first and only tour with more than
one vehicle involved. Between our stops,
I gave my running commentary from the front seat of one car, while the second
car had me on speaker phone. One of our
stops was E&S Bulk Foods, the giant Amish grocery store in Shipshewana,
where one of the ladies wanted to buy some chicken to take home. As we entered, our man said to the women, “Ten
minutes! Ten to twelve minutes!” At that point, the seven women all grabbed
carts and scattered in all directions like a covey of quail!... Twenty minutes later there was still no sign
of any of them at the checkout counter.
Let’s just say they didn’t buy out the store, but they went home with a
lot more than chicken.
All in all, it’s been a great year as a tour guide, and my husband has enjoyed it, too. (He gets better tips than I do!) The tourist season isn’t over yet, and as the weather gets cooler, touring will be even more pleasant. We plan to advertise more widely for 2024, so maybe one of us will see you then!
This is the third of several Amish-related posts I wrote for my old genealogy blog...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He was the last person I would ever have expected to be interested in genealogy—and what I found out about his roots was the last thing I would have guessed.
It was late 2011 and I needed a new genealogy project. My husband had mentioned my hobby at the manufacturing plant where he works, and one of the young factory guys asked him, “Do you think your wife could find out more about my family tree?” Bruno (not his real name) was young, wild, and festooned with tattoos. I was intrigued. I decided to take on the project until my next paying client came along. Bruno provided me with a few names and dates—that’s all he had. He was particularly interested in his father’s ancestry, which he thought was German. Perhaps he hoped for a few skeletons in the family closet.
A few days into the project, I came across the World War I draft card of Bruno’s great-grandfather Albert in Livingston County, Illinois. I did a double-take when I read the answer in the space reserved for “Do you claim exemption from draft? Specify grounds.” Albert’s answer was “Religion—Mennonite Church.”
More digging connected me with the generation before that—and sure enough, before long I’d “struck Amish.” Others had blazed this particular trail before me, so at that point I was able to connect with the research of fellow genealogists who were willing to share… and so I was able to follow Bruno’s paternal line all the way back to a small village in Switzerland in the 1600s, where his 7th great-grandfather Peter had been part of a group of Anabaptists led by Jacob Amman himself—the original founder of the Amish church.
August 10, 2023
Today’s post is what I would call “off topic”—but I have a lot on my mind. Thirty years ago today, on Tuesday, August 10, 1993, I said goodbye to Robert Milo Wallin—my dad.
Dad died at 70, when I was just 38
years old, and not ready to lose him.
Being raised by a former army boot
camp officer wasn’t always easy. I took
a lot of heat as the oldest child of parents who didn’t have children until
their thirties (and didn’t have the best father and mother role models growing
up)... The pressure to excel in school
was relentless, as was the pressure to deal with the food issues that have continued
to dog me since infancy. There were some
great memories—but sometimes guilt and fear were the parenting techniques of choice. By the time I went away to college, I was
glad to be 650 miles away from the pressure at home.
But the wisdom that comes to twenty-somethings when they realize that they don’t actually know everything!—along with a year of therapy—resolved my anger and restored me to the parent who gave me so much of his own personality (as I’ve been told over and over through the years by those who knew him). I realized that Dad was only human, and doing the best he knew how to do—and that he truly, deeply loved me, as no one else could. I thank God that I got twelve more years with him after that.
Courage. Integrity. Generosity.
After Dad left us, I pondered what
I most wanted to exemplify in my own life, that I had learned from his... I have these three words written in the front
of my Bible, and for all the years since Dad’s death, I have tried to live out
these three qualities, as a way to honor his memory.
Courage—I’ve always trusted my own
instincts, as he did, and they’ve never let me down, even in risky situations... Integrity—I’ve tried to live out my Christian
faith as well as he did, in my financial life, my personal life, and on the
job, handling the money for a million-dollar law firm... Generosity—I’m still working on that
one. I can be selfish with my time and
money, but I strive not to be.
I just realized that these three
words spell out the first three letters of “cigarette.” Dad was a lifelong smoker, much to his own embarrassment,
as he felt it was not a good Christian witness nor a good example to his own children. But he started in World War II, where, he
once told me, cigarettes were a part of their daily K-Rations in the front
lines in France. He said, “The
cigarettes were necessary to calm our nerves, in order to do what they asked us
to do.” It’s a habit he wasn’t able to
break—and forty years later, it killed him, as lung cancer took away his breath
and then his life.
Dad used to say, “My job isn’t to raise happy children; my job is raise well-adjusted adults.” That made me pretty annoyed as a teenager, but I can appreciate it as an adult. I wish we’d had more years together! I’d give almost anything to have even an hour with him now.
My sister had a dream the night
after Dad died. In it, our family was
walking across a big, open meadow, towards a beautiful castle on a hill. Halfway across the meadow, we paused... Then Dad continued walking towards the shining
castle on the hill, and the rest of us turned around and began walking back the
way we had come. But I know someday I’ll
walk that meadow, too, and see him again in a better place. In the meantime, I’ll miss you, Dad.
In Loving Memory
Robert M. Wallin
January 23, 1923 - August 10, 1993
Horses are a big business around here! After all, every Amish family owns a few, and there are over 6,000 Amish households in this settlement (Elkhart/Lagrange/Noble Counties in Indiana). Therefore, there’s a need for all kinds of horse-related services. And outside our local community, there are many “English” horse aficionados out there, and I’m learning that they are very serious about their animals!
My Amish friend “Emmon,” who has
an amazing dog kennel, also works at Pleasant Ridge Equine—he likes to keep
busy! I took a walk around there a few
weeks ago, and here’s my report.
Pleasant Ridge is located near
Goshen, Indiana. Their main business is
horse breeding and foaling out mares (helping them give birth)—and they have a
lot of amazing and valuable mares and stallions there. The animals are usually not owned by Pleasant
Ridge, but instead, are owned by investors.
Some of the mares are valued at very high dollar amounts. I asked Emmon why, and he said, “Mainly because
of their pedigree.”
There are 80 or 90 mares boarded
here full-time, and they are typically bred once a year. I was told that the typical mare who boards
here is worth over $20,000—wow! An
ultrasound guy comes around three times a week to check on the mares.
In addition, there are quite a few
mares who come to Pleasant Ridge to be bred and then are returned home
afterwards.
Many of the stallions are quite
valuable, too. Most are owned by investors and boarded here for a monthly fee, but
for some of them, Pleasant Ridge owns a share.
The stud service season runs from
February to June. Semen samples are
gathered from the stud horses on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, assisted by
a pummel-horse-looking apparatus that I nicknamed “Dolores.” One draw can produce up to 5 saleable vials
of semen. (Microscopes are on site in
the lab to check semen count and make this determination.)
The samples are shipped out in
refrigerated packaging to the buyers.
None of the stallions are mated in the old-fashioned way… when a stud is
worth that much money, no chance is taken of injuring a stud horse who gets a
little too enthusiastic about his job! A
mare typically has one foal, after a gestation period of eleven months.
Most stud horses are between three
and twelve years old, although one stud horse is 28 years old! Most are Standardbred horses, although a few
are trotting race ponies. What are the
prices for a sample? Ponies start at
about $400, with some stud horses fetching up to $4,000 per sample. So as you can see, this is big business, and
very serious business.
Horseshoeing is done on site too,
in this room. Horseshoes come in
different sizes, and are hand-customized for each animal.
Lots of feed is needed for all
these animals, and hay is stored indoors in this room. This kitty helps keep the pests away.
Another valuable service Pleasant
Ridge offers is “Sale Prep.” If you have
good horse to sell, and you want to get top dollar, you hire someone to do the
sale prep so the horse makes as good an impression as possible. This involves exercise (arena or treadmill),
training, grooming, and anything else that will help a horse put their very
best foot forward for the sale.
The same kind of prep might be
done on the stallions who board at Pleasant Ridge, before a “stallion
presentation.” This is a type of sales
event where stallions are shown in the ring in order for potential stud service
buyers to see them in action and then order semen for artificial insemination
with their mares at their own stables.
This service isn’t cheap, but a
top-quality stud horse will improve the bloodlines of any mare.
A little backstory: Lloyd Yoder started Pleasant Ridge on his
30-acre farm in 2008, after previously owning a business called Pleasant
Creek Belgians. His young son Owen, who
was a teenager at the time, loved horses just like his dad, and started his own
business, First Start Acres, with a Standardbred stallion named Rex. After Owen grew up, married, and moved to his
own place three years ago, he continued First Start Acres, but after two years,
his dad built a dawdi haus on the home farm for himself and his wife, and Owen
moved his family back home, and the two businesses merged. Things were cramped
in year one, but in year two, the stallion count went from four to fourteen,
enabling the construction of a fine new facility. Now in year three, the business continues to
grow and thrive.
Most of us will never have the need for Pleasant Ridge’s services, but I love learning about new local businesses, especially those that help the Amish community thrive and do what they do best. Thanks, Emmon, for the tour and the interview!
