Wednesday's tours

On this day we visited stables where horses were brought to auction, a commercial printing plant, a harness and boot store, a country store in the boonies, a ice cream freezer plant, a buggy wheel works, and a clock builder. It's amazing how these cottage industries among the Amish prosper.











Most of the shops were located on the family farm, often miles off the beaten path. The printer had modern computerized equipment in a brand new building. The wheel works was in an old barn using machines that dated bact to the mid-1800s. The ice cream freezer shop made motorized churns that used old, refurbished John Deere engines. The largest one sold for over $7,500.00. The clock maker's shop was as clean and neat as a shop could be, and though he had no electricity, the windows brought in enough light to make the room very bright. All his equipment ran on either air or hydraulic motors with an exhaust system in the floor that vacuumed out most of the dust. He crafted the cabinets of all his clocks from scratch, using oak, cherry, and walnut wood mostly.

Just realized that the Warther Museum has a web site. To get a little better taste of that amazing place you can see more of it at http://www.warthers.com/