My visit to Amish country

In case you were wondering, I've been away for the past 11 days. I was on a family vacation visiting my wife's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in Toronto and area, and then my wife's sister and her family in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

Chambersburg is a small city in farm country. It was founded in 1764 and in its centennial year Confederate soldiers burned it to the ground in the U.S. Civil War. It's about 25 miles from Gettysburg, where 53,000 soldiers were killed or wounded in a four-day battle from July 1-4, 1763.

We drove down from Toronto through the heart of Pennsylvania on two-lane highways the whole way. The forest is thick, the hills are big — many descents and ascents of 1,000 feet — and the highway runs through every small town. The speed limit switched from 55 to 45 to 35 to 25 every mile or so. The brakes and transmission on my rental car got a work out. It was the hardest eight-hour drive of my life and my kids — who are four and seven — didn't sleep a minute of it. Now we can say we've "seen" the state.

         On one outing, we went to Lancaster County, where the Amish have turned their car-less lifestyle into a booming tourism business. The boys and I rode a horse-drawn buggy — with 10 other tourists — through back roads and cornfields while our guide, Jesse, explained a little about the lifestyle. Amish don't believe is using cars, and some of them still harvest corn with horse-drawn one-row combines. Some will use a combine.

Jesse's son wanted to buy a car AND use a combine. For this privilege he had to convert to Mennonite, Jesse told me, which is like dropping down a tier, I guess.

On the buggy ride, we spotted a six-horse team of Belgians pulling a liquid manure tank and spreader. The team was shoulder to shoulder, making for an impressive sight. The tank looked to be around 1,500 gallons.

The main crops in Amish country are corn and hay, all for feed. Pretty much every farm is a dairy. Jesse says they typically get five cuts of alfalfa per year and corn yields are well into the 200-bushel-per-acre range. Jesse said that one eight-acre parcel in 2006 yielded 311. To get those yields, they do top up manure fertilizer with synthetic fertilizer, Jesse says.

Because this land is so productive, it also sells for a premium. Jesse's 80-acre farm would sell for $1.5 million in this market. Add that to the tourism dollars, and it seems the Amish are sitting on a goldmine. I paid $10 for the wagon ride. My kids paid $5 each. The company had at least six buggies — as part of a restaurant, gift shop, hotel and museum complex called Plain & Fancy — running non-stop. We had eight adults and five kids on ours, for revenue of $105. At two trips per hour, you can do the math.

The two-lane Highway 30 leading into the village of Bird-in-Hand was jammed with traffic, crawling along at less than 5 mph. We pulled into a gas station a mile from our destination because the kids desperately had to pee. I asked the attendant if she knew another route because "there must have be an accident or construction ahead." She gave me a better route, but shook her head when I said there must be a problem. "It's like this all the time," she said.

I have to say the day left me a bit cold. I liked the buggy ride, but the rest was too weird. Joining the masses to gawk at the Amish and their beards, straw hats and antiquated lifestyle is odd. If you're Amish, what do you do? You either move to rural Manitoba, like some of the Amish of Ontario did. Or you grin and bear it, and suck the tourists for as much money as you can get from them. It's win win.