Milking Time, a Workshop, Then Inside an Amish Home
Long relationships with these families are what open the doors. A fourteen-seat cap is what keeps the visit personal.
Lancaster County is easy to drive through and hard to actually enter. This tour handles the entering: a guide, a fourteen-seat mini bus, and three Amish properties that have agreed to receive visitors.
The operator's own mini bus covers the distance between the three stops, and the guide rides the whole way. Food and drinks are the one thing the fare leaves out.
Amish Experience Visit-In-Person TourThree hours, three Amish properties, with a local guide and transport between the stops.www.viator.comNobody Here Milks by Hand
The first stop is a working dairy, timed to the hour the cows come in. The guide walks the group down the feed alley and goes through the equipment, which is usually where a visitor's picture of Amish farming comes apart. Machines do the milking. What is harder to guess is the bulk tank, kept cold on what the operator calls Amish electricity. The guide explains what sits behind that phrase while you are standing next to it. Whatever else the farm has going on that day tends to get folded in.
The Second Stop Is Somebody's Home Business
Farmland in Lancaster County is scarce and expensive, and many Amish households have answered that by building a business into the property. Books and articles have been written about the balance these home enterprises strike between work and family. The tour visits one of them. The operator names a carriage maker, a leather or wood worker, a basket weaver, a greenhouse, a canning kitchen and a soap maker among the possibilities, and the listing stops short of promising which one. A demonstration is normally part of the stop.
The Last Stop Is the One Where Everybody Sits Down
The bus leaves the main roads for the last stop and takes back roads out to a farm further into the countryside. Inside the house there is no television, no phone and no computer, and the stop turns into the kind of visiting the Amish do among themselves. People arrive as strangers and generally leave having talked for a while.
One rule travels with the group the whole way: the operator asks that no photographs be taken of the Amish hosts. Point the camera at the fields.
Who the Mini Bus Works For
Children under six are not permitted on this tour, and the mini bus is not wheelchair accessible. The operator says that with prior notice it can run the tour over an FM transmitter, with guests following the bus in their own vehicle and hearing the guide on the car radio.
- Service animals are allowed. Pets stay home.
- An infant or small child can ride in a pram or stroller.
- The walking is light and suits all physical fitness levels.
- The operator asks guests to dress respectfully for the homes they are visiting.
The pin marks the theater box office in the east parking lot at Plain & Fancy Farm, on Route 340 between the villages of Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse. Check-in and departure both happen there, and parking is free. The operator asks for arrival fifteen minutes ahead and states that the bus cannot be held for latecomers. Booking closes two hours before departure. Cancelling at least twenty four hours ahead returns the full fare.
Departure times shift with the season. Confirm the time on your own booking, then leave room for the drive out Route 340.