Icecream Journal

Each Wednesday throughout National Ice Cream Month, we’ll take a closer look at a part of our home, Lancaster County. This week’s “Taste of Lancaster County” entry is about our Amish neighbors. Each Wednesday, we’ll also give away a Lancaster County prize to one commenter chosen at random. Good luck!

Drive through the country roads of Lancaster County and you will most likely come upon a horse and buggy clip clopping down the road. The horse and buggy is a familiar sight and sound to those of us living in Lancaster County; but for the thousands of visitors to the area the horse and buggy serves as a glimpse into the lifestyle and practices of a group of people called the Amish. Because of its large concentration of Amish, Lancaster County has become synonymous with Amish cooking, crafts, furniture, and amazing quilts.

The Amish are an Anabaptist religious group closely related to the Mennonites and Brethren. The Lancaster County Amish are easily identifiable because of the plain, often homemade clothes that they wear. They customarily shun usage of modern amenities such as TV, electricity, and automobiles. Despite the fact that they don’t have telephones (or maybe because of that) they often have incredibly close-knit communities in which the local children all attend a one-room schoolhouse. The Amish moved to America from the border of Switzerland and Germany to escape religious persecution in the early 1700’s. They often speak Pennsylvania Dutch, a German Dialect common to Lancaster County. While there are a number of Amish Settlements across the United States, Lancaster County has the second largest settlement of them in the world.

This week’s Lancaster County prize is a package that contains a few samplings from the Amish community, including a Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook and a Lancaster County Calendar (among other items). We’ll choose one comment at random from this post to receive the gift! We hope the items will give you a glimpse into the simple lives of our neighbors, so the next time you pick up a bowl of Turkey Hill ice cream, you can sit back and let your mind wander off to what life is like in Lancaster County.