Pennsylvania Dutch Country: satisfy your craving for comfort food, yearning for yesteryear, and curiosity about the Plain People on a rural ramble through Lancaster County

Travel America, May-June, 2005 by Randy Mink

In addition to its huge restaurant, Plain & Fancy Farm offers back-road buggy tides, bus tours of Amish farmlands, and a multi-media presentation in the Amish Experience Theater. Next to the theater, the Amish Country Homestead, a nine-room house, shows how the Amish live today.

With all these activities--not to mention gift shops--you can easily spend a whole day at Plain & Fancy Farm. And the night, too. Rooms at the farm's new AmishView Inn & Suites are loaded with modern amenities, including a kitchenette with refrigerator, microwave, and coffee maker. There's also an indoor swimming pool.

A special tour of Amish Country this year spotlights the farm and other locations used in the filming of Witness, the 1985 Harrison Ford movie that introduced the world to Pennsylvania Dutch Country. The "Official Witness Movie Experience Tour" is offered through November for this 20th anniversary year only.

For visitors who want more than a surface view of Lancaster County, several working farms--Amish and non-Amish--offer lodging, a hearty country breakfast, and the chance to help with chores--from milking a cow to gathering eggs.

Bird-in-Hand Farmers' Market, an indoor emporium swarming with tourists and local folks, abounds with handicrafts, fresh produce, and plenty of free samples--fudge, jam, nuts, sausage, cinnamon rolls--to snack on. It's open Wednesday through Saturday from July through October, less often the rest of the year.

In Intercourse, a lively town full of shops selling Amish quilts and furniture, the place to be is Kitchen Kettle Village, a cozy collection of 30-some shops centered around the Jam & Relish Kitchen. Available for tasting are dozens of Kitchen Kettle Village brand jams, jellies, sauces, and relishes. Spoon a dab of elderberry or crabapple jelly onto an oyster cracker. Or try the apple, pear, peach, or pumpkin butters. Jam flavors range from rhubarb and fig to tomato and carrot. Another taste treat is Peanut Butter Schmier, a sweet peanut butter favored by the Amish.

My favorite place for free-sampling was the Central Market in historic downtown Lancaster City, the county seat. A great spot to nosh and browse, it's America's oldest continuously operating municipal farmers' market, dating from the 1730s. Inside the cavernous red-brick building, a massive piece of 1889 Romanesque Revival architecture, many of the standholders go back four or five generations.

The Central Market (open only on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday) has a more urban feel than the Bird-in-Hand market; you'll be jostling with many regulars. I was happy to see so many bakery vendors. Just sampling pumpkin-walnut bread made me buy a whole loaf. Also tempting was pumpkin cake roll filled with cream cheese. The Mumma Pretzel Bakery offered taco, jalapeno, oat bran, and whole wheat varieties.

The S. Clyde Weaver butcher shop ("We Sell Fresh Pig Stomachs") put out chunks of honey ham, peppered turkey, and sharp cheddar. Saife's Middle East Foods had baklava, stuffed grape leaves, and spinach pies.