Small Town Festival in Amish Country

Amish Carriage

(You can click on the photo's to enlarge them)

Not far from where we live is the town of Yoder Kansas. This cute little country town is the central shopping area of an Amish community where at any given time you can see these friendly but private people driving their carriages along the country roads or shopping in town. Every year on the last Saturday in August Yoder celebrates it's Heritage Days and this year it was Aug 28th.

Enjoying the parade is a mixture of Cowboys Country Folk City Folk and Amish

 Last year hubby and I moved to our little farmhouse in the country and as we were nearing the end of phase 1 of our renovations we decided to take a well deserved break and head to Yoder to see what this festival was like. We weren't disappointed. This year we arrived back to Kansas from our summer vacation a couple of days before the big event.

This is a unique experience.

It's not every day you get to enjoy wonderful home cooked country meals of  Chicken and Noodles and BBQ'd Beef and Chili and Burgers fresh Kettle Corn and Lemonade home made Amish ice cream and watch a parade and carriage races and tractor pulls and horse events and rub shoulders with friendly towns people and the Amish!

We caught the last 15 mintues or so of the parade

There were girls ladies and kids driving antique tractors

Antique cars and trucks

Strange huge farm equipment that we see go past our farm

There were home made crafts and jams and jellies and dips and bread...oh my!

A couple of the items at the flea market set up in the street

We headed into the old hardware store that has lots of antique items on display but mostly it's a working store. What's interesting is that they cater to the Amish so there are lots of interesting things like oil lamps and old fashioned cookware and utensils. I wish I had taken more pictures this day but I will on our next visit to Yoder.

I'd love to have this old bike in my garden!

I love this stove

Some of the MANY oil lamps they have for sale

From there we headed over to watch the carriage races

There were wagon rides to enjoy

People lined both sides of this little dirt road to watch the carriage races with both Amish and regular folks taking part.

There were lots of minature horses all groomed and waiting.....

Some got pats and loves from pretty little girls

The lady below along with her husband entertained us while America The Beautiful played in the background. She had a pistol and was shooting balloons that were tied to poles

In the photo below her hubby is racing in front of her and letting balloons go while she shot them out of the air. I never saw her miss one!

And if you look closely...she doesn't even have her feet in the stirrups!

The antique tractor pull was fun to watch. This elderly gentleman had fun making us all gasp as he let his tractor rear up as he tried to get the last inch out of his pull.

Just a few who were enjoying the antique tractor pull. The main street was a little empty as people watched events and sat in the shade and ate lunch.

It was hard to get good pictures of the 'pull' as there were so many people trying to get in the shade to watch the event. This young lady had people cheering as she tried to beat the fellows including her Grandpa and brother!

Rembember the sweet little miniature horses we saw earlier waiting for something? Well this is what they were waiting for...

....Their turn to get harnessed up and compete in the horse pull!

In between all the events we bought some lunch and went in search of a shady spot to eat. Most tables were already taken but we found one that had an Amish couple and their children sitting on one side so asked if we could share their table. They said 'sure'! So as we sat and enjoyed our lunch we chatted with the couple. Turns out we have daughters who share the same name...their daughter is Kaitlyn and ours is Caitlyn.

Before we knew it it was time to head home.

We had a wonderful day...and that night we enjoyed this..

A wonderful view of the moon and mars!

What a way to end the month of August!

I hope your summer was a good one and that you were able to do all the fun things you had hoped to.

Enjoy September and all it has to offer whether that means cooler temperatures hopefully for us or a continuation of warm weather for you.

Have a wonderful week!

Maura :)