Fall Weekend in Lancaster County

One of Evie and Earl's pygmy goats

We had a great fall weekend at Landis Farm, even though we missed you, Eileen!  It was much more relaxing than our spring weekend as we weren't racing all over Lancaster County to Amish nurseries and greenhouses and shoving flats of plants and bags of mulch into our cars.  We made our usual stops at Weavers (6 lbs of bacon), Lititz for Wilbur Chocolate (salted caramels for me,  buds for Walt, chocolate covered pretzels for Brooks,  and chocolate covered marshmallows for Julia).  We all have our favs and we buy a lot of chocolate at Wilburs. And a lot of bacon at Weavers. Oh well, on to Bird-in-Hand Farmers Market for bread and sticky buns and fresh produce (the biggest heads of cauliflower you can imagine), the Country Store for spices and noodles, to Espenshades to look at plants and garden stuff (guess who bought Chrismas cactus?? NOT me) and even made it up to Ephrata for shopping and lattes at 10,000 Villages. Every year we love going to the Old Mill Shop near Strasbourg to look at all their Christmas decorations, and we were very restrained in our purchases this year, but they do have beautiful things. We made a shoe stop at the Outlets but our hearts weren't in it so no shoes for any of us.

What we love the most about Lancaster County, though, is just driving around the back roads and stopping at farm markets for jams and jellies and brooms,  and Amish dairy farms for their homemade ice cream. The farms are just beautiful in the fall. My favorite road is called Butter Road--shouldn't I be living on Butter Road?

Judy and Prudy at Wilbur's

Wilbur Chocolate Co.

This is what 6 lbs of bacon look like

Of course one of the highlights of our weekends in PA is always the food--Amish pumpkin pie (much lighter than our pumpkin pie), lunch at Country Table, the apple dumplings and baked oatmeal Evie brought over to us, and finally the pumpkin creme brulee that Prudy made for us Sunday morning. She even brought her torch so she could carmelize the sugared topping. They were delicious.

Evie made us apple dumplings

The cottage

Prudy made us pumpkin creme brulee

Chillin on the porch

Our favorite Amish farm stand

Jams and jellies

Amish-made brooms

It's hard to explain how much we love our weekends in PA. We have been going to this cottage twice a year for over 20 years now and we appreciate our time there, as well as our friendship with Earl and Evie Landis, more each time we visit.