PA Trip - Part 2: Farm Life

One month ago, Abby, Jake and I were in Pennsylvania spending the week with friends (for part one of our trip and more detailed reasons for our trip, go here). My friend Gwen is one amazing woman. A homeschooling mom with six children (the youngest of which was born just six weeks before our arrival and the oldest only 8-years-old), she did not even hesitate to offer her home to us for the week. And not only did she move furniture around to make our sleeping arrangements comfortable and cooked and cleaned and did all the stuff of hospitality, she even hurried along her kids' homeschooling so that they would be done for the summer to go run around with us sight-seeing! Yes, all with a newborn too! It was a neat experience for me to be able to spend a whole week watching this "pro" do her thing. :) And I learned three things that help to make things easier for her (besides the fact that she's just awesome!):

 (1) Living on a farm. The kids can run and play outside all the time with an unending amount of things to do. So much room and freedom!

Frogs, squirrels, dead possums - the boys found all kinds of things around the farm while we were there!

Oh, how Jake loved all the farm kitties!

The kids not only stayed busy having fun, but they also stayed busy with daily chores. While their dad milks the goats each evening, the children sort and stack the chicken eggs. My friends have 17000 chickens in their chicken barn (I don't remember what they call it!). These fertilized eggs are sent on to the hatchery where they will hatch into little chicks. Working on this farm is a family affair and the kids do their part early on, learning skills, responsibility and a hard work ethic. I love it and I so glad Abby got to be part of the experience!

 
Abby also loved drinking the fresh goat milk at every meal!

And then there was the unexpected things that happen on a farm to keep things lively, like the day the cows got out and I helped Bill round them up and shoo them back into their fenced pasture.(okay, so I wasn't the best helper because I kept stopping to take pictures! :)

Running through the yard and garden!

Annoying the kitty.

All of the escapees are back where they belong and are none too happy about it!

(2) Having a big house (remember we were talking about three things I noticed that helped my friend care for her large family?). Gwen's house had more than doubled in size since the last time I'd been there, thanks to a beautiful new addition that she and her husband did mostly themselves (3 bedrooms, a HUGE kitchen/dining room, 2 bathrooms and a giant mudroom/laundry room). Seriously, the place was so big that at one time we had 10 kids and 4 adults there and it seemed no louder or crowded than my house with JUST my little family! And, in actuality, it's over three times the size of my house in all. :)

Isn't this such a lovely country dining area?

 But the house is also very special, being 200 years old! There are no houses that old around here in the NW, so whenever I'm in Pennsylvania I'm always impressed with all the history and old structures. It was neat to see the old melding with the new in my friend's house. For instance, in the picture below you can see the original log and chink on one wall.

(3) Having an Amish maid. For the past couple years, my friend Gwen has had an Amish girl (now 15-years-old) come once a week to help with the cleaning. I'd known about this before my visit and had actually called up a cleaning service wondering what the typical charge is for once-a-week cleaning, thinking that maybe some day when Kevin made more money I could have some cleaning help too (we can all dream, right?). Well, I almost dropped the phone when I heard the price of $35/hour!! So, when my friend Gwen told me her Amish girl was doubling her prices to $15 for FOUR HOURS I just about fainted! Yes, people, that's $3.75 an hour! Sign me up!!! Unfortunately, I don't think there's a single Amish person in the state of Washington so that's not gonna happen. I didn't get to meet Esther since she didn't come the week we were there, but Gwen did take me with her to visit a different Amish neighbor. It was a neat experience to get to inside a real Amish house and visit with a real Amish family. (I've always been a bit obsessed with the Amish after reading Beverly Lewis' books :) Abby and Abigail played on the swing set with their two sweet Amish girls, Emma and Mary, who were the same age and I hope that it will stick in her memory always. It was a rare and special experience for sure! Of course, I wasn't there as a tourist and since the Amish don't like their pictures taken anyway, you'll have to trust that I went and I guess this spot is as good as any to put a few Amish pictures I snapped while we were out and about during the week.

Amish buggy parked outside an Amish store we stopped at.

The easiest way to spot an Amish house was by looking at the clothesline as we drove by!

I was so excited to drive by this young man working in his field!

 And, on a similar note, it was so interesting to see all these similar-looking wooden signs with short bits of Bible verses or hymns on them everywhere we went. These are not put up by the Amish, but by the Mennonites.

What a different world it was over there! Conservative values and Christian beliefs are the mainstay where my friend lives, unlike here in western Washington where liberalism and atheism reign supreme. It was nice to not feel out-numbered for once in my life! :)

And so there you have it, my friend Gwen is one amazing hard-working mom but I understand a little better now "how she does it all." Living on farm in a huge farmhouse with weekly help from an Amish maid sounds like a dream to me, but I guess just the first one (a farm), and maybe the second one (a big house), are the only realistic dreams for me...some day. :) Oh, and another thing that helps Gwen is that she has lots of energy and bounces back quickly after giving birth....no pictures for those points and also probably never going to happen for me. ;)

Anyway, in the midst of caring for the combined eight children and running all around sight-seeing, Gwen and I still fit in several moments with just the two of us and enjoyed some great heart-to-heart conversations. She is such a wonderful wife and mother and I feel so blessed for the time that I got to spend with her! Thank you, Gwen!