Jul 30, 2013 4 min read

New Freedom Grange will sponsor a trip to Ohio Amish country Saturday, Aug. 17. The public can participate at $30 a person. Anyone interested in the trip can call 724-428-3004 to reserve a seat on the bus.

The chartered coach will leave Wind Ridge at 6 a.m., pick up passengers at East Franklin Grange at 6:30 a.m., and then stop at the parking lot behind Wendy’s in Waynesburg. After a quick stop for breakfast in Cambridge, Ohio, group participants will continue their journey to shop at the Holmes County Flea Market; have lunch at the Dutch Valley Restaurant; sample a wide variety of cheeses and candy at Heini’s Cheese Chalet; and browse through nonelectric appliances, farm implements, and household goods at Lehman’s Hardware.

“This is one of our community service projects and is a great opportunity at a very low price,” said Grange president Lonnie Brewster. “Individuals must purchase their own meals, but the cost of the trip is still very reasonable. Every aspect of the trip should be an interesting experience.”

Holmes County Flea Market is housed in a single-level, climate-controlled, 55,000 square foot building, made up of four separate wings. It houses 350 retail spaces and has a café with meal and snack options. Travelers may purchase a variety of items hand-crafted by Amish artisans and utilize the spacious cargo bays of the chartered coach to bring purchases back to Greene County.

The Dutch Valley Restaurant offers a buffet lunch with numerous selections that include just-baked biscuits, buttermilk pancakes, scrambled eggs, fried cornmeal mush, cinnamon rolls, and fresh fruit. More traditional lunch items include slow-cooked roast beef, broasted chicken, country ham, mashed potatoes and stuffing. The dessert bar features peanut butter cream pie. The restaurant resembles a sprawling country farm house and overlooks growing fields and green pastures of productive farms.

Heini’s Cheese Chalet was established by Hans Dauwalder, who trained as a master cheese maker in Switzerland. He came to the United States in the 1920s and worked at the Bunker Hill Cheese Co-op. He returned to Switzerland in 1933 to marry his childhood sweetheart and to bring her to America. In 1935, his brother, Crist, sold his farm in Switzerland, purchased Bunker Hill Cheese. He asked Hans to join him in building a family cheese business. The family business continues to be the primary outlet for the Amish farms in the region, and Amish farmers still provide their milk to the cheese factory in traditional milk cans. Guests who visit the shop can sample more than 70 types of cheese and a variety of types of fudge as they decide what to purchase. The shop also offers a number of salsas, canned goods and mixes for snack dips.

Lehman’s is a 45,000 square foot retail store that features nonelectric technology. It has over 300 vintage-style and handcrafted sodas with more than 70 varieties of root beer. The store features wood burning heat stoves and cook stoves as well as gas-powered refrigerators, freezers, and stoves. Smaller items include pre-seasoned cast iron cook ware, vintage-style copper cookie cutters, kitchen utensils, Lego toys, gardening tools, lamps, and numerous hard-to-find hardware items. In addition to serving the needs of regional Amish families, Lehman’s ships to missionaries and doctors working in developing countries, and homesteaders and environmentalists living in remote areas. Some of the store’s best sellers include poison ivy relief soap, Grandpa’s pine tar soap, burlap feed sacks, plastic caps for storage jars, Lehman’s 55th Anniversary cookbook, vintage-style Ball jars made from blue glass, herbal nail fungus soak, canning jar soap pump lids, and Grandma’s lye bar soap.

After a day of browsing through unusual shops, sampling cheeses and fudge, and gorging on Amish meats and vegetables, Grange travelers and their guests will board the bus for the return trip home. After a quick stop in Cambridge for a light supper, the group will arrive back in Greene County about 10 p.m.