Today was a busy day in Ohio Amish Country. The twice annual big horse auction is going on in Mt. Hope Ohio. It was a beautiful day but a bit muddy as you can see from this photo. The sale runs almost the whole week and ends on Saturday. I picked up an Amish man this morning about 7am and drove him up to the auction barn. He is from Canastota, New York, from a single church district Amish community, consisting of about 12 Amish families. All the familes living their are originally from the Holmes County Ohio area, but there is one family from Indiana that is going to be moving to Canastota. He came here to see if he could find a better deal on a pair of Belgian work horses. Where he lives in New York, about thirty miles from Syracuse, there are not very many horses for sale at auction.
He and his wife traveled by train to Cleveland and had someone pick them up there and bring them down to Amish country. They are staying at his Amish father’s house and at his wife’s parents. He informed me that during the course of the week there will probably be about 1,600 horses, of varying breeds, sold at the auction. WOW! I wonder what that would look like if they were all together in one big field. Later in the afternoon I took his wife up to Mt. Hope to do some shopping before they head back to Cleveland then New York; at about 3am tomorrow morning. Among other things I found out that they get about 130 inches of snow each winter. Compare that to the around 20″ of snowfall we have had in Holmes County this winter. That’s more snow than I would care to see. I drive Amish to and from different destinations about once or twice a week, as I have time to do so. I must say I thoroughly enjoy it.