Bus Tour Stops

Junior Miller will be your host for this stop. He is the owner of this interesting operation that specializes in western saddles and tack. Junior’s interest in saddles, it seems, began with a high back saddle his father purchased at a public auction many years ago for $2. He still has it. While there is a small retail shop on site where a few saddles will likely be on display, almost all of the saddles this shop produces are custom made, and the orders for saddles stretch out at least a year. As you might imagine, special carving and tooling of the leather is part of the process. Each one is different and unique, works of art, no doubt. The leather comes from Wickett and Craig and Hermann Oak, so it’s got to be good. You’ll see why customers come from all over the country to order their special saddles from Junior Miller when you see his shop.

Owner Mark Weaver and his crew will be happy to see you at their buggy shop
where they build three different buggy designs for three different kinds of Amish people; the New Order, the Old Order, and the Dan Church. New Order buggies, you see, are finished with rubber on the outside wheel rims and they will have sliding doors. Old order buggies in this part of Ohio will have steel rims and roll-up curtains instead of sliding doors, but with a storm front, and the Dan church buggies will be the same as the Old Order but without storm fronts and no mirrors attached. Making these three different styles opens up the market for Hope View to a much larger constituency than if only one style of buggy were to be made, and means that buggies from this shop are shipped to a pretty wide customer base.

Hope View builds its own torsion axles. These kinds of axles are now standard equipment on most buggies made, anywhere in the country as well as on a lot of farm equipment since they aid in safety and ease of riding by allowing only one wheel to be affected by the jolt of hitting an obstruction rather than a rigid axle from wheel to wheel which transfers the jolt the whole way across from one side to the other. Mark’s dad designed and built all of the torsion axles for the buggies until he passed away four years ago. Hydraulic brakes and wheels from a company called Carriage Machine in Bird-in-Hand, PA are used on 90% of the buggies made in this shop.

No, the name doesn’t mean that the only kind of wood used in this operation is oak. That is simply the name of the company and the name for the designs they come up with for the many different kinds of wood pieces they produce. There are four different Limited Liability Companies operating out of the 40,000 sq. ft. plus building that houses the operations of Ray Yoder Jr. Dining room furniture, bedroom furniture, kitchen cabinets, and yes, even caskets for the “death care” industry, as well as components for other furniture manufacturers, make up the four companies. The company has been in business for about 20 years. It’s the furniture side that dominates sales, but Ray finds the last 11 years of making caskets an interesting part of the business. There’s something about caring for people’s families and friends when they are taken by death, it seems, that has an added dimension to the everyday business of furniture making. Most of the lumber for this operation comes from not so far away; Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Design ideas come from customers, magazines, and some out of people’s heads. Here you can see how the pieces from this shop are given birth, and reach full maturity before going through the doors to their eventual homes, nurtured on site from start to finish.

Three years ago, the energetic young couple named Edward and Diane Miller
began an equine operation which specializes in the training of horses. Then two years ago they were joined by their new son whom they named Lane. The specialty of this operation won’t be so evident when you stop by in July since it takes place from about the end of September through January each year. This is when the yearling, soon to be two year old, Standardbred youngsters arrive mostly from the Lexington and Harrisburg fall yearling sales to be given their very first rounds of serious training.

It begins in the round pen under harness, and finishes up with being successfully driven around on a 3⁄8 mile track before moving on to the next level of training somewhere else. As many as 20 head might begin their education at Trackside. Diane says when they arrive (or any untrained horse for that matter), it’s like opening a Christmas present for Edward. So the fall and into the winter months are the busiest for this farm, but otherwise there are also usually horses to work with. Chances are when you arrive there will be some outside horses on site whose training is ongoing as well as foals from the couple of mares of their own that the Millers keep. Most of these will probably be buggy horses for fellow Amish travelers, or there could be a riding horse or two in temporary residence. There might even be a few horses around that Edward is giving further training in the hopes that they will become worth more to the person he sells them to than they were when he bought them. Diane is a daughter of Willis Miller, this year’s tour organizer, and she has experience as a tour guide herself, so you will be aptly hosted.

Here is another Ray Yoder you will be visiting today, and another full time horseman. This is an equine reproduction center that also does a bit of training and sale fitting but specializes in shipped semen from a battery of top stallions. Here you will see Belgians, Percherons, Standardbreds, and Fresians. There will still be some boarded mares in the barn and there will be mares and foals in the meadows. Anyone who has been paying even scant attention to modern Belgian breeding lines will be familiar with a horse named Korry’s Captain. If he is still alive (presently in good shape and no reason to believe he won’t be), you will be able to pay him a visit. He will be 26 years old, which is very old for a horse, especially a breeding horse.

Take a good look and keep this moment in your mind forever. You will be looking at a horse that has had a tremendous impact on the Belgian breed and will continue to do so through his sons and daughters and their sons and daughters for many years to come. Ray, along with help from some of his four full time employees or one of his couple of part timers will likely offer you some extra education today when you visit by demonstrating how to collect a real live stallion so that his semen can be shipped to a distant mare who is waiting for it to make a new baby. In 2019 14 stallions stood at Crystal Springs for breeding mares. There should be that many in residence again in 2020.

If you would like to learn more about the Anabaptists (Amish and Mennonites) this is the place, or even if you would like to brush up on the history you already know. Here you will see a cyclorama painted by a man named Heinz Gaugel. The cyclorama at Behalt is ten feet high and 265 feet long. In it are depictions of Anabaptist life beginning in 1525 up until 1992 when the artist finished the painting. Behalt means “to keep” or “to remember.”

You will be hosted by a qualified guide who will point out special representations of culture and faith depicted in the mural. Of note is the fact that the building that houses the cyclorama was specially built to house it. Thousands of visitors each year take advantage of stopping by to see it when in Holmes County. At the information center you may have time to visit the pioneer barn to see the artifacts housed in it, including a restored Conestoga wagon, the vehicle that originated in Conestoga, PA, and subsequently helped to move settlers and their families west. Also on site is a one room school like the ones that were closed by public schools for consolidation, and led to Amish educating their children in schools that are modeled after it. In the gift shop there are many interesting books for purchase in order to learn more about this persistent form of American Christianity that will be broadly represented on the grounds and in the fields surrounding the Mount Hope Auction Center on Friday and Saturday July 3 and 4.

Hitch wagons for draft horse show hitches, hay and farm wagons, parade and trail wagons, two wheeled carts, buckboards, people haulers, and pony wagons. At Weaver Wagons you can find all kinds of styles of wagons to choose from, and if you need something custom made, they will make it. The operation began in a shop on the organic farm of Ervin Weaver when he began to make wagon components for Pioneer Equipment just around the corner from his farm. Soon a bigger shop was built, still on the farm. And then a few years ago a brand new building was erected out by the highway and that is the location you will visit today.

You’ll get to visit with Ervin’s sons Emory and Vernon and their employees who presently keep the operation going. There might be some pieces under restoration when you visit. One thing is for sure; you will be impressed with the quality of workmanship you see represented in the finished pieces here as well as any in production. This is a quality operation with many satisfied customers all over the country and some outside of it. Be sure to check the finishes on the wagons when you visit. And if you need a special folding chair to set up ringside or behind your table at an expo, check out what Emory and Vernon have to offer.

This working, all grass, organic dairy farm is home to Jacob and Elmina Yoder and their three sons and two daughters aged nine years to 22. The milking herd consists of 35 registered Jersey cows. All the replacements are raised on the farm, so you’ll see some lovely calves and heifers here too. Keeping them company are the six Percheron draft horses used for spreading manure, making hay, planting and harvesting sorghum, or any other tasks connected to the care of the 61 acres of owned land that goes with the farm, and the 30 acres of rented land that is part of it. Jacob and Elmina started their lives together off of the farm. Several years after they were married, the opportunity to return to the home farm presented itself, they took it. The first thing they did was to begin transitioning the farm to organic so that they could begin shipping milk to Horizon Dairy. After two years they decided to become Organic Valley producers. In April of 2017 Valley Acres Farm became an organic, all grass farm, the pinnacle of production in terms of milk quality and nutritional value. Be prepared to sample some good chocolate milk donated by Organic Valley.