What’s a girl to do when a long cross-country drive gets boring, and she needs something to look at other than the white lines of the Interstate? She does a few Internet searches and finds that she is just a few miles from one of the fastest growing Amish communities in Kentucky. After promising my husband we’d find some fresh fry pies I convinced him to take a quick detour through Americas Amish Country in central Kentucky.
It was a rainy day, but it didn’t stop our sense of Amish adventure to locate a few places to stop on our way through the area. Munfordville and Horse Cave are small towns nested within the winding roads and hills of Hart County located about halfway between Lexington, KY and Nashville, TN.
According to my quick searches, the Amish settlement near Munfordville was founded in 1989 and has strong ties to the Geauga Amish in Ohio. The Munfordville Amish are mainstream and cater to the non-Amish markets. As we were driving along some of the back roads in Hart Country we took notice too many of the homes had solar panels attached to their roofs, evidence of their progressive settlement.
We only had a few hours to spare but we found three businesses to visit:
- Detweiler’s County Store – A variety store filled with bulk foods, cheese, produce, furniture, Amish clothing, quilts, material, Christian books, gardening supplies, and hand-dipped ice cream.
- R&S Grocery – A discount grocery store, bulk foods, and bakery. The smell when you walk through the doors led us straight to the bakery for those fresh fry pies. The kitchen was filled with young Amish women filling orders and packaging fresh homemade bread.
- Anna’s Kitchen – This by far was our favorite stop. Stumbling upon this little out of the way jam and a jelly store was the highlight of my quick visit to Hart County. Anna’s husband Andy came to the door and let us into their little store room. As I got lost trying to figure out what jam I wanted to buy, Andy and my husband got to talking about fishing and the rest was a 40-minute conversation about all the lakes and rivers they both had
fished . Not sure who enjoyed that more, me, hubby or Andy who had a big smile on his face as we left. With a promise to send Andy my grandmother’s recipe for hot pepper jelly we left Anna’s Kitchen with three jars of jam and a new friend.
As we left, we stepped over a scooter, a quick reminder that the Amish of Hart County moves at a much slower pace but we needed to hop back on the Interstate with dreams to visit again.
