Friday, October 25

It was fun having Mark and Diane visit from Maine for several days last week. When they noticed our Amish tour (on my blog) the other week and saw the camels that are milked, Mark mentioned an interest in tasting camel milk. I was up for that, because I like taking advantage of unusual things. 🙂

They spent some of the time visiting their Pennsylvania children (Josiah, Abby and Lydia) and his mother, but Friday was open, so we set our GPS to visit the two Amish farms we know about that welcome visitors. Our second stop was for a light lunch: soft pretzels, homemade root beer and ice cream.

These pictures were from Diane’s camera, because I didn’t think about taking mine. :(.

We walked out back to see the critters.

Diane liked these angels (in the gift shop) made out of old hymn books.

After this stop we drove around, thinking we would be able to find the camel dairy, but had to revert to googling “camel milk” on my smart phone.

The milk was sold at an organic foods farm – not far from the camel dairy. We bought a pint – for $15.00.

We drove to the farm which was about a quarter of a mile away and could see the camels in the milking barn. There wasn’t anyone around, so we had to be satisfied with partial sighting of the animals. We learned an interesting fact: to milk a camel, a baby camel must be placed near by so the camel “lets her milk down”.

Diane took this picture of a four mule team pulling a manure spreader – just ahead of us – shortly after leaving the camel dairy.

We saved the camel milk for the next day when some of Mark and Diane’s children were here. Several turned up their noses at even tasting it. It wasn’t that different from cow’s milk – but maybe a bit salty.