The "Pure Lancaster County" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading the Farm Market Report in the Lancaster Newspaper.  Something I do from time to time, but more than likely something you have never seen in your newspaper...ever!  For the past eight years I have been extolling the fertile farmland and gorgeous scenery of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  

Lancaster County newspaper.  Click on photos to enlarge.

Long known as the "Garden Spot of America" and with good reason.  The soil is rich in nutrients which is essential for plant growth and the farmland is known as the #1 non-irrigated area in the country.  But perhaps the best part of the area is the people who till the soil.  Hard working farmers who live and die by how well they work their land.  Whether they be crop farmers or livestock farmers, they work the land to help feed many of you who read this blog.  As you can see in my attached photograph, we have towns in Lancaster County with names such as New Holland, Paradise, Blue Ball, Bird-In-Hand, Smoketown, Bareville, Mt. Joy, Goodville, etc., but the all-time favorite with tourists has to be Intercourse.  

Map of Lancaster County with names of towns and villages.

Most bring a smile to the faces of tourists from all over the world who love to travel the back roads trying to find an Amish or Mennonite farm so they can stop and take photos.  Well, Lancaster County residents, me included, have every right to be proud of their heritage of hard workers even if they don't till the soil in the county.  Every week farmers take produce and livestock to local auctions to try and get the best price for their efforts and the accompanying photo above shows you the prices received for hogs and cattle for that particular day.  

Posting on the Internet showing sign in Intercourse, PA.

I'm not sure if the prices were good or bad, but I do know that without those farmers, the county, state and country would go hungry.  Recently the local paper also published a series of black and white photographs to show what farming was like years ago; even before I became a resident of this world.  I have posted some of them so you can see that farming is much the same today as it was years ago; except for technological advancements.  Take a look at the photos and see why Lancaster County is considered one of the best places in the country for farming as well as having some of the best farmers who toil in the fields.  It was another extraordinary in the life of an ordinary guy.

Lititz area farmers loading food for livestock onto a wagon in November of 1942.

1942 photo of boy giving water to a horse.

Butchering pigs on a farm in Ephrata, PA in March of 1942.

Hex signs and a cow likeness on a Terre Hill barn in March of 1942. 

A Mennonite farmer is preparing to place the wagon of tobacco into his barn in May of 1941.

1938 tobacco drying.

1939 photograph of cows grazing in a Lancaster County field.

Women going home from market in 1941.

Lancaster Central Market stand taken in November of 1942.

Bags of Lancaster County potatoes in a potato cellar ready for market in 1938.

Farmer Herbert Royer is feeding his chickens on a family farm in 1938.

1939 Lancaster County farmland.

1941 photograph with a farmer and his children traveling by horse-drawn wagon.