Stringtown Ladies

We took a trip to Stringtown Store, just north of Kalona, Iowa. It is an Amish grocery, where we bought bulk flour and spices, along with a traditional Whoopee Pie to share. They have every conceivable seasoning and spice, mixes from soup mixes and bouillon to sugar cookie and pancake mix in bulk in plastic bags of different sizes. Baking staples of all kinds, and a huge variety of bulk candy and snacks. Noodles- probably 20 different kinds and sizes in bags huge and small, all kinds of dried beans and peas and lentils, cereals, nuts, dried fruits, other pastas, etc., etc. They have farm eggs, butter, cheese from the cheese factory on the corner. Outside they were selling seed potatoes and onion sets.

It was a chilly but sunny day, and all along the route back and forth, across the North and South Skunk Rivers, which were both almost out of their banks after yesterday’s rain, we could see cows with little calves, goats, chickens, sheep and laundry flapping on lines in the yards of both plain and fancy houses – both in little towns like North and South English, Wellman and Webster, Joetown and Frytown, and in the country. Pastures and ditches are intensely green and the forsythia is blooming and gardens are newly turned and some are starting to come up. I don’t know if there is anything better than spring in Iowa.