Plow Day

 Every year for the past six years, our community has joined with the local Amish community to hold a Plow Day benefit for local families struggling with disease.  Every year the money raised goes to either an English or Amish child who is suffering with cancer or other incurable diseases.  This is truly a family event for us:  John Deere blacksmiths, my in-laws run a rope maker, distant family gathers from the community.  This year, my husbands aunt from almost an hour away even brought her kids to the event.  It is truly amazing to see community gathered like this.  I have included some pictures.  I know that the Amish do not condone photography, especially of their faces, so I tried to avoid that, but it is really hard when they are everywhere in support of the cause!

 Amish and English kids stood in line for hours, even in the rain, to make a rope!

 They had a man vs. horse pull.  It took 36 big men to pull these two huge horses backwards.

 You should have seen the look on the horses faces when they couldn't move forward--They were obviously not used to that.

 The two horses in the previous picture pulled an International M with no problems--imagine what these 12 horses could pull!

 I thought this was funny!  Of course there were lots of tractors there pulling, but they weren't nearly as fun to photograph!

 Amish boys were very excited to see what John Deere could create

My brother-in-law tries to catch a girlfriend. . .