House and Farm Tour
The centerpoint of Amish Acres restoration is the Stahly-Nissley-Kuhns
farmstead, the only Amish farm listed in The National Register of
Historic Places. Widow Barbara Stahly and her five sons migrated
from Germany to the southwest corner of Elkhart County, in 1839,
making them likely the first Amish settlers in Indiana. By 1873 son
Christian had acquired eighty acres of land to build a house and
barn for his son Moses. From that beginning rose the main house in
1893. Noah Nissley, his wife's father, purchased the farm from Moses
who in turn sold it to his son-in-law Manasses Kuhns. From the Kuhns
estate the farm was purchased for the purpose of preserving the buildings
and traditions of the three generations of Amish families who lived
on the farm and tilled the soil.
Following a year of meticulous restoration Amish Acres opened to the
public in 1970. Now visitors can experience life as it was and mostly
is lived by the Amish surrounding Nappanee.
You join your guide at the gate with the dinner bell following the documentary films Genesis and Exodus of the Amish, and Bonnets and Britches for the children. As you walk together through the orchard, past the kitchen garden, you come upon the outbuildings that dry food, bake bread, and smoke meat. Here lye soap is made from the rendered lard and leached lye.
Upon entering the pioneer's two room house, you'll learn about the history of the Anabaptist wing of the Protestant Reformation, the difference between Mennonites and Amish, the founding family and evolution of the farmstead. You'll marvel at primitive but practical furnishings, cook stove, and kitchenware as you learn about the unique culture of today's Amish who maintain their reverence for the past while successfully adapting to the outside world around them.
The washhouse is filled with iron and copper kettles, cistern pump, egg incubator, and pie safe. Onto the back porch where peas are shelled in the rocking chair by the pitcher pump from the open brick well below. Here the dinner bell is rung to bring the men from the fields.
Through the screen door, the main house kitchen reveals a more comfortable and roomy gathering place for the growing family. The connected pantry features built in sugar and flour bins and canned fruit and vegetable shelves. Here the dry sink holds the buckets of water brought from the windmill pump. A bread box protects rising dough before baking in the outdoor oven. Keroscene lanterns with metal reflectors hang above the wood burning South Bend range, a family heirloom filled with teasured china fills a corner. Dark curtains are pulled to one side of the numerous double hung windows with irregular glass panes. The hardwood floors are protected by rag rugs woven on a treddle loom.
Upstairs is the coveted guest room, fancy beyond the family's quarters, a storage room in place of individual closets. Rope beds feature feather and straw ticks. Dressers have no mirrors. Heat rises through cast iron floor grills from the Round Oak stove below. The steep stairs return you to the living room filled with rockers, library table, family bible, fainting couch, treddle sewing machine, and baby crib. The small master bedroom flanks the living room, positioned with a window to the lane and barn. An outside door exits to the rear porch so the man of the house has control over his domain day and night.
The wooden walk lead you past the attached milk house with its cream seperator, ice box, and water trough filled with crocks of cheese and cans of milk. It then connects with the Gross Daadi Haus, where the senior generation lives following retirement. Here quilts are made true to Amish patterns that have become coveted for their simplicity and geometric patterns.
Up the bank to the Schweitzer barn is the threshing floor, hay and straw mows, and grainery. Here you'll find the 1874 wooden threshing machine, antique church benches stored in the rafters, hay sling, winnowing machine, and corn grinder. Pike poles bring to mind the community effort required to raise such a barn. The stables below seperate the horses, cows, and bulls. The lean-to crib is fill with corn on the cob that is fed to the pigs in the adjacent hog house. Chickens, turkeys, guineas, and barn cats run free.
The wagon shed features an Amish church bench wagon, two and four seat buggies, bob sled, and Birdsell wagon. The Chauncy Thomas Blacksmith Shop stands nearby, moved intact from its home six miles south. A wheelwright and farrier, the blacksmith crafted many parts from scrap metal at the coal fired brick forge made white hot with the wood and leather bellows.
The ice house next to the farm's pond features foot thick walls filled with sawdust to insulate the blocks of ice cut following the winter freeze. The broom maker busily makes floor, hearth, and chimney brooms using his antique machinery and trimmers.
The brightly painted Walnut Street house, moved from early Nappanee, sits in contrast to the stark white Germanic main house. It represents the creation of the town of Nappanee that followed the coming of the Baltimore, Ohio & Chicago Railroad along the continental divide sitting along the farm's south border fence.
The German one room school house stood less than a mile from Amish Acres and was relocated and restored with the assistance of Ivan Hochstetler, neighboring harness maker, who attended German classes there as a youngster. Sitting outside next to the water pump is the horse drawn yellow school bus used to round up students for the nearby Weldy school before the turn of the century.
A tractor pulled wagon ride and tour through the farm's woods brings a refreshing conclusion to a tour of Amish Acres house and farm. Domestic crafts including apple cider pressing, maple syrup boiling, horseshoeing, plowing, cultivating, haying, and harvesting are sights at Amish Acres based on the seasons.
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