sales stretch past thawing season and
into late summer, but the muddy moniker still applies.
Publication: Arrive Magazine Run Date: March/April 2010 Job#: 168-0005 Size: 2. 25 x 9. 5 Ad Produced by Dana Communications 609.466.9187
The Bird-in-Hand auction follows the
same format as the rest—from morning
until late afternoon a number of auctions
happen simultaneously around the sale’s
grounds. Throughout the day, Amish volunteers in a bustling food tent serve up
homemade doughnuts, ice cream, pies,
sausage sandwiches with sauerkraut,
soft pretzels, barbecue chicken and
other Pennsylvania Dutch specialties.
Amish and locals bid on tack, harnesses,
horses and sheds.
Tourists and bargain hunters from up
and down the Eastern Seaboard come for
crafts and quilts, and Jacob King, chairman of Bird-in-Hand’s auction committee, confirms that the typical buyer does
tend to score wholesale prices on these
handcrafted goods. Supplementing
the low prices are the blanket mud sale
policies of no sales tax and no buyer’s
premium. Maybe that’s why people are
clamoring for a good seat an hour before
the crafts and quilts sale is scheduled to
begin at 10 a.m.
As that sale gets under way, two
Amish women in white head coverings
get into a rhythm of fastening each quilt
to a horizontal rod with clothespins and
lifting it to the rafters with a rope and pul-
ley. Within seconds, a 100-by-114–inch
quilt with a jaunty tree of life appliquéd
in browns and oranges goes for $300.
A 100-by-116–inch broken star quilt in
shades of blue is next: sold for $175. A
104-by-112–inch quilt described on the
lot list as Flower Star sells just as quickly,
for $200. The Amish women are already
pulling up the next quilt as bidding on the
previous one comes to a close.
Not just another hotel
An Authentic Landscape
These glimpses of the Amish working
together are unique to mud sales.
“They’re very di;erent from staged
tourist attractions,” says Donald Kray-
bill, a professor of sociology and religion
at Elizabethtown College. “They’re a
slice of real Amish life.”
Many volunteer firemen are Amish,
as are most of the sales organizers and
workers. The fire companies are vital to
protecting farms, barns and property,
so they work hard all year to make the
sales a success. On sale day, everyone
pitches in. At Bird-in-Hand, clusters of
Amish boys wheel around wagons with
cardboard signs reading “Hauling $1.”
Their sisters and mothers sell baked
Clockwise,
top right: An
Amish boy
with wares to
sell; a horse
for sale; and
a variety of
Amish quilt
patterns up
for auction.
RATES
STAR TING AT
$259
