Road Trip & Beachy's Bulk Foods, Arthur, IL

I mentioned this week that Clint and I went to an auction last Saturday, and that our travels took us through country roads with a lot of Amish farmhouses and scenery. We were on a mission to our final destination, but I've done nothing but think about those roads for the last week. I wanted to drive them again, and slow down, and watch, and stop, and look around, and explore.

I did just that today, despite the forecast of rain and snow. I left town a little after 7 a.m., with all of the necessities: 1 camera, 2 hats, and my friend Diane, armed with her new camera. Thelma & Louise, goin' shootin!

By the end of the day, we'd pulled over on the side of the road more times than we could count.

We made several cows ...


...and 1 donkey...


...smile for the camera, and I crawled on my belly with a herd of ducks...

...and 1 swan.

We trespassed...


...on abandoned farms...

...and ran roughshod through cemeteries,...

...all in the freezing rain.


The most lovely, and unexpected shot from today was when I was trying to focus on the swan, and in the interim startling a blue heron that I hadn't noticed. It took off and accidentally ended in this photo:

SNAP! WHAT WAS THAT?!! I actually had to lower the camera to see what had just happened. Seriously, kiddies. I could have been sleeping in at that moment, but I wasn't. I'm so glad we were HERE!

God, we were tired and happy when we got home. I have 145 photos to sort and post, along with 145 from last week. I have just a few more to share with you now.

On the way, Diane reminisced about an Amish bulk foods store in the area that she used to shop in years ago. Beachy's Bulk Foods, it was called, but she couldn't remember how to get there. Hey! I'm using our new Garmin for the first time, so I called Clint and asked him to look up the address: 259 N County Road 200 E. Beep boop boop; we were soon on our way.

If you're from around here, you have to go shop at Beachy's! If you're not from around here, make a note that when you visit me, you want me to take you here.

Beachy's is a small grocery, but it has has everything—everything—in bulk! I am stunned to discover that I've never heard of this store before today. It is so much better than any Trader Joe's I've ever been to (except for the lack of 3-buck Chuck).

There seems to be nothing you can't buy here in bulk, and a great deal of it home-made.

Notice that my photos are dim; there is no electricity in this store, so you shop by skylights in the roof. That is, if there is actual light in the sky. There wasn't much today, so the experience of shopping in the dark was both fun, and with my poor eyesight, challenging.

A challenge I was up to, of course. There are spices galore:




Flours, rices, pastas, bulgars, couscous-es, seeds, nuts, millets, groats, oats, polentas, corn meals, gluten-free this and organic that. Choose your size:


Candy! Candy from today, and candy from yesteryear. Gummy bears, Black Taffy, candy corn, sandy anise, nut goodies, sassafrass, rootbeer barrels, licorice bits,

and giant jawbreakers:


Ah, the frozen foods: I brought home cherries for pies, and sage pork sausage. There are gooseberries, apples, peaches, and more.



I left with this much food packed in to a box:

2 quarts apricots, basil, oregano, mint, garlic chips, chicken stock, bread & butter pickle chips, egg noodles, pasta shells for stuffing, miniature whole wheat pasta shells, 1 dozen farm-fresh brown eggs, 1 lb. farm-fresh pork sage sausage, 1 bag licorice bits, 2 c. Himalayan red rice, 2 c. thai black rice, and 1 jar of molasses, because my friend just told me that adding 1 bloop of it to spaghetti sauce makes all the difference in the world.

$42.

All of that stuff: $42.

Spending the day soaked to the skin and freezing my ass off, with my one of my best friends in the whole wide world:

Priceless.