Filling in the Details, Part 2

I'm back in Lancaster, PA on the identical trip that we did last week but with a different group. So I'm going to tell you about day two of the first trip on day one of the second trip and then I will tell you about day two of the second trip on another day to be determined.

After a full breakfast buffet at the Country Inn Hotel we took a tour of the Kreider Dairy Farm http://www.kreiderfarms.com/. This was an interesting and smelly tour of the outdoor facilities of the farm as well as the "milking house carousel" where we saw the milking process in action. The cows are "steered" onto a carousel and as they go around it, the workers in their turn clean the udders, attach the milking apparatus, extract the milk and then the cow is "backed out" of the carousel. They explained how, since cows don't naturally like to back up, they have to be taught to perform this step in the process. This was done by spraying water in their faces at the end of the circuit so that the cow would back up to escape the annoyance. They said it only takes a couple of sprays for the cows to learn to back up. Pretty interesting but as I said...smelly.

It was so smelly that I had a few ladies in my group who went into the milking facility and made an immediate U-turn because they couldn't take the odor. They didn't even have to be sprayed in the face...they just turned tail and got out!

After the farm tour we went to the Sight and Sound Theatre and saw "The Miracle of Christmas" http://www.sight-sound.com/WebSiteSS/ which was an elaborately produced dramatization of the birth of Jesus. The production was lavish--the costumes, effects, staging, and scenic designs were stunning.

After the show we boarded the bus and head for home but made a dinner stop at Cracker Barrel in Downingtown, PA.