The Best Stores in Ohio's Amish Country - The Mt. Hope Country Health Store

In Mt. Hope, Ohio, there is an unassuming grocery and health food store near the town’s chief intersection between Holmes County 77 and Ohio 241.  The front of the store has parking for maybe four automobiles, and the side of the store is well appointed for parking buggies at the rail.  On any given day, we might see as many as eight horse and buggy rigs hitched there, and business inside the Country Health Store can be brisk at any time of the day, Sundays excepted.  I favor the cheese cooler at the back of the store because they carry Lacy Swiss, a treat you should not miss if you visit there.

But the more interesting items for sale are out on the shelves.  First, there are the herbal tinctures and remedies in eye-dropper bottles.  Then in another aisle, there are the herbs.  It’s fascinating to read the labels and wonder how well any of the ‘naturals’ really work.  In the brown bottles, there are folk remedies like After-Pain Relief, Bed-Time Drops, Blues Buster, Herbal Respiratory, Infant Immune Booster, Natural Attention Aid, Liver Glow II, Kidney Toning Formula, Squawvine, and Stress and Sleep.  Take a few drops each day, and you’ve ‘gone natural’ with your medicines.

Then among the herbs, just among the C’s, there is German Camomile, Chapparal Leaf, Chicory Root, Chickweed Herb, Collinsonia Root, Coltsfoot Leaf, Comfrey Leaf, Couch Grass, and Crawl Grass.  And there are dozens more - all herbals and all natural.  I bought some Sassafras Root there once to make tea, and it was not as tasty as what I remember from my childhood.  Oh well, sometimes memories are better left undisturbed.

So, what if you used such remedies and herbs?  What if your life was one in which you knew what each of these would do to help your health?  Can you imagine something so different?  So non-modern?  I have often thought I’d try a couple of them as an experiment, but then I remember that my doctors in town probably wouldn’t appreciate my supplementing their modern chemical medicines with folk remedies.  So I’ll just stay modern with it all.  It’s probably better that way.  Don’t you think?  Really, I’m asking.