Illinois Amish Heritage Center announces 2026 events

By Editor | February 3, 2026 |

“Sheep to Clothing to Quilts” will return to the Illinois Amish Heritage Center on Saturday, May 2, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event will feature sheep and alpaca shearing demonstrations, processing the wool, and making clothing and quilts from the shared materials. There will also be numerous activities for children, including pony cart rides and a petting zoo with a variety of farm animals, as well as household pets.

A farmer’s breakfast of pancakes, old-fashioned liverwurst, and grilled sausage will be offered for a fee starting at 7 a.m. In keeping with the theme, grilled lamb kabobs will be available for lunch, as well as hamburgers and other grilled sandwiches and fried foods. Baked goods, including homemade bread, cookies, cakes, and pies, will be sold by a local Amish vendor.

Craft demonstrations and activities (including sheep shearing), will begin at 9 a.m. The Charleston and Champaign Spinners and Weavers Guilds will demonstrate the use of spinning wheels, drop spindles, stationary, and back-strap looms. There will be wool washing and dying, and Amish ladies will join other women to demonstrate quilting and the making of quilts and coverlets.

There will be laundry demonstrations featuring a turn-of-the-century hand washer and wringer using water heated over an open fire. Visitors can try their hands at milking a goat, and other essential farm skills will be demonstrated, including chair caning, soap making, rope making, and gardening.

Tours of all the historic Amish buildings (1865 Yoder House, 1870’s Schrock House, 1879 Hershberger-Miller Barn, 1860’s Yoder Workshop, 1930’s German Schoolhouse) will feature demonstrations and displays of the Amish way of life. Early Amish clothing, quilts, coverlets and other hand-woven fabrics will be on display in the Schrock House, including a blue and white coverlet that was woven by the Diener family before they came to America in the 1830s.

Also on display will be the 1890s era suit worn by Daniel Schrock at the time of his death in 1892, and the 1840s era Campbell family quilt, hand-made entirely from local wool, dyed from plants, and then spun, woven, and quilted.

Vendors will be stationed as is customary in the hay loft of the 1870s Herschberger-Miller barn, where visitors can purchase a variety of gifts, including homemade soaps, jams and jellies, popcorn, crocheted crafts, dried herbs and flowers, hand towels, and more. There will be a beekeeper’s booth, book-card making, and the making of tissue-paper flowers.

Updates on all event activities will be posted on the IAHC website www.illinoisamish.org and the Facebook Illinois Amish Heritage Center Facebook page. The IAHC is on Rte. 133, three miles east of Arthur, and five miles west of the Arcola, exit on I-57.

Steam Threshing Days will be held on Friday, July 31, and Saturday, Aug. 1. Oats will be cut, bound, shocked, and threshed using a 19th-century steam-engine-driven threshing machine. Many additional harvest activities and demonstrations take place during the festival. Watch the IAHC website and digital media closer to the event for more details.

Additionally, the IAHC will produce smaller monthly events throughout the year, such as “All About Horses,” “Amish Education,” “A German Spelling Bee,” “Storytelling,” and a return of the popular 2025 “Old-Fashioned Christmas” in the one-room schoolhouse. Watch their website and social media pages for event dates and details.

In 2026, the IAHC Living History Farm will be open to the public every Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., May through October. Docents will lead guided tours. Reservations are not necessary, but there is an admission fee.

The new Visitor’s Center & Amish Museum is slated to open in the fall to house “The Story of Anabaptism and the Amish,” the original exhibition from when the Illinois Amish Heritage Center was located in Arcola in the 1990s and Rockome Gardens in the 2000s.

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