Mrs. Hanes' Cookie Factory

This past week we went to Mrs. Hanes' Cookie Factory with our home school group. I have to say this has been the YUMMIEST fieldtrip yet!

Mrs. Hanes' cookies company is one of the last Moravian cookie companies that still roll and cut their cookies by hand.

Here is one of the ladies rolling out the cookie dough. You can see the cookie cutter sitting there on the table. They make around 100,000 pounds of cookies in a year. There are at least 100 cookies in a pound sooo that would be somewhere around 10 MILLION cookies!

We got lots of samples along our tour.



It's really amazing how thin those cookies are.

This guy operates the huge mixer. I can't remember exactly how much dough it holds, but trust me when I say it's a lot!

See the guy in the blue shirt... his job is to crack eggs. He cracks more eggs in a day then I crack in a year!!!... and we eat a lot of eggs!

This barrel is full of molasses.

We got to see some of the original baking pieces that were used long ago before the company was in existence. I'm not sure what this pot was used for. I liked it because it was rustic.

One of the original mixing bowls used to make the cookies.

And the oven! The tour guide pointed out that there are no windows on this oven. Mrs. Hanes mother would know the cookies were done because of their smell.

yeah... my cookies sometimes have a unique smell too... burnt!

Our tour guide showed us several inventions the owners came up with to make packaging the cookies easier. They are all packaged by hand as well.

This is another tool they invented to help with packaging.



Here is where they package the tins.



Boys will be Boys!





Outside the factory they had a flower garden along the walkway.



The sunflowers were beautiful!

I don't know what kind of sunflowers these are, but I really want some like these in my backyard. They are so happy!!!

We had a neat time learning about how these cookies are made. Joshua is going to hate he missed this one. He's at camp this week. He is greatly missed!

especially by seth and noah, cause they have to do his chores while he's gone!