Amish America

Have a look inside an Amish toy shop courtesy of Tom. This store is located in New York’s Conewango Valley, and as you can see below features a wide-array of Amish-made wooden toys.     I enjoy seeing the creativity that goes into some of these products. It makes me wonder what is the story [...]

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Today we have the latest installment in our regular 10 views feature. I took these photos last summer while in the Nappanee, Indiana Amish community. The town of Nappanee is at the center of a large Amish community of around 5,000 people, which stretches over 4 northern Indiana counties: Kosciusko, Elkhart, Marshall, and St. Joseph. [...]

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My friend Mose Smucker was in the news over the weekend. Mose is an Amish father of 8 (and grandfather of more) who currently runs a meat shop and sandwich stand at bustling Reading Terminal Market in downtown Philadelphia (grab a sandwich from Mose if you’re ever in the neighborhood, if he’s not around his daughters [...]

Continue reading Mose Smucker on being Amish in public

A new study seems to show that Amish children are “remarkably immune” to both allergies and asthma.  Researchers compared a group of Indiana Amish children to Swiss children from both farm and non-farm environments. Swiss farm kids were over 3 times as likely to show a predisposition to allergies than Amish children, while Swiss non-farm [...]

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The WANE news channel has aired a second report, of Indiana politicians discussing the Amish child buggy driver issue (see video below). The station interviewed 2 Hoosier state lawmakers. One seems a little flustered by the issue, as if he’d like to do something but can’t for reasons like religious rights. The second says that [...]

Continue reading Amish child buggy drivers: Indiana lawmakers’ response

Is this the next road battle for the Amish?  A local news station did an investigative piece on young Amish drivers in Indiana (the Swiss Amish settlements in Allen and Adams Counties).  They discovered children aged 12, 11, and even 10 driving horse-drawn vehicles. If you’ve spent time in Amish communities, that shouldn’t come as [...]

Continue reading Should 10-year-old Amish buggy drivers get off the road?

We have another nice batch of photos today from Tom in NY, though I hesitated to post them at first.  Not because they are controversial, but because the weather depicted in them is so different from what I have been enjoying the past few days–a perfect 70-75 degrees and sunny as anything.  But in the [...]

Continue reading Romulus, New York Amish Community

I thought it might be nice to share something from The Connection magazine with you today. “The Life of a Farmer’s Wife” appears in each issue courtesy of Lena Yoder of Topeka, Indiana. Lena is an Amish mom just doing her best with husband Wayne to run a family and a farm. As she writes [...]

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I liked this recent nugget from The Budget (thanks to Linda for passing it along): From Guys Mills, PA, written by Dorothy Hershberger: Later that afternoon my parents and I went to David Bylers’ (sister Betty) in Conneautville and returned home the next day. Davids are in the process of selling their year-old puppy. While [...]

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Spending much of my year in Europe, I am on buses, trams and trains a lot. Polish people are surprised when I tell them that outside of a few big cities and the Northeast corridor, we North Americans don’t really do public transportation. For instance, I recently told a couple colleagues about the first time [...]

Continue reading Do you ever use mass transport?