A new cast member on the “reality” show Return to Amish named Johnny Detweiler has been sharing his wild Rumspringa life on TikTok. He has amassed a good-sized following of over 100,000 followers (I expect that will likely double or triple as the show has just started a new season). I’m not too keen on […]

Continue Reading Amish TikTok Star Promotes “Wild” Version of Rumspringa

About six weeks ago, I came across two Amish homes for sale in the community of Tripp, South Dakota (the only Amish location in the state). It seemed then that it might mean the Amish are leaving. Then just recently, I found a third Amish home for sale in the community. This is in an […]

Continue Reading The Amish Are Leaving South Dakota (UPDATED)

A northern Indiana man will be secured behind bars for eight years following a December 2021 incident, in which he hit an Amish buggy with his Nissan and ran (“ran”, as in, drove off). As a result, people on area roads (both Amish & non-Amish) will travel a bit more safely now. The obvious reason […]

Continue Reading 3-TIME Drunk Driver Gets 8 Years After Buggy Hit-and-Run

In this video, I answer some questions on the Amish and dating (or “courting”, though that’s not quite the same thing), thanks to info from Karen Johnson-Weiner’s book The Lives of Amish Women. I share a couple of excerpts from the book, which provide answers to the following: Can Amish girls ask boys out for […]

Continue Reading Amish & Dating: Do Girls Ask Boys? Do Amish Date More Than One Partner? & More

In the video below, I discuss three of the most common ways in which Amish light their homes. In short, they are: 1. Propane or natural gas lighting – here you see an example in the form of a propane-powered lamp. The propane tank is built into the furniture unit at bottom, and these typically […]

Continue Reading Three Ways Amish LIGHT Their Homes

Very sad news from northern Michigan. Via 9and10news.com: Two children were killed and one other suffered serious injuries after an accident Monday morning involving a passenger vehicle and an Amish buggy, the Wexford County Sheriff’s Office said. The sheriff’s office said they received a call at 8:15 a.m. about a crash at East 16 Road […]

Continue Reading Two Amish Children Killed After Horse Allegedly “Bolts” In Front Of Car (UPDATED)

In a recent article by Mary Swander, writing for the Iowa Capital Dispatch, she describes receiving an abruptly direct call from someone Amish. I found this of interest because it raises the question of whether the Amish could be described as more rude – or lacking manners – compared with your average Americans. And if […]

Continue Reading Are The Amish Rude?

Recently we had a look at how the plainest Amish heat water for washing. Today thanks to the same reader, we look again inside the Michigan home of “Andy” and his family to check out another little aspect of Amish daily life. This is something that might go overlooked, but which fulfills an important function. […]

Continue Reading Inside A Plain Amish Home: How They Dry Gloves (Video)

I have to admit when I saw the headline of this story (“Driverless Amish buggy crashes in Watertown”), the first thing that came to mind were driverless cars. Had Amish in some under-the-radar settlement stealthily adopted battery-powered self-driving buggies when no one was looking? Some Amish absorb change faster than others…but that would be quite […]

Continue Reading “Driverless” Amish Buggy Crashes After Two-Mile Ride

In this video, I look at the different ways Amish prepare food (specifically, how they generate the heat for cooking & baking – if you’re looking for things like Amish recipes and food prep techniques, this is not that topic 🙂 ). I go through three main ways they do so: Wood-burning cookstoves – Amish use […]

Continue Reading 3 Ways The Amish Cook Food

This latest Amish home is found in a small community in Oklahoma, a state which has long had an Amish presence. This settlement is at Welch (Craig County), one of several small Amish locations in the Sooner State. This community was founded in 2010, and listed at just 80 residents, the departure of the family […]

Continue Reading Inside an Oklahoma Amish Farmhouse (20 Photos)

Here’s a nice recording by P. Thomas of a group of Amish youth singing the hymn “I Am On The Winning Side” somewhere in Ohio (I assume Holmes County). It’s been quite a while since I’ve shared an Amish singing video. This is a nice one for a return to the topic. This is a […]

Continue Reading Amish Youth Sing “I’m On The Winning Side” (Video)

If you caught part 1 on Enos Gingerich’s furniture shop last week, here is the promised part 2 video, where Enos shows us his tools, his power setup and how he makes furniture. This is about the plainest community you’ll find, and some of the solutions Enos uses wouldn’t be used by “higher” (more progressive) […]

Continue Reading Enos Gingerich’s Workshop: How the “Lowest-Tech Amish” Make Furniture

Hot water on demand – for showers, dishwashing, laundry – is something most of us take for granted. Yet, there is a small segment of people in the US today who do not enjoy such a luxury. This would include the most conservative Amish churches. Below you’ll find some photos sent in by a reader […]

Continue Reading How The Plainest Amish Heat Water

This is maybe the most commonly-asked question I’ve gotten in the weeks following the February 3 train derailment and chemical spill and burn in East Palestine, Ohio. This is is an area right on the border with Pennsylvania. There are a number of Amish communities in the region. Within the greater overall concern for the residents […]

Continue Reading How will the East Palestine chemical spill affect the Amish?

I recently put out a video from my visit to Enos Gingerich’s outdoor furniture shop in the Swartzentruber Amish settlement at Ellenboro, NC. You might recall Enos from the video on my visit to his wife’s soap and lotion shop, previous posts on his community, or the video on southern accents among the Amish. In […]

Continue Reading A Visit to Enos Gingerich’s Furniture Shop

Do the Amish have their own dentists? Well, not in the sense of the certified, licensed professionals that you think of when you think “dentist”. But they do have people who provide basic dental services in some communities. This basically boils down to pulling teeth – both the ones you can see, and wisdom teeth […]

Continue Reading On Amish “Dentists”

A tragic van rollover accident in Iowa two weeks ago claimed the lives of young Amish father Ervin Borntreger, his one-year-old son, and two of his also very young nieces. Remarkably, the Amish community has allowed the Dyersville Commercial newspaper to publish an account of the funeral and even some photos. This article is noteworthy […]

Continue Reading Iowa Van Accident: Amish Community Shares Final Farewell With The Public

So I got another comment on the YouTube channel that made my head spin a little bit 😀 The commenter claims that an Amish home I showed in the video “Inside an Amish Home” is “Utterly NOT an Amish home!” The commenter includes a list of five points why he/she thinks it’s not Amish, adding […]

Continue Reading “Utterly NOT an Amish Home!” (5 Myths In One Comment)

I really enjoy all the various accents we have in American English – the regional dialects, quirky localisms, unique manners of speaking (this may be because I also apparently have an odd way of speaking 🙂 ). Amish in different communities have different accents and pronunciations when they speak English as well. When you compare […]

Continue Reading Amish With Southern Accents?

Anyone out there planning to burglarize the Amish, take heed (more on that below). Now, that notice is not meant for the vast majority of people reading this. But why am I writing about this? Well first – what prompted this post. Pennsylvania state police are reporting arrests in a burglary ring which allegedly targeted […]

Continue Reading Thinking About Stealing From The Amish? Think Twice

Amish in Unity, Maine recently completed their yearly harvest of ice. This ice is to be used in their ice houses for cooling throughout the coming year. Harvesting ice from local ponds is a common practice among the plainest Amish, though the Amish in this community don’t exactly fit the conventional definition of “plainest”. From […]

Continue Reading Maine Amish Complete Ice Harvest (300,000 Pounds’ Worth!)

How do Amish keep their homes warm? Heating methods and costs are on the minds of many of us, both Amish and English, every year as the calendar moves into the winter months. But as a group which does not use public grid electricity, how do the Amish heat their homes? Here are three ways […]

Continue Reading Three Ways Amish Heat Their Homes

The Lancaster County mud sale schedule for 2023 is now available, with the first event happening just a month from now. These Amish-heavy events draw members of the community and outside visitors in support of the local volunteer fire companies. Many have large numbers of Plain volunteers on their rosters. A mud sale is an […]

Continue Reading The 2023 Amish Mud Sale Schedule (Lancaster County Auction Calendar) [UPDATED]

This is a neat article (Jamestown Post-Journal) on the opening of one Amish family’s new pizza place, the aptly-named “Family Night Pizza”. On first glance, the article title itself is eye-catching, for more reasons than one: “Amish Owned Pizza Business Has Opened In Panama”. That would be Panama, New York – not the Central American […]

Continue Reading Amish-Owned Pizza Place? Why Not

The Amish here told the judge they prefer jail to paying fines for violating Ohio’s new buggy lighting law. That might seem surprising. But it’s not, if you’ve paid attention to how these things go with Swartzentruber Amish. From Ashland Source: ASHLAND — A group of eight Amish people refused to pay their fines for their […]

Continue Reading Amish Buggy Light Law Violators Go To Jail In April

After 15+ years of writing a blog on the Amish, from time to time I still hear from people who wish to become Amish. I usually advise people to take a look at what is attracting them to want to join the Amish. Often, I suspect, the real reasons have little to do with the […]

Continue Reading Six Reasons Why People Fail To Join The Amish

With the expansion of the Amish to more and more locations (over 600 of them now in North America), and the recent addition of a new Amish state (New Mexico), it’s becoming easier to say where the Amish aren’t than where they are. Now, that said, many states just have a small Amish presence – […]

Continue Reading The 18 States WITHOUT An Amish Community

According to the most recent figures, the community in Adams County, Indiana, centered around the town of Berne, remains the country’s fifth-largest, with over 11,000 Amish. This is really a sprawling community spread out across the wide expanses of flat Indiana farmland. I have visited here several times over the years, but don’t know it nearly […]

Continue Reading 10 Views From the Berne, Indiana Amish Community