Up to 90% of Lancaster County Plain families have had at least one family member infected with COVID-19, according to a local health center administrator. From Lancaster Online: Late last spring a COVID-19 wave tore through the Plain community when they resumed church services, infecting an untold number of Amish and Mennonites in Lancaster County. The administrator of a medical center in the heart of…
David Marvitz, who took the ice harvest photos we saw here last month, recently shared how he got permission to photograph Amish in Hazleton, Iowa. More on that below. I was also in touch with David after that post went up. He passed along another nice set of photos, this time of a young Amish fellow training a Belgian breed horse. First, on how he…
Do the Amish live in Ireland? There are no Old Order Amish communities in Ireland, but Beachy Amish do live there. The question is revisited today by irishcentral.com in an article titled “Did you know Ireland has an Amish community?” The Christian Fellowship of Dunmore East, Co. Waterford is Ireland’s only Amish-Mennonite community. It was founded in 1992 by William McGrath, an Irish American who…
This home caught my eye for two reasons – the photos, especially the exterior shots, which are quite vivid (might be a camera filter, plus spring conditions), and because this appears to be the home of a family from a New Wilmington-related settlement. I am basing this on three things. First, the blue doors, as this is typical of New Wilmington Amish (though they are…
Four Amishmen have asked the highest court in the land to consider their case, in a long-running dispute over “gray water” disposal. Attorney Brian Lipford filed the petition on behalf of Amish members of a Minnesota Swartzentruber community. Via the Rochester Post-Bulletin: In a petition filed on Jan. 20, 2021, by attorney Brian Lipford, Ammon Swartzentruber, Menno Mast, Amos Mast and Sam Miller ask the…
We learned the sad news of Lovina Eicher’s daughter Susan’s husband being killed in a car accident in December, along with his driver. Mose Bontrager was only 30 and married just three years. In this week’s Amish Kitchen column, Lovina turns it over to Susan to share an update three months after her loss. Here’s an excerpt from her heartfelt column, which you can read…
Sometimes a photo is worth a thousand words – and this photo shows better than any words the damage a car can do to a buggy. Photo by Ashland County Pictures You’re not really seeing much of a buggy here, just two wheels, axle and some of the undercarriage. The buggy, in other words, was annihilated by the impact. The crash occurred Saturday in Ashland…
Next Friday, March 19th, will be a big day for the Alvin and Wilma Borntrager family of Vestaburg, Michigan. That’s when their 80-acre farm – house, equipment, 105 cows – goes up for auction. Jim Halverson alerted me to this sale listing, which opens with a simple description: “Haveing [sic] decided to move Alvin and his family will be selling the Real Estate, Farm Equipment…
I mentioned this idea of Amish “supercounties” in a recent post. This is the term I came up with to describe counties containing a large number of individual Amish communities. For one reason or another, these are counties which have just drawn Amish to settle in them, repeatedly. An alternate term might be “Amish-friendly counties”. There is something about these counties that makes them attractive…
That’s one of the interesting things I learned from a recent article in Banking Dive on how banks work with Amish customers. The Bank of Bird-in-Hand has tried to make banking more convenient for its horse-and-buggy customers with an investment in four mobile banks: “Anytime you have to hitch the horse up and get in the buggy and drive it, it’s a production,” said Lori…