Author: Erik Wesner

Erik Wesner is the creator of amishamerica.com, and author of Success Made Simple: An Inside Look At Why Amish Businesses Thrive. Erik began visiting Amish communities in 2004 – eventually meeting thousands of Amish families while selling books.

He began writing about the Amish on this website in 2006, and is often cited in national media, including USA Today, The New York Times, and others on a wide range of Amish topics. A native of North Carolina, Erik has visited dozens of Amish communities across the country, and loves spending time with Amish friends and discovering new Amish places.

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10 Unusual Amish Communities

10 Unusual Amish Communities

One thing that makes the Amish such a rich and vibrant group is that there are various ways of “being Amish”. Across nearly 700 different communities and dozens of affiliations, you can notice quite a number of differences in the ways Amish people live and manifest their faith. One common type of comment I come across is when someone comes to know the Amish in…

Enjoy A Meal In A New York Amish Home (+7 Recipes)

Enjoy A Meal In A New York Amish Home (+7 Recipes)

Would you like to eat a home-cooked meal in an Amish home? If you don’t yet have Amish friends who’ll feed you, you can always track down a home business providing meals for the public. Last year we heard about two such places, in Lancaster County and NE Indiana. Today, a look at another, in upstate New York. Beverly Kehe-Rowland writes about her friend Cindy…

5 Plain Amish Communities

5 Plain Amish Communities

In many ways, the Amish are not one uniform group. To take one example, there are material differences between churches and communities. On one end, there are Amish who permit telephones in the home, regularly hire Amish taxi drivers to transport them for errands or to and from work, and who have homes which visually resemble non-Amish homes, with beautiful gardens and “English” architectural flair….

Wisconsin Amish Agree To Add Buggy Lighting

An update on a group of Amish we covered in “Should Amish Buggies Have Car Safety Features – Like Seat Belts?” Amish in Wood County, WI have agreed to add amber lights to their buggies to improve visibility. Wood County officials previously considered an ordinance requiring seat belts, child car seats, and other enhancements, along with drivers needing to get licenses and insurance. This met…

Vermont Amish Doing Well 3 Years Later

In 2015 it was reported that Amish were moving to Vermont, to the area of Orleans County, part of a region known as the Northeast Kingdom. Vermont joined Maine to become the second New England state to currently have an Amish community. The Black Hills Pioneer (no longer online) updates us on the group three years later: BROWNINGTON — The yellow street signs showing a horse-drawn…

5 More Facts About Amish Schools

It’s graduation time for Amish eighth-graders. Lancaster Online shares a closer look at Amish and Old Order Mennonite schools in Lancaster County. Last year they published something similar, covered here. Here are 5 more things of interest from this year’s article (with comments from me in italics): 1. Different ways to get to school – there are several common ways Amish children get to school….

17 Questions For Anabaptist Seekers

17 Questions For Anabaptist Seekers

What should people who want to join the Amish or Mennonites or other Plain Anabaptist church believe? What about their behavior? What kind of commitments should they be ready to make? Nicci Price – who herself is a convert to an Old German Baptist Brethren church – writes in Mennonite World Review about getting regular requests from”seekers” wishing to become Amish or Mennonite. Over the…

Mary Yoder’s Amish Kitchen (Middlefied, OH)

Mary Yoder’s Amish Kitchen (Middlefied, OH)

For being the fourth-largest Amish settlement, the community in Geauga County, Ohio, often seems to go overlooked. That is probably because of its nearness to Holmes County, a popular tourist destination. But this is a large settlement approaching 20,000 Amish in size, so it gets some tourist visitors, and therefore has some attractions, like food. Mary Yoder’s Amish Kitchen, located in Middlefield in the center…

Things You See at an Amish Auction (22 Photos)

Things You See at an Amish Auction (22 Photos)

Reader Jerry frequently visits Amish communities and auctions. You might remember his posts on dandelion greens in Amish cuisine, a Nebraska Amish auction in Big Valley, the Amish in Burke’s Garden, VA, and photos of a $9,861 Amish buggy. Jerry is back today following a trip to an Amish sale in central Pennsylvania. What will you see at an Amish auction? Jerry gives us a nice…

Corner Ball – Traditional Game Of The Amish & Old Order Mennonites (15 Photos)

Corner Ball – Traditional Game Of The Amish & Old Order Mennonites (15 Photos)

Nearly 10 years ago we had a post about corner ball, a traditional game played by Amish and Old Order Mennonites. I had long heard of this game – described in depth by Richard Stevick in Growing Up Amish: The Teenage Years – and had always wanted to see it “live”. Fortunately, I had a chance to do just that on my recent visit to Lancaster…