Goot Essa is an Amish cheese company based in central Pennsylvania, in business since 2001. They make a wide variety of cheeses (traditional cow dairy, goat, sheep) using milk from Amish farms. Founder John Esh shares more about Goot Essa and their cheeses in today’s Q & A. We first heard from John in a 2020 interview. I also did a little review of a…
In September I wrote about one person’s expression of disappointment on discovering the Amish using plastic packaging. You can read that post here if you missed it. In that post I looked at a couple of the misconceptions that might lead one to be disappointed in a cultural group’s choice of food packaging. These were the somewhat related ideas that a) Amish are “frozen in…
A glimpse at one of Kentucky’s Swartzentruber Amish communities today, courtesy of Don Burke. The community is in Graves County, KY, and is two church districts large. Let’s have a look at some photos of this plain Amish settlement. I’ll add a few comments as we do. Horseshoeing business open three days per week. The pole does double-duty as a birdhouse perch. I’m a bit…
In the video below I explain two main reasons why Amish restrict their children’s schooling to eight grades. If you’d prefer to read this in post form, you can do that here. Some additional things to know about Amish & schooling: Amish school teachers are usually young women in the community (though some men do teach, perhaps around 10%) Not all Amish attend one-room schoolhouses;…
In this video I share five reasons people either a) decide not to join the Amish (that is, decide not to be baptized), or b) leave the Amish church after joining. I call it “leaving” in either case (and explain that at the beginning), even though the consequences are different. Not everyone who is born Amish decides to be baptized in the faith. And…
With an eye to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, Amish Cook Gloria Yoder devotes this week’s column to the idea of giving thanks. An excerpt: No human being (or at least not me) is naturally filled with thankfulness. There’s a person I know who has gone through more pain than any human could ever tell and more surgeries than I can count, and that individual is…
A request to open a liquor store in the middle of Shipshewana, Indiana, the best-known town in the country’s third-largest Amish community, was rejected Thursday at a meeting of the LaGrange County Alcohol Beverage Commission. From kpcnews.com: ABC meetings are typically somewhat quiet and last in general only a few minutes, but Thursday’s meeting lasted nearly three hours as nearly 100 Shipshewana residents packed into…
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 as well as other communities in the state, like nearby…
An Amish community was founded at Rector, Arkansas back in 2009. Though it managed to attract a number of families (including a minister), it never grew very large, and eventually went extinct about five years later. Despite their rapid growth and many new communities being founded yearly, this happens to some Amish settlements – for various reasons. Don Burke paid a visit to the Rector…
Some very nice news came in since the Christy Otto book giveaway post went up. A reader who wishes to remain anonymous has very generously chosen to donate copies of one of Christy Otto’s books of artwork to the first 50 people who left comments on the previous Q&A post. Call it an early Christmas gift in appreciation to the readers here. Wow! Below you’ll…