Amish Culture

Here’s one I hadn’t seen before: an Amish farmer in Lancaster County is selling his baseball card collection via online auction. Amish play baseball and softball, and there is certainly interest in the sport in some quarters. Amish have hobbies and pastimes of course, but we tend to hear about ones like hunting. So I’d never heard of adult Amish with baseball card collections. But,…

It’s nothing new to observe that people feel overwhelmed by technology nowadays. The Amish fascinate many for a related reason. They’re a society of people who live with restricted technology, yet by many measures appear to be thriving. Here’s a new article on the Amish and technology where writer Alex Mayyasi looks to the Amish for ideas that non-Amish can use to get back in…

In the latest edition of the Journal of Plain Anabaptist Communities (JPAC) we find an article by Henry Troyer titled “Change and Continuity in Amish Wedding Dates in the Holmes County, Ohio, Settlement“. I found several interesting facts in Troyer’s piece I’d like to share with you, concerning Holmes County wedding customs. Let’s start with the main point of the paper: 1. Over the past 100…

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…

These near-perfect photos by David Marvitz almost look like something staged or taken from a film. Actually, the scenes remind me of some of Bill Coleman’s masterpiece photos taken in the Big Valley of central PA, which have a similar quality. But these are real Amish at work – cutting and collecting ice in the Hazleton, Iowa community. The ice will be used for cooling…

We’re not told where this singing video takes place, but the dress is Midwestern Amish. We see numerous Amish young people sitting around the table at what looks to be a youth gathering. This is a relatively new video, posted this past November. You can see a wringer washer – are we in a basement, or some kind of utility room? I see some board…

Here’s a remarkable feel-good story about a team of audiologists helping Amish children with hearing and ear issues. In one plain Amish community in southern Michigan, medical professionals saw an uptick of children losing their hearing (untreated or repeated ear infections can cause hearing loss). From the Michigan Health blog: In 2019, Winters and her colleagues noticed that a large group of parents within an…

This is not your typical Amish singing video. What we see here is something called the Sail & Sing Christian Cruise. It’s a tour company based out of New Holland, PA. So what are Amish doing on a cruise ship, you might be wondering? For those who wish to visit Europe (or anywhere overseas), ship travel is the only option sanctioned by many Amish churches…