Ben & Rose are back, this time covering a hymn beloved by many. “How Great Thou Art” went up on YouTube yesterday, their first new song since “Stroll Over Heaven” at the end of June. The hymn has an interesting history. It started life as a Swedish poem, “O Store Gud,” written by Carl Boberg in 1885, reportedly after he was caught out in a…
Earlier this month, Sugarcreek Budget Publisher Milo Miller brought us a look at the latest edition of Horse Progress Days. He’s back with a look at another popular Amish event, this time Family Farm Field Days, held in Apple Creek, Ohio. It’s a gathering built on a simple idea: that farming can still be a viable living for a family, whether they’re working hundreds of…
So I couldn’t resist commenting on this one. You may have come across slideshow-style “listicle” posts on mass media sites like MSN or AOL. I’ve been seeing a lot of them lately about the Amish (sometimes they link to this website as a source, so no complaints there). Things like “10 surprising technologies the Amish use” or “The 15 largest Amish communities”. Often enough, the…
Horse Progress Days 2026 happened last weekend in the Arthur, Illinois community. Like he did last year, Budget Newspaper publisher Milo Miller shares a great batch of photos he took while at the event. For those unfamiliar, Horse Progress Days is the marquee event for horse-drawn farming equipment. It draws thousands of Amish attendees from across the country each year. It’s an event not only…
Ben & Rose have just released a new tune – “Stroll Over Heaven” is a gospel song written by Carl L. Trivette in 1952. It was popularized more recently by Alan Jackson on his 2005 gospel release Precious Memories. This is their first since their team-up with Rose’s siblings Mike & Marty on “Palms of Victory”. We actually got a short demo clip preview of…
“Will The Circle Be Unbroken” was originally written in 1907 by Ada R. Habershon, with music by Charles H. Gabriel. Versions of it were later more famously recorded by The Carter Family, Johnny Cash, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – with variations in lyrics and music. Now Mike and Marty contribute their own effort to the unbroken circle line. Their version of the song…
Ben and Rose have joined with Rose’s siblings Mike and Marty to do a lovely rendition of “Palms of Victory”. This just released today, and I bet it’s going to get a lot of listens 🙂 Rose was previously in a group with brother Mike and sister Marty, called Third Fret Harmony, which we’ve seen here before. Really neat to see them uniting/re-uniting on this…
Here is an upbeat song for your day – Mike and Marty just released a new one called “Keep On The Sunny Side”. This tune was originally written in the late 1800s by Ada Blenkhorn, and later recorded by the Carter family. The story behind its writing is moving: In 1899 Ada Blenkhorn was inspired to write the Christian hymn by a phrase used by…
If you’ve been following Ben and Rose, you probably know Conrad Fisher has been part of their story from the beginning — producing their music, playing on their recordings, and showing up in their video clips. The Associated Press recently did a piece which centers on Conrad and Ragamuffin Hall — a former Presbyterian brick church building in the rural Pennsylvania community of McCoysville —…
Over 300 Amish and Plain community writers got together in Berlin, Ohio on March 13 and 14 for the Plain Community Writers Workshop — an event that has grown from a small home gathering five years ago into one of the more noteworthy literary happenings involving the Amish. The two-day event was held at Dayspring United Mennonite Church in Holmes County. Publishers, sponsors, and book…