Last summer we first heard from Anne, whose son Ed a few years ago joined an Amish community in Minnesota.  Anne shared her experience as an English mother to an Amish son in posts on language challenges at Ed’s wedding, friends’ reactions, and expectations regarding photos. Becoming Amish is not easy to do, which is probably as it’s meant to be.  One reason is the change in…
Tom in New York checks in again today with a piece of technology that can be a necessity this time of year, depending on your latitude. This horse-drawn snow plow is at the ready on an Amish farm in the Conewango Valley in western New York. This machine was made by Pioneer Equipment of Dalton, Ohio, a well-known manufacturer of horse-drawn equipment in the Holmes…
Ruth Anne writes: As a mother to a young woman who has Down syndrome I am curious as to how people with intellectual disabilities are accepted and integrated into the Amish culture. Â I live near Xenia, Ohio and I often see Amish people out and about shopping, visiting the doctor, etc., but I have never noticed an Amish person who has Down syndrome or any…
In closing a recent post on Amish use of solar and wind power, I joked: Maybe one day we’ll observe Amish buggies rolling down the road, plastered with solar panels, or with whirling wind turbines planted on their roofs. The first part of that tongue-in-cheek prediction is actually closer to reality than one might think, at least for some Amish. A reader shares a photo of a solar…
Amish heat their homes in various ways, including wood and coal stoves and natural gas heaters. But how do they stay warm when they hit the road? The answer to this question would depend in part on what kind of buggy you drive. Those Amish whose Ordnung prohibits a storm front (the “windshield” enclosing the front), such as the Nebraska Amish group, have a harder…
That may seem a dumb question. Hard work = exercise after all, and “hard work” is one of the bullet points in the Amish job description, for most Amish folks anyway. However I think there is a difference between the two. What I mean is the 21st-century Western approach to exercise, where we isolate it as its own, often-intense activity done strictly for health, weight…
A reader in Indiana shares photos and a description of a water pump system in an Amish home: This is the most common configuration for a well pump in the Northern Indiana community. A water pump driven by a Honda engine. This picture was taken in one of the houses we looked at buying. This particular unit was located in a side room of the…
A reader writes: I took this picture about a month ago in Shipshewana. The surrey buggy on the right is totally different than others in the community. It was a new buggy. I showed the picture to an Amish friend and he said something to the effect of “once and a while you see things like that. Seems like it’s usually new people moving into…
We recently looked at how Amish use turbines to harness the wind and create power. Â But what about when they need to do the reverse–generate a little wind of their own, say to keep cool in the hot summer months (remember those)? You may have seen Amish-engineered ceiling fans before. Â They are common in Amish shops. Â You can see one in action here (no longer…
Do you know these Amish-related terms?  Why are they important to the Amish? Thanks go out to Linda for suggesting some of these terms.  And if you missed it the first time, here is the original 10 Amish terms quiz (with answers in the comments section). 1. Wedding wagon 2. Truck patch 3. Dach-weggeli 4. Crowding the fence 5. Cockscomb 6. Zeugnis 7. Eck ball 8….