An Amish Man on Valentine’s Day In anticipation of February 14th, I passed this question along to John Stoltzfus, an Amish husband and father of five living in a Pennsylvania community: Do Amish people do anything for Valentine’s Day? How do they observe the day?  John’s response hints at differing attitudes about Valentine’s Day. The usual caveat about Amish customs being different in different places…
I just returned late last night from a trip which took in four Amish communities in Ohio. Over the roughly three-and-a-half days I spent in the state there was a lot of visiting with Amish and English friends and acquaintances. I just did a count and besides things like auctions, shops and church gatherings, I was able to squeeze in sixteen visits over that time….
I grew up washing my hands in the kitchen sink when I came in from outdoors and often before meals. Mostly because it was the most convenient one, and for that matter, really the only one, unless you wanted to walk to one of the bathrooms in the back of the house. I just spent some time visiting with Mark Curtis in the Amish community…
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…