I’m away from the computer for a couple of days, but have auto-posted some hat shop photos. The first is from the Nappanee, Indiana Amish community. Â Nappanee is the 3rd-largest Amish community in Indiana, and 6th-largest in the nation. Â There is also a small Old Order Mennonite community near Nappanee: You can see a few different styles here (notice the bottom row). And even more…
You might remember a photo a couple weeks back, of an Amish kitchen that some people found a bit on the fancy side? Today we have a shot of another room in the same Michigan home: This place looks like it has some nice spots for taking a nap. Â Just as long as those clocks aren’t too noisy. Â A close-up: Another Amish wall decoration: Special…
Another photo today, of an inspirational wall decoration from an outhouse at an Amish school (thanks again to Karen Johnson-Weiner). If there is any place that could use a little livening up, I guess it is the outhouse. Â And why not include an uplifting message? Â Actually I guess this is more of a lesson in humble sharing: Outhouses have been in the news lately. Â USA…
When was the last time you went car shopping? Â Have a fun time? If you were buying new, odds are you had to pick through a whole pile of choices. Amish buggy buyers have their fair shake of options to choose from too–everything from the upholstery to the lighting to the dash to the battery holder (a relatively new feature in Lancaster County has the…
When I first began spending time with the Amish, I felt like I was entering another world. Â I would drive my car from gritty Decatur, Illinois, where I was living for the summer while selling books, 45 minutes southeast to the farms, fields and fresh air of Moultrie County. Crossing into “Amish territory”, it seemed like I passed through an invisible border. Â Much of what…
I think you’ll notice quite a contrast between this photo and last week’s Swiss Amish home photos. Â This was taken in a Michigan Amish home by Karen Johnson-Weiner: Comparing these photos you can really see the diverse material standards of different Amish groups. I’ve zoomed in on a couple parts to make things more visible: Notice anything familiar? Also if you missed it, inside a…
I just got off the phone with an Amish friend, “Alvin”, from Holmes County. Â I like to call Alvin, a furniture maker, from time to time, to check up on things in Amish Ohio. The big news? Â March Madness, or I suppose the Plain equivalent, is apparently heading to Holmes County. I’ve written a number of times about Amish and sports. Â Sports and games are…
Nadege Armour asked in a comment yesterday: Â Any chance we might be able to see the inside of an anonymous Amish home? Well, here we have a photo of the inside of an Amish home near Clymer, New York, shared by Amish researcher Karen Johnson-Weiner: First off, you can see one of the most important types of technology in an Amish home (at least in…
Traveling through Amish settlements you may notice something like this: That’s not a Plain people hauler, nor the caboose of some sort of horse-drawn train. Â This bulky vehicle is a church wagon, and you’ll see them throughout Amish America. Each Amish church district will have its own wagon, used to transport benches from one location to the next. The benches are mainly used as seating…
In her guest post last Friday, Kate Hastings pointed out how common calendars are in Amish homes. Â Kate noted that while visiting an Amish friend, “I realized that I could see six picture calendars from where I was sitting in the kitchen.” Â The calendars “featured horses, barns, lighthouses, bluebirds, and wildflowers.” While you won’t find family portraits on Amish walls, you will find a range…