I attended the funeral of an Old Order Amish man while in the Holmes County settlement over the weekend. A few observations: Around 200 attendees, mostly Amish, with all four major affiliations represented: Old Order, New Order, Andy Weaver (aka ‘Dan church’) and Swartzentruber. There were only a handful of non-Amish present–mainly consisting of a few plain Mennonites. The Amish funeral takes place in the…
Today is the first day of school for the Lancaster County Amish kids. Despite the rise of small-enterprise in the settlement, the Lancaster County Amish are still highly ag-oriented and the school schedule reflects that. Today commences a week of half-days for all children. Next week will be full-schedule for everyone except the seventh and eighth graders, who will remain on the half-day schedule til…
MY TWO unofficial breakfast jobs at Abe and Sarah’s farmhouse are: 1) hand-grinding the coffee–Abe is a big drinker of the stuff, as am I, and 2) sneaking in to Abe’s dad’s milkhouse to scoop up a pitcherful of ice-cold organic raw milk. Okay, maybe not sneaking in, as Abe’s pop fully condones the practice. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with it. …
Two quick bits of good news: One more tech snag has been overcome-I hope(!) It seems the size of the blog has gotten a bit large, and that’s complicated email or feed reader delivery over the past couple weeks. For reader/email subscribers to Amish America, you’ll now be getting just a short snippet of each post, and you can simply click on the post title…
“When I was a little boy, I often went away with my father–to town, to the neighbors, to the welding shop, to the engine shop–anywhere Dad needed to go. As with all little boys and girls, going away was a treat to me, no matter where we went. “On one such ‘going away’ adventure, perhaps to the welding shop, we chanced to meet a man…
First night at Abe and Sarah’s Lancaster farm went well, except for the friendly rooster who stomps the ground just beneath the window of my room. Apparently concert time is 430 am. I felt compelled to compliment Sarah on her bird’s voice the next morning. That got a knowing chuckle. Earplugs didn’t quite keep it out, but closed windows did the trick last night. Abe is a swell organic farmer, and…
Donald Kraybill has written and edited over 20 books and dozens of professional articles on the Old Order Amish, Mennonites, and other Anabaptist peoples, and is the Senior Fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In addition to his current projects, Professor Kraybill has spent recent months in locations from Texas to Vancouver promoting Amish…
Fireworks and cookouts are the name of the game today. And some Amish people will no doubt be participating in one, the other, or both. But as you’d expect, secular holidays take a backseat to church-sanctioned ones in Amish America. Generally speaking, Amish that are more in tune with the American mainstream (say, by virtue of their occupation, or church affiliation) would be more likely…
Here on the Euro side of the pond, the quadrennial European Football Championships are scrapping along nicely, with the continent in a frenzy for the sport that we Yanks most readily connect with Pele, Maradona and now the flamboyant Mr. David Beckham. Back home, looks like the NBA has been having a nice series. I’m sure some Amish have had a glance in the paper…
Just been flipping through the blog’s back pages and came across a post on the Amish and gasoline prices from May of last year. Gas was around three-and-a-quarter then. “Yikes, that’s high”, people were saying. I guess we’re at four bucks now… My main point on that post was that rising gas affects the Amish in a number of ways. The Amish are plugged into…