‘The typical English guy looks at one of us and just sees an Amish person. Actually there can be a lot of difference.’ So said a Holmes County Amishman, commenting on the diversity in his area. Compared to the Old Order Amish, the so-called New Order Amish are a curious mix–one which we might term technologically more liberal, but in some ways culturally more conservative….
…that might mean you’re in Amish America. As you drive around your neck of the woods, it’s increasingly likely you might bump into some Amish. With new settlements starting yearly, and with communities now present in half of the states, you no longer have to go all the way to Lancaster County to run into some Amish. Here are a few things to look out…
In The Riddle of Amish Culture, Donald Kraybill explains Amish “gangs” in Lancaster County: By the age of ten, an Amish child will be able to name some of the groups—Bluebirds, Canaries, Pine Cones, Drifters, Shotguns, Rockys, and Quakers—and even describe some of their activities. Youth are free to join the gang of their choice…Parents worry about which groups their teens will join because they…
Cows have to be milked twice a day. This inconvenient fact is just part of life for the typical Amish dairy farmer. Milking is usually done at 12-hour intervals. Popular times are at around 4 or 5 in the morning and the same hours in the afternoon. It takes an hour or two, depending on the number of cows and hands. Because of the early…
“The only treasure we can take with us to heaven is our children.” This came from a mother of five in Holmes county, Ohio, but it could have been just about any Amish parent. For the Amish, children are a blessing, not a burden.  Large Amish families are common. America has gone from being an agrarian to an industrial and now a post-industrial nation. We…
Most Amish look alike to the man on the street. In reality the group is surprisingly diverse. Though tied by a set of core beliefs, the Amish have no national governing body, no pope nor patriarch. The individual congregation, guided by its bishop, decides its own rules and customs. This decentralized approach, along with a widely varying tolerance for progressive ideas, creates many different ‘flavors’…