I have lately been seeing a lot of list posts on one or another aspect of Amish life. These typically have catchy titles and are designed to get you to click on them. Hard to resist a list! (I’ve been known to create a few myself 😉 ) One caught my eye this week – “20 Unique Ways The Amish Raise Their Kids (That No…
Have a look at this buggy wreck photo…can you believe the driver escaped “shaken, but not injured”? The accident happened on Prince Edward Island, first settled by Amish in 2016. From the Canadian Press: A horse-drawn buggy was destroyed Wednesday morning after colliding with a truck on a rural road in the New Perth area, near where many Amish families have bought farms in the last…
How to move a barn from point A to B with little more than bodies and hands? A gathering of Amish people recently showed how in the Geauga County community. The report is that “over 250 Amish men and others were there to to help move a pole barn from one side of a farm to the other.” If you look at the video I…
From time to time runaway Amish buggies make news, though it’s not something you come across often. However the past several days saw two such incidents reported. Luckily, no one was hurt in either case. But runaway horses have caused severe accidents in the past. The second incident in particular seems like it could have been especially bad. More on that below. Here’s the first,…
What if you couldn’t buy medicine, ship packages, or even give blood – all because you lacked acceptable identification? Amish and Mennonites in Virginia who have been dealing with issues like this will have an alternative moving forward. The state has approved photo-free cards for those who object to conventional IDs. This will resolve issues that the commonwealth’s Plain population has had doing business and…
You may have come across the term “Amish Mennonites” before. It popped up on the site here recently, in our post on the first Amish settlement in America. Both Jim Potter and Al in KY wondered, what does the term mean? You might see it in some accounts referring to a modernizing group which emerged in the latter 1800s, in contrast to what became the…
So another memorable stop from my recent Holmes County trip was at a farm I had first visited a decade earlier. This is a Swartzentruber Amish farm, technically located in Wayne County. They have a creaky signpost by the road displaying whatever it is they have for sale. At the time, the only items on offer were rag rugs. We’ve seen glimpses of this place…
Today’s Q-and-A is a bit different from most previous editions, for two reasons. First, the author is Amish mom Delilah Byler. Delilah kindly answered some questions about her book and family for us today. Second, the book is called Where Are Aldo’s Treasures?, and it is a children’s book. Delilah created this search-and-find book from her own experience as a mother of eight children. I…
Did you know that Amish are heavily involved in building recreational vehicles? We’ve touched on this topic in the past, in posts like Why are Amish building RVs? and 3 Concerns for Amish Working in the RV Industry. The funny thing is that these are really some luxurious vehicles that don’t seem at all to fit an “Amish” way of life. Yet Amish workers are key…
The year 2015 brought news of an investment scam targeting Amish in multiple states. Amish-born Earl D. Miller promised investors double-digit returns, and many Amish people gave Miller their money. Miller eventually gathered over $50 million. Some of this was used to pay back earlier investors promised returns, in typical Ponzi fashion, before the scheme imploded. Amish being victimized by large-scale financial scammers is nothing new,…