“I don’t remember ever having joy growing up.” Emma Gingerich, who grew up in a Swartzentruber Amish community, some years ago appeared on the Megyn Kelly Today show to discuss her background and departure from Amish life. Periodically you see former Amish doing media interviews sharing about their past lives. Typically the stories are negative, and Emma’s fits that bill, but you can understand why….
Lovina Eicher is an Amish mother of eight and author of the Lovina’s Amish Kitchen column (and formerly the Amish Cook column). She answers your questions in today’s post. Lovina is the author of The Essential Amish Cookbook and the Lovina’s Amish Kitchen column. To enter to win a copy of The Essential Amish Cookbook, just leave a comment on this post. I’ll draw a…
Donald Kraybill is retired, but hasn’t slowed down much as far as putting out books. He has a new one out called Simply Amish, a short overview of the Amish. He recently sat down with LNP/Lancaster Online to answer some reader questions on camera, about the Amish in general but with a focus on Lancaster County. This spawned an article outlining six main takeaways from…
Do the plainest Amish shun tourists, as you might suppose? Not in the case of the Amish at Ethridge, Tennessee. Mary Hance details her visit to the comunity at Ethridge in a recent article for the Tennessean. This is an interesting community as it is one of the most traditional, but also rather tourist-friendly. This Swartzentruber Amish settlement has many farms and a lot of…
According to a report by WWNYTV (unavailable), towns in the North Country region of New York are pushing for a state law requiring more visible markings on Amish buggies. The main town featured in the video below is Dekalb. “We want to protect both the Amish and our own citizens,” said town supervisor John Frary, who has handed out a resolution to other towns to…
You may have seen Amish-made noodles for sale in shops or even tried some yourself. Today Don Burke takes us to an Amish noodle-making business, to share a behind-the-scenes look at how these noodles get made. While in Jamesport, MO, a few years ago I had the opportunity to visit the facilities where a local Amish family made their Detweiler’s Homemade Noodles. These noodles were…
Reader Mike Sparks shares photos from a Sunday visit to Ashland County, Ohio. Most of these are from the Swartzentruber settlement, though you’ll see several from the nearby Old Order community. Note the unusual buggy triangle in the final photo. Ashland County has several distinct Amish settlements. Sunday afternoon in Amish communities is a peaceful time. There is an increased amount of buggy and foot…
Aside from eating in an Amish home, people often want to know where they can find accommodation on actual Amish farms. A TribLive article points us to the website amishfarmstay.com, which lists six such properties – all run by Amish families. I’ve tried to answer this question over the years but never had a resource which gathered several such properties in one place. This site is the…
The past several weeks have seen quite a few buggy accidents in the news. The most headline-grabbing was the story of the Missouri woman who hit a buggy for the second time in a year. The first incident last September resulted in the death of a pregnant Amish woman. In the latest, the 83-year-old resident of Licking, MO, hit a buggy containing four youth, saying…
One thing that makes the Amish such a rich and vibrant group is that there are various ways of “being Amish”. Across nearly 700 different communities and dozens of affiliations, you can notice quite a number of differences in the ways Amish people live and manifest their faith. One common type of comment I come across is when someone comes to know the Amish in…