Local produce auctions can be an important sales outlet for Amish farmers. An Amish person from Ethridge, Tennessee explains for a story in the Tennessean: “We nearly have to keep the auction going to keep our families together. It’s for our future. We want our kids to have an outlet to sell at a fair market.” The Plowboy Produce Auction is one such venue serving the Amish…
Today we have three winners of Richard Stevick’s Growing Up Amish: The Rumspringa Years, and a pair of excerpts from the book. First, the excerpts. Excerpt #1: Rumspringa This first text is from Chapter One, showing public and media misperceptions of Rumspringa. What happened to catapult Amish youth and their teenage years squarely in the public eye, both here and abroad? Seeds were undoubtedly planted…
“The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day.” – Lewis Carroll By no means do Amish people take this notion literally. Jam, or one of its cousins, can be had pretty much any day you want it in most Amish homes. You can also find it on store shelves, at least 6 days per week. I picked up the jam above–okay,…
The scenes below come from the Adams County, Indiana Amish settlement, from the recent building of a new school. You’ll see two structures in the photos below. The school is actually the foundation you see in the bottom two photos. The wooden structure the men are working on is a barn for the school. The slab on the right hand side of the bottom…
Non-Amish friendships? The allure of technology? Religious strife? These and other factors may very well play into individual decisions to leave behind an Amish faith and background. Caroline Faulkner, a professor of sociology at Lancaster’s Franklin & Marshall College, is trying to shed some light on this and related questions in a new study. In today’s guest post, Caroline examines depictions of Amish people leaving their faith and…
Today we have Part 1 of an interview with Messiah College professor emeritus of psychology Richard Stevick on his Growing Up Amish: The Rumspringa Years. Win 1 of 3 copies of Growing Up Amish: The Rumspringa Years Ask Rich a question in the comments below, and you’ll automatically get a chance to win one of three copies of Growing Up Amish: The Rumspringa Years. This…
A recent article in the Massillon Independent depicts the efforts of law enforcement in Holmes and neighboring Tuscarawas County to thwart large parties held regularly in the area. According to authorities, these parties, such as those held at a resort in Tuscarawas County, have a significant Amish youth presence. Drugs such as meth and cocaine are sold and used at them. From the article: Such parties are…
When I saw “graffiti” in the title of the email, I imagined spray-painted epithets, possibly the work of ne’er-do-wells with an axe to grind against the Amish. By the looks of things, the etchings in these photos from contributor ShipshewanaIndiana appear to be the work of young boys, perhaps killing time after a church service. I can’t quite make everything out in the images–in the first…
If you were scanning a map of Kansas for places where Amish might be found, Yoder in Reno County would seem a logical guess, given how common that last name is among Amish today. And it’d be a good guess–the town itself was named after the son of an Amish bishop, Eli M. Yoder, who came to homestead here in 1870 (see GAMEO – Yoder). In 1886, the…
Loren and Dorcas Yoder are the owners of Silver Star Leather, located near Shipshewana in the northern Indiana Amish community. I first met Loren in 2006 while selling books in his area, and bumped into him again last summer through a mutual friend. It was a nice chance to visit with Loren again and see his growing business–like many Amish-owned companies housed in a small workshop sitting…