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…
Amish resistance to photography is fairly well-known. But not by everyone. Or at least it’s not respected by everyone. Tourists can still be a problem, frustrating the Amish and even causing accidents. The Amish believe posing for photographs is a form of pride. Reporters dealt with the issue, some tactfully, others less so, while covering the Nickel Mines incident last year. There are exceptions to…
The Amish don’t use ‘thee’, ‘thine’, or ‘thou’, as you might think after watching Weird Al’s video. Neither do they speak like Alexander Godunov or Jan Rubes did in Witness. Check that, at least one Amishman today does–but he was born in Germany and converted to the faith in his 20’s. They mostly speak English like any rural Americans would. Though you could say there…
People sometimes pity the Amish, thinking that since they do not have a chance to go to university, they must live miserable lives. Not to mention:Â no car, no internet, no makeup, no golf. But maybe it depends a bit on what you value. If you value things like unrestricted choice, education, wealth, and consumption above all else, then yes, Amish life might not look…
The Amish famously refuse anything that smacks of government dependence. They opt out of Social Security, agricultural subsidies, Medicaid, Medicare, and generally any sort of public welfare program. Strangely, this is news for Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services. Ohio has the largest Amish population in the nation, by far. Yet they recently decided that the Amish needed to step up their Food Stamp…
In the Amish world, when disaster strikes, you help your neighbor. Sometimes that means going two or three states away to clean up. And it’s not just Amish helping Amish–after all, in the grand scheme of things, you, English person, are a neighbor too. Amish often travel to help non-Amish rebuild after hurricanes, such as the Hugo storm in the early 90’s. Amish were active…
“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’…