The environment is a hot topic these days. Outsiders view the Amish as an environmentally-friendly people. And since they ‘live like it’s 200 years ago’, they surely must stick with all-natural means of raising their crops, right? photo: turkeycreeklane.com Though there is probably truth to the idea of a particular sort of ‘Amish stewardship’ of the land, this does not automatically mean that the Amish…
photo:Â waynet.org Indiana is an interesting place when it comes to Amish diversity. In the Hoosier state, you will find communities of New Order, Swartzentruber, ‘Swiss’, and of course, ‘standard’ Old Order Amish. One relatively new influence in the state has been the presence of two settlements of Lancaster Amish, which both formed in the 1990’s. The two settlements, on opposite sides of the state…
I may have missed this before, but this is the first year I’ve seen the Calender printed in an English version as well as in the usual high German. The bulk of the 88-page pamphlet, produced by an Ohio Amish printer, is a more-or-less comprehensive listing of Old Order Amish church districts along with their respective ministers. The Calender/Almanac also contains a curious mixture of…
It might not be too clear in the photo, but in the New Wilmington, Pennsylvania Amish settlement, even the milk house doors get painted blue. Photo from late September 2007. And if you’d like to get a closer look at this community, Bill shares how, thanks to some lovely Google technology: PA 208 is available in “Street View” on Google maps. The Amish settlement runs…
Spring is here, and that means plowing and planting time. Most Amish do not use tractors in the field. Some will keep a tractor for around-the-barn tasks, such as filling the silo. Why do the Amish limit tractors? Part of the problem is their similarity to cars. Get comfortable behind the wheel of a tractor, the thinking goes, and it’s a short hop to sitting behind…
lithograph:Â Stan Jolley An Amish friend recently pointed out that the Amish population (roughly 220,000 today), currently doubling in size every 20-odd years, will hit a million sometime in the 2050s. For what it’s worth, 200 years from now, if current trends hold (a huge ‘if’), we should expect to see…204 million Amish on the planet. That would be over five times the current population…
‘Made specifically for the plain people by the plain people’. The Classic boasts ‘unequaled safety’. It is ‘Not just a locked computer’, promising ‘No modem, no phone port or Internet connection, no outside programs, no sound, no photographs, no games or gimmicks’. The ad is found on page 3 of this year’s Lancaster County Business Directory, a collection of advertisements of hundreds of (mostly Amish…
Shannon shares some nice photos from the Amish settlement at Montcalm County, Michigan. Shannon says that the family she knows here belongs to the ‘Troyer Amish’ group. There are currently 24 Amish settlements in Michigan, according to the latest Calender, the almanac-and-guide to Amish church districts. The oldest Michigan settlement, that in the vicinity of Centreville in St. Joseph County, dates to 1910. It is…
Rumspringa: To be or not to be Amish got a lot of attention when it was released in the spring of 2006, with media such as the Wall Street Journal calling it a ‘wonderfully rich portrait and history of the Amish as a people and a faith.’ Rumspringa is also, and primarily, an on-the-scene look at a crucial period of Amish adolescence. Tom Shachtman was…
I was reading through the Economist magazine a couple of days ago and came across an article entitled ‘Where angels no longer fear to tread’, discussing a study whose main objective it describes as an attempt to provide a ‘biological explanation’ for religion. Whether science should be ‘poking its nose into the God business’ may be of issue to some. But if you can get…