A while back I wrote a post on Raber’s Almanac, an annual guide used by the Amish. The Almanac includes an extensive listing of Amish church districts and their ministers. Â It also includes a Scripture and hymn schedule for church service as well as some folk wisdom and even a dab of astrology, which I examined in the original post. The other day I came…
Have just recently been finalizing page proofs for Success Made Simple. If you’re wondering, this is the part where the text of the book is placed in the proper font and style and fitted to the page, so it actually looks like the page of a book, as opposed to a Word document, which is what we’ve been using up til now. You work from…
Success Made Simple is the first practical business guide based on Amish ideas. 9,000 Amish businesses thrive throughout North America. This book examines why, and what lessons they can offer modern business owners. It reads a bit like this blog does, chock full of anecdotes, stories, and 16 sidebars covering everything from the ‘Amish miracle heater’ to why you’ll find 47 David Yoders in one…
Ohio Amish bishop David Kline is an interesting person. I’ve known David for a couple of years and fondly recall my last visit to his Ohio farm, and specifically some warm muffins and warmer companionship at the kitchen table. David is also unusual as an Amish person in that he is a twice-published author. David’s descriptions of wildlife, farming, and rural living in Great Possessions…
Lined up in a bicycle rack in front of a barn at an Amish farm is a row of scooters in various sizes and colors–red, blue, and green. Around four o’clock in the afternoon, Simon Bontrager went looking for his five-year-old son, Reuben, finding him high up in a tree house perched over a stream. Simon cupped his mouth to holler up the tree, “Hey,…
Outsiders sometimes express a desire to join the Amish. As an Amish authority explains in Richard Stevick's Growing up Amish: The Teenage Years, seekers often come with misguided notions: "When seekers from the outside come to us wanting to be Amish," explained a bishop, "they are often attracted for the wrong reasons. They could have fallen in love with one of our Youngie. Or they…
Kevin over at the informative and fun Amish Cook blog has beaten me to the punch here, but I thought I’d bring to your attention an article in the New York Times on Amish business. It’s a pretty meat-and-potatoes look at Amish entrepreneurship but nice to see in a high-profile spot. Donald Kraybill contributes here, pointing out that in some settlements high majorities–even 90%–of households…
Any work that discusses bundling in ‘the good old-fashioned way’ has got to be a heady read. And so it goes with Little Known Facts About the Amish and the Mennonites, a tourist booklet first printed in 1938. The seeds of Amish tourism were planted in the early 20th century, with the enterprise really getting a proper start in the 1930’s and 40’s. Amish-themed postcards,…
In this second part of an interview with an anonymous Lancaster County Amishman, we look at the phenomenon of outsiders joining the Amish, using the Amish name to market and sell products to the public, Amish participation in the recent presidential election, and the meaning and purpose of shunning. (And if you missed the first part, here it is: An Amish America Q-and-A with a…
From Living Without Electricity (by Stephen Scott and Kenneth Pellman): “The majority of Old Order Amish use lamps that burn “white,” or clear, gasoline or naphtha. The fuel tank in these lamps is filled with compressed air. The air forces the fuel to the generator tube, where it is vaporized, and then to the mantles, where it is burned. Mantles are loosely woven fabric bags…