In this final installment, Aaron Miller continues his discussion of choice in Amish society: Let me list some choices that I and other Amish people make in their daily lives. One of the first financial lessons I teach my boys goes like this. When we are about to attend a social function or community event such as an auction or local farm show or the…
The blog will be relatively quiet for the next few days, as we are working on a few changes here. The blog platform will be switched from Typepad to WordPress–which is a good thing, and something I’ve wanted to do for a long while. WordPress seems to be a much more versatile platform (any WordPress users out there concur?). But, expect Amish America to remain…
The Ultimate Mud Sale Guide | Jump to full 2026 Mud Sale Schedule OR scroll down 2026 Mud Sale Guide (22 Sales) When are the mud sales in Lancaster County? The Lancaster County mud sale schedule for 2026 is now available, with the traditional first event happening soon (February 27 & 28 at Strasburg Fire Company). What is a “Mud Sale”? How did it get…
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…
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…
“It is very definitely a gray area, in fact it is nearly black.” An anonymous Amish friend from Lancaster County has offered candid answers to some questions on Amish life. In this first of two parts, he comments on topics such as the Amish presence in the media, Amish internet usage, friendships with non-Amish people, and the benefits and challenges of living life as an…
“Amish” sells. That fact is not lost on the numerous merchants of Amish-branded stuff. Software, refrigerators, and organic cotton bedsheets are among the products that non-Amish dealers have sold under the Amish moniker or by association with Amish images. A female Amish acquaintance in Ohio who runs a food-related business herself offered an example, complaining, good-naturedly, about the use of the Amish name on products….
Two quick bits of good news: One more tech snag has been overcome-I hope(!) It seems the size of the blog has gotten a bit large, and that’s complicated email or feed reader delivery over the past couple weeks. For reader/email subscribers to Amish America, you’ll now be getting just a short snippet of each post, and you can simply click on the post title…
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…
‘Sylvan’, one of my Amish friends in Lancaster County, runs a scooter workshop in addition to milking cows. In Lancaster County and related settlements, you rarely see bicycles–in Lancaster, for instance, there are only a few church districts I’m aware of that seem to allow them. I’ve also seen scooters in use among the Amish of Allen County, Indiana, and I’d imagine they’d be found…