When stepping foot on an Amish farm for the first time, feeling like you have been instantly transported back to 1800s era America is the most obvious initial impression everyone feels.
If you hail from a rural area, the differences between Amish life and life on your own farm or homestead are a lot less stark.
City folks who have only seen livestock in a petting zoo and have never touched a cow teat with their bare hands are typically in for a far more eye-opening experience.
Wholesome and busy. Those are the first two words that come to mind when describing what you see and feel when spending some time on an Amish farm, no matter where you are from.
The Amish are surely prepper, survival, and homesteading all-starts. Their way of life avidly wreaks of self-reliance and sustainability. They do not need to watch YouTube videos or read blog posts to learn how to do any of the farm chores they accomplish with vigor each day. Instead, those skills are passed down from generation to generation with hands-on training literally beginning around age two.
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A local Amish boy named David was hefting 50-pound bags of horse feed into my truck from his father’s farm business.
He was about 9 at the time and I felt a little bad watching him do all of the heavy lifting. I told him to make sure his dad paid him well for doing such hard work and doing it so quickly.
“This is like his college. David should be paying me for teaching him how to run the business,” his dad yelled out from his farm office while chuckling. Yes, the Amish do have a sense of humor.
Technology
The Amish, just like any other group of folks, are not a monolithic community. The “rules” of Amish life when it comes to technology in both simple and advanced forms, are agreed upon by each community and are not a rigid set of rules all Amish in America must follow. The rules can change over time by agreement by the community members.
For example, I once asked Ezra, my Amish farrier, if he knew if the Amish greenhouse in a neighboring village just across our county line was open for the season yet.
“I have no idea. Those are wild Amish, we do not associate with them at all.” Ezra replied.
I was of course curious and simply had to know what constituted “wild Amish.”
By and large, Amish are open to questions about their way of life when asked respectfully and out of genuine curiosity and not judgment.
So I asked.
“They ride bicycles. Even the women,” was Ezra’s response.
Yes, I laughed at his answer. I simply could not help myself. Doing…