The Amish on their front porches, and my little experiment.

When you drive through most Amish settlements, you’ll see massive front porches with benches and benches. If you ride around after dinner, you’ll see Amish folk seated there and no one is working. No one staring into a bowl of peas that need shelling. Men aren’t out there with their tools trying to fix something. No, they are looking at each other, communicating. In a day of text messages begging for our every beck and call, it’s sad that this is a nostalgic thing: people sitting on their front porches, sipping lemonade and talking. Face to face.

On one of my many trips to Smicksburg, I went past Lydia’s, (Katie Byler in  my book, Knit Together) and saw her little family on the front porch making ice cream. I didn’t want to intrude, but they earnestly waved for me to come join them. So I did and I’ll never forget it. Lydia’s husband, John, and her step-daughter, Ida, were yapping up a storm, and I joined in. They commented on birds seen at their hummingbird feeder that hung nearby, the peeper frogs that sang a deafening song in their nearby pond…just small talk. John asked me if I knew of a place to buy cheese in bulk for their store, but quickly caught himself as it was after business hours. It was ice cream and family time.

When I got home, I did a little experiment. What if I sat on my front porch and just relaxed? It could be a refuge from daily concerns, a little haven. So after dinner, Tim and I sat on our little portico for a little while, and notice things we hadn’t before. The red-tailed hawk that lives in the meadow across the street was being chased by crows. Hummingbirds sucking nectar from our rhododendron bush in blossom. Then we saw something that slowly appeared after the drizzle subsided. A rainbow. We would have missed it if we had been looking down at laptops and cell phones.

Once again, the Amish make me reevaluate my life, and Tim and I now use our front porch often.

Lydia's front porch. Notice the benches on the right stacked on top of each other for additional seating.

The rainbow I might have missed....

The Amish and the value they place on motherhood

I have a few young mothers of preschoolers on my mind today. Sometimes they act like they have to apologize for staying home and not being out in the “work force”.  Some are aspiring authors, who ask me how I find time to write. When I tell them I homeschooled my four kids for over 20 years and it was the most important and fulfilling job I ever had, they don’t believe me. So, knowing these women are Amish enthusiastic, I want to tell share this story.

When I was up in Smicksburg a few weeks ago, one of the restaurants asked if I knew of a good cook, since they need summer help. I thought immediately of Amish women, especially some that are trying to make ends meet.  I went to one family and asked if their teenage daughter would be interested, and they said no. They said maybe some “liberal” Amish would let their daughters be exposed to the “world” but not them.

So I stood there, mouth gaping. The world? Being one to say what’s on my mind, sometimes to a disadvantage, I asked, “The world? What do you mean?”

Well, the father said the ungodly influence and the tourist who take pictures of their faces.  I then asked if he knew of any married Amish women who needed a job, and he grabbed the fence post for strength. (I think I shocked him) “Married women?” Shaking his head, he told me they were needed at home.

Sometimes the Amish can rub me the wrong way. They say things, giving no explanation, and I have to probe deeper to unearth what they’re trying to say. So I asked if they were too busy raising children and having some sort of home business. Bingo, I was right. They believe in Proverbs 31 very strongly.

Here’s a section of Proverbs 31 from The Message Bible:

She shops around for the best yarns and cottons,

    and enjoys knitting and sewing.

She’s like a trading ship that sails to faraway places

    and brings back exotic surprises.

She’s up before dawn, preparing breakfast

    for her family and organizing her day.

She looks over a field and buys it,

    then, with money she’s put aside, plants a garden.

First thing in the morning, she dresses for work,

    rolls up her sleeves, eager to get started.

She senses the worth of her work,

    is in no hurry to call it quits for the day.

She’s skilled in the crafts of home and hearth,

    diligent in homemaking.

 This was written before the Industrial Revolution, when women had to make their own material and sew their own clothes. That’s where the knitting and sewing part comes in, but the rest is very relevant for our times.  I see that Amish women have a healthy sense of their worth as homemakers, and their husbands and children have a respect for motherhood I don’t see too often in the “English” world. (This also carries on to grandmothers, who are involved with raising the “grandkinner”.

Now, Amish women are not chained to their homes, cooking and cleaning all day. They come in contact with non-Amish, since they take their quilts and other crafts to local stores. When I sit on SuzyB Knits front porch for a knitting lesson, I see Amish women going in and out of the stores along the road to deliver goods, and they stay and chat.  I did a blog on Amish women entrepreneurs. Click here to read:  http://karenannavogel.blogspot.com/2012/01/amish-women-entrepreneurs-inside.html

 

Back to the mothers of preschoolers on my mind; you are not moms who sit in front of TV’s all day and watch soaps. You’re actively involved in your children’s lives.  That’s what a real stay at home mother is. You believe everything else is secondary to your kids and their needs. You can be a writer, but your kids should come first.

But, I felt I couldn't divide my time between writing and my children, having four kids close in age, so I put my writing on the shelf until they were grown. To be honest, my kids come first and they’re married. When people ask me what it’s like to be a writer, I tell them it’s my passion, but being a mom is so much more important. The joy of raising my kids far supersedes seeing a book in print. I really believe that being a mother is the most important job on the planet because everyone needs to feel there's someone who is there for them. Loneliness and isolation in America is epidemic. If you’re a working mom, needing to make a living, if your kids know they come before any board meeting or deadline, I think you’re a “stay at home mom” at heart. My mom had to work, but I always knew her heart was in her home. <3



Mother teaching her child to knit

Amish men vs. Duck Dynasty men

  I just discovered Duck Dynasty and am hooked! I haven’t  watched anything so wonderful on TV since The Waltons! Now, the families are polar opposites, but family values are at the heart of both shows. Living without any TV reception, we rely on DVDs and when I found Duck Dynasty, I thought, hey, Jack (Uncle Si says that a lot) Amish men are like the Robertson men in so many ways.

For one, I see men being men. Last year when my husband Tim went deer hunting, he was amazed that an Amish man and his 7 year old son was in a neighboring tree stand ALL DAY. Why? Because men teach their son how to hunt. They talk to them about live from a tree stand. And what Tim was amazed about, was that a 7 year old sat quietly for most of the day. Tim said the boy was just so happy, happy, happy (something Phil Robertson says) being by his daddy all day.

Now, I really hope I don’t blow your mind when I tell you the Amish hunt like the Robertsons, minus the alligators. Yep, they eat squirrel and other little four legged creatures. They also kill beavers because a beaver can destroy lots of trees. But the Amish coon hunts along with beaver and sell their fur. They fish all they can too and most likely catch frogs and eat their legs. They were raised to live off the land like their fathers before them and handing down their knowledge to the next generation is almost sacred to them.

Another similarity that the Robertsons on Duck Dynasty have with the Amish is extended family that cares about each other. I saw how Jase (my favorite) took his niece out in the woods to learn how to drive. Who does this anymore? Well, the Amish do.

But one thing you may not know is that the Amish, especially men, tease each other as much as the Robertsons. It’s all in good humor, but they can really be a rambunctious bunch. When the team that put a new roof on our house practically lived at my place for four days, the jokes never ended. They tease from everything from who pounds nails like a girl to who’s hen pecked by their wife….or who can’t grow a real beard.

Speaking of beards, the Robertsons say real men have beards. I’m laughing as I write this because they’re just too funny. The father, Phil, said only babies and women don’t have beards and he is neither. Well, the Amish have beards if they’re married. And how full and robust their beards are, well, kind of make them pop their buttons. (Well, if they use buttons and not safety pins).

But the thing I’ve just love about the Robertsons is their old-fashioned family values and their unflinching Christian faith. I see this in the Amish. When an Amish family business is really stressed, they’re as laid back as the folks on Duck Dynasty. Everything works out in the end and if it brings the family together through it all, well, it was all worth it.

 

                                                         Amish hunting tree stand ....

 

Amish buggy pulling a boat to go fishing

 

 

 

 

A beard like the Robertsons, but not the hair ;)

Do the Amish have refrigerators? Do they still use iceboxes?

Before I became acquainted with many Amish, I always wondered how they kept their food cold. Somehow I looked at them as campers, having big coolers or something similar. Maybe they had underground storage places, like root cellars. Well, many have root cellars but many still use iceboxes. Yes, as in an insulated unit where a block of ice is placed to cool the food.

It wasn’t that long ago that many people in America used them, my grandparents for one. My mom told me a story of how a salesman came to their house, most likely in the 30’s or 40’s, trying to sell my grandparents a new contraption called a refrigerator.  And they could be bought by paying in monthly installments. My grandparents declined, saying they had a perfectly good icebox already paid for. To buy something on credit was unheard of in those days, or maybe among Italians. They kept their icebox until it needed replaced, and then paid cash for a new refrigerator.

The Amish are similar to their way of thinking. If it works, keep using it. If not, consider other alternatives. The Amish I met in Lancaster County could not believe that my Amish friends in Smicksburg still cut ice, had ice houses to store the ice, and used iceboxes instead of refrigerators. Now, since there are so many types of Amish in Lancaster, I’m not saying there are none that don’t still use iceboxes. But the ones that I talked to laughed and said that my friends were “backwards Amish” compared to how modern they were.

So, I took my camera up to Smicksburg and asked Amish friends if I could take pictures of their icehouses and asked them why they still use iceboxes. “We like to cut ice,” was the men’s response.  They have shallow ponds where they cut ice with saws and it’s their annual ‘man frolic’, and something they cherish. This took me back. I’ve seen a dozen men on ice cutting it in frigid weather, and it doesn’t look like fun, but hard work.  But this is the Amish way of thinking: work and play are combined. And how they sing and laugh while doing it.

Of course, I wondered what the women thought of using iceboxes. They said, tongue in cheek, as long as the men carried in the huge ice blocks, it worked just like a refrigerator. And some were attached to their iceboxes in a nostalgic way. Now, their ordnung has changed since the Marcellus Shale is under W. PA and many Amish hire companies to drill for natural gas. So, some have natural gas powered refrigerators. The goal of Amish life is to live off the grid, and as long as there are no bills to pay, they're fine with it. They also use wind power, which makes it so picturesque to see windmills dotted all over the countryside.

 

 

All the icehouses are white to reflect heat.

They also match Amish homes, almost all being sided in white.

 

 

There are two well insulated doors on an icehouse.

They keep two years worth of ice just in case there's a mild winter.

 

Shelves are placed inside so it doubles as a freezer.

Why there's a watermellon in this one, I didn't ask.

 

Notice the insulation. It's about a foot thick!

 

 

 

 

These pictures of iceboxes are not mine, but from Wiki Commons.

 I've seen many styles of iceboxes in Amish homes, but the one on the right is the most common.

A cube of ice is put on the bottom left door.

 

 

Amish Winter Pictures shot in Smicksburg, PA

 

I'm not a professional photographer, but snow seems to make everything so angular, clean, and well, easy to fake that I'm a pro ;) Tim and I took our cameras up to Smicksburg after half a foot of snow fell. How crisp the air and everything around us was, and we want to share these favorite pictures with you. Smicksburg is approximately 60 miles NE of Pittsburgh, and so charming with many little shops, it the perfect destination for a vacation. For more info, contact www.smicksburg.net

 

 

 

 

 

A buggy port



Setting for Smicksburg Baptist Church in all my books.



Red barn set against white snow.

 

My favorite one-room schoolhouse.

 

Roman's Rocker Shop.

"Granny Weaver's" porch where the Amish Knitting Circle started. I visited Granny and she was canning pork. Her son, Roman, was slaughtering pigs in the barn. I did not visit Roman that day

 ;( I love pigs.

 

 

Many Amish have small greenhouses. This one can collapse if snow isn't removed so it's being shoveled off.

 

 

 

My favorite. An Amish snowplow.

 

 

 

Here's an Amish man I know who's making the path clear for the mailman. Rural routes are delivered by car and snow needs to be removed. The Amish write a lot of letters, and getting  mail's a real link to the outside world.

People walking everywhere. That's one thing you notice in Amish country. Taking a walk for pleasure of needing to get somewhere, they're always on their feet, even in frigid weather.

 

 

The Amish let us take a picture of these gorgeous horses. (They're hidden in the barn as no photos allowed of faces.) I've always loved cows, those big lugs pulling at my heart with their huge eyes. But an Amish friend thinks I should get a  horse at the local auction.  Hmm....as you age, you're supposed to try new things....never know ;)  

 

Stacks of corn still  line fields. Corn is important all year as feed for livestock and the deer seem to appreciate the stalks peeking up through the snow as well.

 

A buggy port

 

Another Weaver farm

 

 

One of the many Weaver brothers' farmhouses. This family, after having 8 boys, finally have a daughter and are pleased as can be.

Currier and Ives postcards all around us.

 

 

 

 

 

"Granny Weaver's" granddaughter on the road to Granny's. Martha is 15 and just loves nature.

 

 

My friend, Barb, and her nine children run these 2 large greenhouse.

How do the Amish shop? Thrifty tips to stretch your dollars

Before I knew any Amish folks, I had an advantage to thrifty shopping, since my mom and dad were both first-generation Italian/Croatian, respectively. When you see through the eyes of a foreigner, so to speak, you see the materialism and entitlement mentality that many Americans have. As my Italian grandma used to say if I wanted something big, “Hey Kad, you think you something-a special, uh?”

When I had four kids under the age of seven living in rural Upstate New York, I met many Amish, and became close with Harry and Katie Hershberger. He had a variety store attached to his house, being wheelchair bound, and we shopped there regularly. What struck me right off the bat was there was no pressure whatsoever from Harry to buy something. This is so simple, but hard to live by. We’re always bombarded with advertisements, but the Amish pay in cash, and know a penny only goes so far.

 One day, after picking Katie’s brain for cost effective recipes, she mentioned their food co-op. It was an “Amish only” closed bulk store. Instead of showing a card to get in, I was to say, “Harry and Katie sent me.” I’ll never forget our first visit. I had all four kids in tow, and we walked into the store behind an Amish house, and all eyes landed on me, full of suspicion. “Harry and Katie sent me,” I quickly said, and with relaxed faces and smiles, they welcomed us in. You see, a co-op is a lot of work for a few people, to benefit the Amish community. I didn’t contribute to their communal way of living and was about to reap its benefits, but that’s how much a real friendship with an Amish family is valued. I learned later we were called “Trusted English Friends.”

Back to shopping. My jaw dropped when I saw all the prices in this co-op. C-H-E-A-P. The Amish don’t believe in price gouging, but helping each other save. The women in the store give out recipes: cost saving recipes. The Amish collect these recipes, and try other ways of making it better with less money, as if it were an art form. My favorite to this day is making granola. The Amish put in everything edible but the kitchen hand pump, mix in gooey brown sugar syrup, and consume it. “The kids don’t know there’s stale cereal in there,” they’d say. Well, I tried it, and it works. J

 So, the Amish work hard to help each other save money, and we can do the same. When I see an item majorly on sale, I text people in my “co-op” and ask if they need any. When I go up to Smicksburg to Lydia dry good store, I contact my “co-op” and buy for them. They do the same, when they see a sale.

 I can’t really write this little article if I didn’t bring in the Amish love of Wal-Mart. If you ever want to see Amish people, go to a rural Wal-Mart! It’s so fun to watch them. They don’t go often, maybe once a month, but do they ever stock-up. There’s a bus from Smicksburg, PA to Indiana, PA, fifteen miles away, just to take the Amish to Wal-Mart once a month. I was at Lydia’s after one of her Wal-Mart sprees, and she and her husband were lit up and very animated. “Do you know how cheap it is to get walnuts at Wal-Mart?” they asked with glee, skipping around the kitchen, putting their groceries away. I had to hold back the laughter. The Amish really think it’s fun to save money.

Fun to save? Why? Like I said, when you pay cash for everything, you know there’s a limit, right? So, it’s almost like a game to them as to how much they can get with their dollars. I think there’s a real joy in a goal that’s met, too.

One thing that may shock you is that the Amish also attend garage sales, flea markets, second-hand stores and auctions. I saw a group of Amish women at my local Salvation Army. Of course, they weren’t buying clothes, but books to devour or household items, such as dishes, pots and pans etc. Many people wouldn’t be caught dead in a Goodwill of Salvation Army, but not me. I learned early in life from my Italian grandma, “I’m not something-a too special.” And since we pay cash now, too, I get really excited to see how I can stretch a dollar.

 Inside Lydia's dry-goods store. Most Amish co-ops and/or dry-goods stores look similar. What they have in common are prices around 2/3rds cheaper than retail stores, and healthy organic items.

A letter to my children on living out Amish Simplicity

I was listening to Joyce Meyer the other day, and something stuck me deeply. She spoke about the lack of peace she used to have, white-knuckling every decisions every day. Big decisions bring stress, and if you make them daily, you will have no peace or simplicity of mind…Hmmm. She was talking about my husband and me!  And then I thought of Suzanne Woods Fishers’ book, Amish Peace. The lacks of choices, Suzanne says, make the Amish not deprived, but free to not have to make so many decisions.

To understand this, I’d like to share a letter to my four adult “kids” to help them recognize that they inherited a white-knuckle mind from their father and yours truly.

 Dear kids,

Dad and I have been talking lately about what we learned from and the Amish, Suzanne Woods Fishers book, Amish Peace, and Joyce Meyer. We both tend to make life changing decisions daily, and know that it’s brought stress into our lives, and for me, unsettling dreams. Just over the past week, we talked about the following:

Should we go on vacation this year or not?

Should we get a Lab, a poodle or a Labradoodle?

Should we keep savings in dollars or invest in assets?

Should we buy the little house for sale down the road (an asset) to rent out as an investment?

Should we start another business? We can buy Amish rockers off of Roman at wholesale and sale online? It would help Roman and is a tax right-off.

Should I go to Costa Rica with dad on business trips, and if so, should I go out into impoverished areas and blog about poverty? Should I blog for Compassion?

We’re both making this the “Year of Health and Fitness”. Should we buy a rowing machine? Join Weight Watchers online or go into town for meetings?

So many people are hurting and I can’t keep up with making prayer shawls. Should I start a knitting circle, since more hands make light work?

Should we join a small group Bible study in our church?

Should we start a small group Bible study in our house?

Should we build a little cabin in our woods in Smicksburg, or get a retro trailer off Craigslist? If we build a tiny house cabin on wheels we pay no taxes and give employment to Melvin and Levi, our Amish friends.

Should we go to visit family in Italy this year, and if so, should I write about my awesome Italian grandma as a memoir?

Should we get a goat this year or expand our herd of chickens? Or get a cow? If we get a cow, we’ll need a pole barn, and that means employment for Amish friends.

We got a letter asking if they could do fragging on our fifteen acres in Smicksburg, which is on the Marcellus Shale. I threw the letter in the garbage, since it would upset the Amish who border our property. No, it bothers me that they’d would go in and cut down virgin trees. Am I anti-fragging or not? Do I want this country energy sufficient? Am I helping the Saudi’s?   

These aren’t even all the things we discussed, as some are private.

So, over the past weekend, we went out for our 32^nd wedding anniversary, and when we caught ourselves making “big decisions” we laughed and changed the subject. I cannot believe the peace this action produced. As you know, Dad and I love the Amish and are drawn to their culture, but is it the lack of decisions they have to make every day that we envy, in a good way? Time will tell, as we’ve decided to take time once a week or month to talk about big or troubling decisions. We suggest you all do the same... 

Love you more,

Mom

 

 Readers, I highly recommend Suzanne Woods Fishers book, Amish Peace, and Joyce Meyers’ Battlefield of the Mind to understand all I’m trying to say here. You can find them wherever books are sold. Oh, but they both have radio shows to listen to. Should you listen to their radio shows or buy their books? If you listen to the radio it’s free, leaving you money to invest, but not in dollars, as inflation is kicking in. LOL.

Please leave advice in the comments section if you’re looking to have more Amish simplicity of mind, and how you do it. For Tim and myself, we go often to Smicksburg, to detox from a busy world with too many choices. Lydia's living room, pictured below, according to blog stats, has had the most views than any other picture! Why do you think this picture draws so much attention world-wide?