Chapter Eleven

A Gift to Be Simple

A 2003 STUDY by the Ohio State University’s agricultural extension service in Geauga County revealed that the net profit per acre for Amish wheat farmers was $126 while for conventional farmers it was $10. The study went on to show that start-up and operational costs for the Amish farmers were about 5 percent of what they were for conventional farmers, one reason being that labor costs are much lower for Amish farmers whose children do much of the work. Another is that their farms, averaging 60 acres, are smaller and more easily worked with horse-drawn equipment than larger farms averaging 500 to 1,000 acres and often worked by only one or two people. Many Amish children, who leave school at the end of eighth grade, work throughout their adolescence on the farm while others go to work in factories and restaurants but turn over their wages to their parents. Most Amish live at home until they marry, so grown sons and daughters continue to help the family.

They call themselves “the plain people,” and simplicity is what they say they desire. The children go barefoot in all seasons except winter. Clothing conforms to the practices of the church: men wear denim overalls and hats; women long dresses, aprons, and bonnets. Some more liberal Amish groups allow men to wear straw hats and women to wear green, purple, or blue dresses and white caps. Their houses have no electricity, they use horse-drawn buggies and wagons for travel, and they do not serve in the armed forces. Most do not vote, although some do.

The church began in the seventeenth century in Switzerland when their group, named for Jakob Ammann, broke from the Swiss Brethren, part of the Anabaptist Movement begun by liberal Protestants who wanted to eliminate all vestiges of Catholic practice from their churches. The Anabaptists eventually divided into three groups—Brethren, Mennonites (named for the Dutch priest Menno Simons), and Amish—whose differences with the others stemmed not from belief but practice. All Anabaptists were persecuted by Catholics and more conservative Protestant groups, causing them to move to the hinterlands and take up farming for their livelihood. Eventually the Dutch Mennonites were tolerated, while the Swiss Brethren were persecuted for centuries. Large numbers immigrated to other countries, particularly the United States. The largest Amish settlement in the world, numbering over two hundred thousand, is in Holmes County, Ohio, and many live in the surrounding counties of Wayne, Ashland, Richland, Knox, and Tuscarawas. There are sizable communities in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and other states and countries, including Canada and Belize.

In America, both Brethren and Amish broke into smaller groups, the Brethren splitting into the Church of the Brethren, which remained pacifist, and the Brethren Church, which abandoned pacifism after the Second World War. The Amish divided themselves into even more groups, each based on practice—what kind of clothing they wear, what color buggy they drive, or whether they worship at home or in church. There are “wide-brim Amish” and “narrow-brim Amish”; “black-hat Amish” and “strawhat Amish”; “black-buggy Amish” and “yellow-buggy Amish”; “house Amish” (the most conservative) and “church Amish.” Just as many non-Amish mistakenly believe that all Amish belong to one order, the Amish refer to those outside their community by all-encompassing terms—anner Satt leit (“the other kind of people”), or “the English.” Even recent immigrants from Mexico or Asia are called “the English.”

What unites the Amish is their literal interpretation of the New Testament injunction of separation from the world, especially Romans 12:2 (“Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God”) and II Corinthians 6:14 (“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?”). They base their pacifism on John 18:36: “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight.” Even their philosophy of life, seemingly so attached to the earth, is otherworldly: they view themselves as “strangers and pilgrims” in the present and emphasize obedience and self-denial over the notion of “grace by faith alone” as some Protestant groups do. None knows until the Judgement Day of his or her salvation. One of the greatest of all sins is that of pride, either of knowledge or personal display. Weddings are simple affairs, usually with no names attached to wedding gifts. Photographs are forbidden as evidence of vanity. Some Amish believe that even keeping themselves, their children, or their farms clean is evidence of the sin of pride, while others believe that cleanliness is their duty, and so many non-Amish neighbors incorrectly distinguish between only two types, the “dirty” and the “clean” Amish.

One controversy between Amish and Mennonites included the practices of shunning those who departed from Amish custom and excommunicating women who spoke falsehoods, and the conviction that noble-hearted non-Amish people could be saved. Believing that one’s own sect had the only answer to salvation was nothing new, of course; what was different was that they did not seek converts, preferring to bring new members to the church only through their own families. The most liberal of the Anabaptist sects had become the most conservative.

The Amish are indeed resourceful. They know how to grow food, build houses, and install plumbing. They are all trilingual, speaking their own dialect of German, High German, and English. Amish communities have survived and grown, while the Shakers (who did not believe in procreation but depended on conversion for membership), Mennonites of the Zoar community, and the followers of Fourier (Brook Farm, Massachusetts) and Owen (New Harmony, Indiana) did not. They keep in touch: their newspaper, The Budget, published (in English) in Walnut Creek, Ohio, contains information about Amish families as far away as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

They are a visible part of the larger community: one sees hitching posts at nearly every large store and hospital in Ashland, Wayne, and Holmes Counties. The large medical facility of the Cleveland Clinic in Wooster set aside an area of its parking lot for buggies. One Thanksgiving day, during a drive through Millersburg—the town called the “heart” of the Amish country—I saw more buggies than cars. On a recent farm tour visit in Tuscarawas County, I encountered more buggies than cars, partly because it was Sunday, which they set aside for visiting. Many families supplement farm income by selling storage sheds and birdhouses. A common sight along the roads in Amish country is a buggy and a family selling commodities—handwoven rugs, scarves, bird-houses, bread, pies, and jam—while the tethered horse grazes beside them. The Amish always had more and better produce than I did when years ago I sold some of my crop at the local auction, and so I gave up raising produce for sale. Driving Route 96 between Ashland and Mansfield, one can see Amish children playing on swings and a slide in the yard of a one-room school-house. Horses wait patiently in a stable outside a Mennonite church on a narrow road in Clear Creek Township in northern Ashland County while parishioners worship on Sunday in a church that has no windows—so no curious onlookers can disturb them.

David Kline, an Amish man who has lived and worked on the same seventy-acre family farm in north-central Ohio for over fifty years, is also the author of two books, Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer’s Journal and Scratching the Woodchuck: Nature on an Amish Farm, and for a long time edited the magazine Farming, People, Land, and Community. The first is structured, like Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (which was also to have been titled “Great Possessions”) and Bromfield’s Malabar Farm, according to the seasons. Kline describes primarily the bird life he is able to attract to his farm in Holmes County because he practices diversified agriculture. He also describes other wildlife such as deer and insects and devotes a chapter to the American chestnut. As Aldo Leopold names a chapter for the band number of a chickadee, Kline names one for the band number of a Canada goose. His brief introduction includes his philosophy: “The Amish are not necessarily against modern technology,” he writes; “We have simply chosen not to be controlled by it.” He describes a neighbor who used chemicals to kill weeds in accordance with the no-till technology, which is supposed to save farmers time and help to conserve soil, but which killed off nesting bobolinks. In Great Possessions Kline laments the loss that farmers will sustain who are eager to ease the burden of their work with the chemicals required by no-till: “Presently no-till farming with its dependence on vast amounts of chemicals is being touted by the experts as the way to guarantee green fields forever. What they fail to say is that those green fields will be strangely silent—gone will be the bobolink, the meadowlark, and the sweet song of the vesper sparrow in the twilight.”

Kline emphasizes the type of crop rotation that discourages insects and thus eliminates the need for insecticides. When corn follows hay, he advises, there are fewer crop-damaging insects. He paraphrases Wes Jackson on what is often described as the tedium of farming: “The pleasantness or unpleasantness of farm work depends upon the scale—upon the size of the field and the size of the crop.” By staying with the horse, the Amish have maintained a proper scale, says Kline. With farms the size of his, there is always something to do, yet farmers are not overwhelmed. Families work together and thereby grow together. While doing chores with his son, Kline was able to hear about the issues of adolescence. When he, his wife, and five of their children bundled straw on a thirteen-acre wheat field (a chore called “shocking”), the job was soon finished because everyone helped.

Kline’s Amish upbringing does not seem to have limited his acquaintance with the world. He writes knowledgeably not only of farming practices but also wildlife and geology. In Great Possessions he includes a detailed history of three alien species intentionally introduced which are considered by many to have become pests—the starling, house sparrow, and carp. He states that Hotspur’s line in I Henry IV about starlings led to their being brought to America: “Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak / nothing but ‘Mortimer.’” The breadth of Kline’s knowledge seems to disprove the commonly held assumption that the Amish are barely literate because they leave school after the eighth grade: it was drug manufacturer Eugene Schieffelin who introduced a hundred starlings into Central Park in New York City merely because he wanted all birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s works to be present in the United States. (They may be considered pests, but flocking starlings weave beautiful patterns over the fields in autumn.)

The desire to live simply is not new: Ben Jonson praised the virtues of Penshurst; the Romantics sought a more honest and liberating way of life; Thomas Jefferson declared that his new nation should be one of yeoman farmers; idealistic young people created a back-to-the-land movement in the 1960s. Antiquarianism is also not new: most societies have a form of the belief that somewhere and at some time, people lived simpler, nobler, more meaningful lives, whether in a golden age of the past or a more primitive place in contemporary times. It is understandable that people romanticize a culture based on strong family values, self-sufficiency, and identification with place. Pictures of Amish farms and buggies decorate calendars, and people look to the Amish example for evidence of the strength of community. Residents of this area enjoy the musical sound of shod horse hooves on pavement and the sight of buggies along the sides of roads.

We often frame our vision, however, to suit our ideals. The workmen who built Penshurst and the servants who labored there lived in a stratified society that offered them few choices; the Romantics, like the sixties generation after them, found themselves irrevocably part of the culture they wished to leave; the yeoman farmers of America found it difficult or impossible to compete with large plantation owners, even as farm families now find it difficult or impossible to compete with agribusiness. Although diversified farming helps to protect ecosystems, and Amish separation from the world necessitates admirable self-reliance, they employ modern conveniences, and they sometimes hold their communities together by coercion, not cooperation.

As a child I visited many Amish farms with my father, and for a time I envied their way of life. After moving to Ashland County, I observed more closely. I knew that they live, work, and trade with non-Amish, but I did not know the extent to which they use modern products and equipment. My first surprise was in seeing them in the grocery stores in Loudonville buying items like frozen pizza and ice cream, which they pack into Coleman containers for the ride home. They cannot own cars or telephones, but they can rent them: many communities before the age of cell phones installed coin-operated telephones for community use.

Anyone expecting Amish workers to build the old way will be disappointed. When I hired a fencing company from Sugar Creek, four Amish men showed up. The post pounder and chain saws were completely modern, but they were leased, not owned, by the company. (This practice of leasing leads non-Amish to describe them as “sneaky,” an epithet that could be attached to any religious group that does not adhere literally to its own teachings.) Far from making all their own clothes, the Amish sometimes shop in clothing stores. While the women do make most of their dresses, many of the men’s bib overalls come from China. One day in the very large Meijer store in Mansfield I saw many Amish. Outside, a Greyhound touring bus, hired for that day, waited while dozens of bonneted women loaded their purchases into the luggage hold. They sometimes rent smaller vans to shop in the stores in Loudonville and Ashland.

Young Amish men and women may listen to popular music, even rock music, so long as they have not yet married or joined the church, which they do at age twenty-one. Young men used to carry boom boxes or radios in the backs of their buggies; now they have MP3 players. Likewise, the belief that their way of life is quiet and pleasant is not entirely accurate. While they don’t have electric tools, they have gas-driven machines that are sometimes ear-splittingly loud. I take my horse tack to a leather worker who uses a noisy gas-powered cutter. Some neighbors have told me they once lived beside an Amish family that operated their own sawmill: from dawn to dusk the ripsaws roared, shattering the peace and quiet of the countryside. No laws could be invoked to stop it because the area was zoned for general farm use, which allows family-run businesses.

The image of the entire Amish family working only on the farm is misleading. Unmarried girls serve as waitresses in the restaurants in the Holmes County towns of Millersburg, Sugar Creek, Walnut Creek, and Berlin. An Amish grocery store in Loudonville does a brisk business in homegrown produce, homemade cheese, and home-baked pastries. Many boys go to work in local cheese factories and lumber mills. A company need have only one Amish worker in order to claim that its products are “Amish made.” Some Amish men hire themselves out as carpenters and even electricians because there are no licensing requirements outside incorporated towns. Self-taught Amish electricians and plumbers are not always competent, as we learned when we had to have nearly everything in our own house replaced or repaired that had been installed by Amish workers. Their honesty and craftsmanship are highly rated, but, like people everywhere, not all are skilled, and not all are honest. The Amish respect for the land does not always apply to the rest of the world; I have seen Amish at the local hay auction and fair throw paper plates and napkins onto the ground even when trash bins were close, although I hope these people do not represent the majority of their group.

The Amish are mostly law-abiding and community oriented, but they do not like to become involved with the “English” even if their own best interests are at stake. They do not regularly take part in task forces that monitor zoning changes or groups that seek to protect waterways and parks. While some Amish leave the church, very few people ever join because the rules of membership keep their communities closed to almost everyone not born into them. When a colleague tried to become a member of an Amish church, the elders told him he would first have to leave his wife and four children because he had been married before. He declined.

The Amish way of life is more sustainable than that of the larger culture because the community members produce much of what they consume, yet like non-Amish they consume things they do not produce, including conveniences that create waste, such as disposable containers. They also find land scarce. Although about 10 percent of their number leave the Amish way of life when they turn eighteen, their numbers are growing because they have large families (ten to fifteen children are not uncommon) and many try to purchase land from non-Amish. When they buy “English” houses they tear out the electrical wiring but retain other conveniences. In Holmes County I have seen bonneted women sitting on plastic Walmart chairs on the decks of split-level houses.

A young woman of my acquaintance who left her Amish family told me that she realized very early that she would leave the community, but she had to keep quiet about her plans right up until her eighteenth birthday. She worked in a factory after she finished eighth grade and turned all her wages over to her father who never explained to her how he used the money. Child labor laws do not apply to their situation, as parents in most states have the option of taking their children’s earnings until age eighteen. She did what most Amish do who want to leave the order—she made friends with an “English” woman who gave her a home until she could save enough money to finish her GED and enroll in college. Choosing the larger world often means separation from families. Many who leave know they cannot return, even to visit. Although she had not officially joined the church before she left home, my acquaintance had not seen her parents or siblings for four years.

This young woman and others who have left the Amish tell me that, far from the simple life where everyone is equal and people help each other, Amish communities have the same stratification the larger society has. The families with least prestige are those in which one or the other parent suffers from some mental illness—more common among the Amish than outsiders know. While they will consult physicians, they will never go to psychiatrists or psychologists because they believe that mental illness stems from personal failure. Clinical depression thus has the status of a character flaw, and the whole family suffers from discrimination by the rest of the community. It is true that when one family needs help—getting in a harvest, for example, or rebuilding a barn that has burned down—the whole community shows up to pitch in. They then return home, my acquaintances tell me, to gossip about the family who was careless enough to let the barn catch fire.

A common belief among Amish women is that having large numbers of children will give them a better place in heaven, and they compete with each other to see who can have the most. Death of infants or children is considered the mother’s failure. One former Amish woman told me about a mother who bragged widely about her eight healthy children but suffered a nervous breakdown when her ninth child died. She grieved, my acquaintance claimed, not because her son was dead but because she believed the death was her fault. Amish women view postnatal depression as a moral failure because they revile no one more than a woman who is not thrilled to have a new baby. My acquaintance described bright-eyed young women who married and set up housekeeping only to find a few years or even months later that they had tied themselves to lives of grinding drudgery. Once a woman has children, she finds it impossible to leave them or support herself, for she has no marketable skills other than domestic labor. Although the Amish way of life involves strict stratification of authority with the men running the farm and women caring for the house, children, and garden, many people believe there is much equality between men and women; however, the men have all the power in decisions about the family and the community. The women do rule the house, but that is the only place where they have any influence. The story of the assault and beard cutting by members of an Amish breakaway sect at Bergholz, Ohio, in 2012 made national headlines, but not so for another true crime story that involved an Amish husband in Wayne County and his girlfriend (a married Mennonite woman) who murdered his wife so that he could be free without having to leave the church.

The most stifling part of the Amish upbringing, however, is not the rules about dress or conduct or even the gossip of neighbors; it is that children are often taught not to ask questions about belief or practice. When they do, the most common answer is “because we do it that way,” whether the query involves clothing, farm practice, or theology. My acquaintance had never been praised for her intelligence and never even realized that she was a quick learner, as most Amish do not prize reading, writing, and learning other than knowledge of farm practices. Any child who shows curiosity realizes quickly not to try to elicit answers from an Amish person but to wait until he or she can have contact with “the English.” Amish children learn to distrust each other because they never know who will report “worldly” questions to parents or clergy, as people who lived under totalitarian regimes say that they had to be extremely careful whom they trusted.

There are many happy Amish people, however, and there is much to recommend their way of life. A former Amish man of my acquaintance says that he never experienced ostracism or shunning when he left home at twenty-six to marry a non-Amish woman whom his family accepted completely. He explained that he had never joined the church and so did not have to upset the family by leaving it, but he also knew people who had left the church after having joined and were still not shunned by their families, who adopted a more accepting attitude toward those who left. A former colleague of mine who lives near Amish farms told me the young Amish women in the community threw a large party to honor the older people—non-Amish and Amish alike. Most significantly for me is the fact that Amish farming impacts the environment far less than conventional practices. The Amish, furthermore, seem to be the only people who have found a way to circumvent agribusiness, which prevents anyone who is not independently wealthy or who does not inherit land from farming.

Rural electrification in the 1930s was considered a great innovation, but ubiquitous power derived from fossil fuel has compromised our independence and self-reliance. I prefer washing clothes by hand, hanging them up to dry, and pumping water from a well and would like to keep food in a root cellar rather than a refrigerator. Most of all I would like to do away with the noise of motor vehicles and return to the quiet music of horse hooves on pavement. We think we travel farther and faster with the internal combustion engine, but I am not sure that is the case, as we also spend a great deal of time in traffic jams.

Watching Amish horses trotting down the city streets or country roads, I consider that the route to freedom is not fewer choices but more, including the flexibility to realize higher ideals rather than our present situation in which a few influential, wealthy people decide how the rest will live. My belief in traditionalism and sustainability, however, coincides with a belief in the importance of questioning the status quo, as Jakob Amman did two centuries ago. I would certainly like to reverse dependence on fossil fuel, pollution of air and water, and suburbanization, which are some of the banes of the last century, but I would not want to jeopardize the civil rights and women’s emancipation that are also its gifts.

Our failures as much as our successes give us our energy, our need for art, and our desire to strive for change but also to preserve what we love. Morality should not be defined by divine retribution but by engagement with the world and acceptance of responsibility for actions. Sustainable land use and modes of transportation as well as more choices of livelihood could enable people to create a better society than imagining an elusive paradise that has never existed.