I've been driving a delivery truck through Amish country (MI) for the past couple months, and have a couple random questions that you folks can maybe answer. I am very curious & a bit in awe of these folks, and my inquiries are made with utmost respect... First, I never see any horses other than bay-color, pulling the carriages. Never see other colors in their fields, either, except for draft horses. Is there a reason they use only dark horses, or is that not actually the case? Also, when I stop in the small stores or gas stations in these towns, I often see Amish children buying candy or pop there. They are frequently, (forgive me) rather "poor" looking, with clothes that are too small, over-mended, etc., and I've seen several little boys that needed their hair & fingernails cut, etc., looking rather neglected. I think I had a stereotypical image about Amish families & parenting, but I guess maybe in actuality they run the gamut with parenting skills, just like the rest of us. Out of curiosity, do the Amish have a teen-pregnancy problem, and do they use any type of contraception (married couples)? Also, are there "rich" Amish? I see plenty of poorer-looking Amish farms, and very few really nice ones. On my route, I even pass a farm where the family lives in a modern (though beat-up) trailer, with the black carriage right out front! An odd juxtaposition, especially in an area of old farmhouses. About those farmhouses & barns: do the Amish not use paint? Seems that all of the Amish homes I pass on my route need a SERIOUS paint job, house & outbuildings, both. There is a neglected look to the buildings, though the grounds are usually admirably clean & free of clutter and debris. Wish my farm looked like that! About their animals...do the Amish keep pets, or does every animal have to have a purpose on the farm. Also, I have heard that Amish tend not to be overly-kind to their horses, etc., that the animals are there for a specific purpose, and that's the extent of their importance to the family. The horses I see typically are just-this-side of thin, as though they are fed just enough & not a morsel more! Although I expect that horses who actually work for a living would have a leaner look about them. I have other curiosities, but this is enough for now! Know that my inquiries are truly meant to be respectful. Thanks for any info!

-- Shannon at Grateful Acres Animal Sanctuary (gratacres@aol.com), January 07, 2001

Answers

Hi Shannon, I am not extremely familiar with the Amish, other than the fact that they show up at the racetrack to buy horses who are not successful in harnessracing. This could be the reason the horses are mostly bay colored-most standardbreds are. As for their looking thin, standardbreds are a slim, sleek breed and after being raised with quarterhorses, I too thought standardbreds looked too thin. Our standardbreds are very well fed (Bill says I overfeed), yet they never put on weight, next to my oldfashioned Morgan they look anorexic! I have been told they work their horses hard and there is opposition among some racing people to selling horses to them, but it could just be a matter of perspective or the individual groups of Amish. Also, if you'd ever seen my 4 year old daughter, you might assume she is unkempt because she likes to color herself with markers (for Christmas she got a body art kit to she's not using regular markers), insists on picking her own clothes, plays in the dirt piles, spends time in the barn, and screams bloody murder when I brush her hair, so much of the time she looks unkempt despite my fighting with her daily to clean up. My other two girls are spotless, though so I'm sure if people see us they can get the idea that it's the indivual child. Just some hints as to why things may apear the way they do.

-- Epona (crystalepona2000@yahoo.com), January 07, 2001.

Shannon.Where do you live? I grew up in Amish country,and the description does not fit very much to what I knew.

They are "plain folk" and yes they have certain beliefs about color and what they would consider baubles.

The children I've seen over the years were well behaved and well taken care of.If they look a little dirty,it is because they have an outdoor lifestyle, not because they are neglected. If you had seen me growing up,I would have looked the same way,when not in school.I can assure you,I was not neglected.As far as mended clothes or too small,It is a use it up mentality,not neglect.

The amish are pacifists,and different-this can make them a target.Where I lived in central PA, the kids road the schoolbus to their own school.They got treated badly by the other kids on the bus,as reported to me by my stepson.They would not fight back.

There is also diversity within the amish community,some will have phones in a workshop for business purposes.Chainsaws are ok for some,but autos are not.It ties into their beliefs and you would have to study that, to make sense out of it.

I'll note that an Amish fellow lived next door to me in a trailer once,and he was,frankly, rather an outcast.So maybe that is what you are seeing.In some areas land has gotten too high priced for purchasing new farms for the children,and they are moving to other areas.This may be what you have,as well.

I will take an Amish for a neighbor any day,even if they do bum rides.They are in my experience good people.Wish I could say the same about my southern baptist neighbors.

-- sharon wt (wildflower@ekyol.com), January 07, 2001.

Lehman's sells eight book on understanding the Amish and Mennonites. All are reasonably priced.

I have read where you are not automatically in the Amish faith or church when born. At age, I think 18, children are encouraged to go out and explore the outside world. I think it is called 'the wild period' or something. For some the wildness may be putting a radio in a buggy. For some it is loud dance parties. And, yes, for some it may be drugs and alcohol. Only after they have made a decision to stay Amish are they baptised into the church.

I cannot address teenage pregnancy. However, I recall reading about someone who looked at the Puritans. They compared the date of marriage to date of the birth of the first child. Over half came within nine months.

I understand their practices vary significantly from sect-to-sect or community-to-community, so any generalization is difficult.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), January 07, 2001.

Your experience sounds the complete opposite of my impression having visited the backroads of Shipshewanna,Indiana for many years now. These people are spotless and their homesteads are the same. Some have mammoth spreads. I have never noticed any "unkeptness" except at one place and never any mobile homes although the county might not allow them there. On some new construction this past summer, they are even attaching their "barns" now to the houses and they look more like traditional housing with two-car garages. The people that I have seen in their stores are all clean and I have never seen a hole or patch on anything.

-- Sandy Davis (smd2@netzero.net), January 07, 2001.

We have lots of Amish around here (WI). One family used to process my turkeys for me, but they did a lousy job and charged me twice what others had! Very nice people though; I have a van, and took a whole brood to town many a time--they paid for gas. Their yard was always incredibly untidy, and they have since moved away.

Most of the Amish around here are very poor according the appearances of their farms and to real estate agents I have talked to; I had four horses trained by one fellow last summer. Boy did they lose weight!! Good deal for em though, they were too fat! His whole family were extremely friendly and talkative; I learned alot from him.

As far as pets, most of them around this area do have dogs.. 2 or 3 little mutts, usually not neutered.

Sounds like Amish come in all different flavors, same as the rest of us.

-- Earthmama (earthmama48@yahoo.com), January 07, 2001.

sounds like the Amish that around here, in MICH,, have seen others in PENN,, and it was totaly opposite, emaculate houses and clothing, ect,,

-- Stan (sopal@net-port.com), January 07, 2001.

Most Amish in the thumb area of michigan are not the clean and tidy of Penn. or Ship. some do try but from what I found out they are Amish that are not in good standings with the orginal group (Old Order)because some have married outside of order,others because they have change their views,etc. Some of your new progressive groups (Beachy,New Amish) permit the use of autos,and such. Also there is a group of Old Order Mennonites that talk,dress,and farm like Amish but are not as meticulous as the Old Order Amish. the Amish have the same problems we do with kids,finances,pollution, spouses,etc. sometimes we do great, sometimes we do not so great.

Take care Tom

-- Tom from Mich. (tjk@cac.net), January 07, 2001.

Since most of my friends are Amish and i have lived and worked among them for years, I guess I am qualified to share some thoughts. There are "Old Order" Amish and then everybody else calling themselves Amish so it gets confusing. Old Order Amish do not recognize anybody else as Amish (but we probably would)...No electricity, no automobiles, no bicycles, no phones in the house (phones for businesses and a phone on the lane shared by several families are OK), no outside natural gas lines (propane tanks are the norm),,no alcohol except wine specially made for communion in their church, men may smoke, women may not.Men and boys may have buttons on their clothing, women my not. Boys and unmarried men shave, married men do not ever shave their beards again. Girls and women do not ever cut their hair. Men always wear black pants. Women wear either black dresses or dark shades of other colors..favorites are blue and green and brown. Unmarried girls wear white aprons to church.All women have their heads covered with either a cap or a bonnet or both. Young girls do not have to wear haead coverings except to church. Men always wear a hat unless they are inside someone's home.Women secure their dresses with straight pins, some of which are heirlooms from 200 years ago. It is not forbidden to have "pets". Many homes have birds and small dogs. Horses are thought of as you would your truck..pragmatically. "National Velvet" would not fare well unless it was worth the feed. I liked to remind folks that all of our ancestors who were from the country were pretty much the same regarding horses. I have seen plenty of instances where I wanted to personally rescue a poor horse from an Amish farm...one of the few things they do that upset me greatly.There are poor Amish, but mostly frugal people who have a great deal of money (at least in PA)...Problem is that they are running out of affordable farmland and must "work away", usually at minimum wage..Hard to support a large family. Contraception is deeply frowned upon for anyone without a health problem, but if a woman would be in danger of ill-health from pregnacies, BC pills or tubal ligation is more than accepted. Church membership is offered at age 18 and can be differed until age 25. I'd be glad to answer more if anybody wants. God bless.

-- Lesley (martchas@bellsouth.net), January 07, 2001.

In my county, (Adams County, Indiana) there are at least 21 different Amish churches. If you go north of town, those Amish use lawn mowers, and other gas engines. The Amish to the east and south of town shun gas engines. The homes north of town are for the most part much nicer looking and cleaner. Many of the Amish homes in my neighborhood are very shabby looking.

I believe that a lot of this has to do with the combined wealth of the church members. The Amish take care of their own, and if there are a lot of wealthy Amish in the church, then all members will benefit. The church will usually pay large hospital bills, and I am certain that the better off help the poorer ones. Of course, it would stand to reason that there are churches that are full of wealthier Amish, and some that are entirely poor.

Around here, none of the Amish have covered buggys. The only thing they have to protect them from the wind and rain is an umbrella. I have heard some complain about the bishop not letting them use covered buggys. Of course the bishop never rides in one because he has a driver take him everywhere in a car.

Most of our Amish men have taken to construction work for a living. They hire "english" drivers to haul them to their jobs. There is a joke about this. If 90% of people where Amish, what would the other 10% be? Amish haulers. Actually though, this has provided some very good paying jobs for many of my class mates that finished in the bottom two percent of my class.

Having lived with the Amish all of my life, I can assure you that they are just like everybody else. There are good ones and there are bad ones. Unfortunately they all suffer from the prejudices of many of the english people in the area.

As far as teen pregnancy, If they get married on Saturday, then it's a shotgun wedding. Normally they get married on Thursday.

-- Wayne (plefor@hotpop.com), January 07, 2001.

Lesley-My life growing up was very much like "Doing laundry in 1917." We came home from school changed into work clothes, hitched the team of mules and hauled fire wood and logs.We also used horses and mules to do all farm work as we had no tractor.Our horses and mules were well fed and cared for.When we worked our animals they were always fed first.That was the way my grandpa taught me.

-- Bettie Ferguson (jobett@dixie-net.com), January 07, 2001.

The Amish near me in Southern Indiana have money. They sold land to the coal company (meneral rights only, they got the land back after it had been mined) Living near then I can tell you they are not the picture post card perfect people we would like to believe they are. As for teen preg. well lets just say, they marry young.

-- grant (organicgrange@yahoo.com), January 07, 2001.

I usually only run into the Amish around here rarely, but I'm skeptical. At horse auctions, I have seen some very poor horses go for a whole lot more than they are worth because the horse owners in the area will outbid the Amish if they can -- the local ones don't care well for their horses. I see them in early morning cross country hauls (I'm hauling horses in a trailer) and they are out trotting the poor horses down the blacktop -- HARD! They could be on the shoulder for the horse's legs, but they aren't. One of the horse vets I know is less than enthused about them -- says that any horse they have had is broken down and often dies of parasites since they don't deworm.

I happened to get into a house this summer that was owned by the Amish before the present owner moved in and it was trashed. They'd had a chimney fire that cracked the blocks and it was unusable, altho the homesteader now owning it was fixing it up, replacing broken windows, insulating, etc. There was a whole lot of trash and garbage just thrown out into a gulley behind the house that was from them as well.

There has also been some controversy about the Amish around the U.S. being puppy mill-ers. They raise the animals in tiny cages and unsanitary conditions like other puppy mills, as a cash crop, and up until recently (and still may be, I don't know) have been able to do so under an umbrella of this being their religious faith/right/heritage and not subject to health inspections.

That isn't to say that all Amish are that way. I sure hope they're not. I'm sure that despite the religious angle, there are some who are kind and compassionate and others who aren't, just like every other walk of life.

-- Julie Froelich (firefly1@nnex.net), January 07, 2001.

regarding Amish 'churches'..Old Order Amish do not have any. They hold worship services every other Sunday in peoples' homes or barns.The inbetween Sunday is used for extensive visiting in the community. Amish are forbidden to ride in cars on Sunday unless there is an emergency.This keeps folks in their buggies and therefore in their communities making and receiving social calls. As for pregnancy before marriage; Amish count quite well....if a young couple has a baby before nine months after the wedding and it is not premature by weight, that couple is shunned by the community for anywhere from 6 months to a year. That means no participation in community gatherings, no sharing a meal with relatives or friends, and virtual social isolation..not something to be taken lightly! The reason they marry so young is to keep the morals of the community intact. A person cannot get married before they belong to the church and they cannot be a member of the church until they are 18, so it works out well. Out of the thousands of Amish I have met, I only was aware of one couple who were shunned for induldging in sex before marriage.God bless.

-- Lesley (martchas@bellsouth.net), January 08, 2001.

I have a question. What is the difference between Amish and Mennonites? I get the feeling Mennonites are a little more "modern". There are some Mennonites in the next county who have a bulk food store and they are some of the nicest people I've ever met and the store is spotless. I'm sure Amish and Mennonites are the same as everyone else. There are good ones and bad ones just like there are good Southern Baptists and not so good ones.

-- bwilliams (bjconthefarm@yahoo.com), January 09, 2001.

bw: Amish and Mennonites used to be all the same church in Europe a few hundred years ago. They were fiercely persecuted there, with many folks killed. There were two leaders in that church, one fellow named Mennon, and another named Ammon.They all had to give up church buildings in exchange for safety and worshipped in secret in each others' homes. When they left Europe as a group (1700s), Mennon felt that it was safe to establish church buildings in America and worship openly, while still keeping mostly to themselves in a tight community. Ammon felt just as strongly that to build churches and worship openly was a mistake, even in a new country and they should keep themselves strictly apart from other folks.Hence the split in their church, with Mennonites having church buildings and "sort of' assimilating into the larger society by adapting along with it and using cars, electricity, phones, modern farm equipment, etc. as they were invented. There are several sub-sects of Mennonites throughout the USA..some are unidentifiable in the larger society, and are completely "modern"..others are recognized by the men wearing straw black or grey hats and the women wearing flowered print dresses and a white lace round head covering at all times. Added to that there are "Team Mennonites" who are of a similar mind to Old Order Amish in every way except they worship in church buildings. Their women wear long grey dresses (down to the ground) and large grey bonnets..their buggies are grey instead of black. There are not many of them around.All of this explains why folks have different understandings about Amish and Mennonites! Folks will swear that they know Amish who use electricity and drive cars and Mennonites who only use buggies! God bless.

-- Lesley (martchas@bellsouth.net), January 09, 2001.

Then what is the difference between Hudderites and Amish? Here in Montana we have several Hudderite colonies and maybe one Amish colony (I think). Do the Amish fix their meals collectively and eat in a dining hall, or is each family on their own?

-- (trigger@mcn.net), January 09, 2001.

No, Amish maintain individual homes and land ownership. They are a community, not communal society.

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), January 09, 2001.

Hello! Just found this site and am already hooked on it. I run a dairy farm here in WI and live about 30 miles from an Amish community. I have spoked with several of them at farm auctions and have found them to be very friendly, yet usually won't speak to you first. I don't think they are poor - they produce farm products that sell at the same price I'm getting but they have only a fraction invested in equipment that I do. But, I have heard that much of what an individual makes is given to the "community" for school, churches, etc. So as a whole, the community has a lot of $$ at their disposal.

A few years ago, I had an opportunity to deliver a load of corn to an Amish farm. We do custom harvesting and the fella we were cutting for sold a load to the Amish. I was VERY impressed by the ingenuity of these folks. They used one Honda small engine to power several pieces of equipment around the farm and had it set up to quickly remove it from one piece to power another. They also had a large woodworking shop where they produced tables, chairs, cabinets, etc. There was an old three cylinder diesel engine that powered about 10 woodowrking machines in that shop, as well as an undergound auger that took sawdust to a kiln that they used to dry lumber. Also was a blacksmith shop where they were building a new ground-driven manure spreader that looked exactly like several I've seen backed into the edge of some woods on old farms that haven't been used for 80+ years. It's also interesting to drive through Amish country in the summer during oat harvest and look at all the fields with grain shocks on them.

There are also a few clans around that will used motorized equipment - as long as there are no rubber tires on them! They relate tires with the ability to travel long distances with powered machines. There are a few around that run the latest high-dollar high-tech tractors with four wheel drive and have steel wheels on all four!

Take care! Tom

-- Thomas Langan (twlangan@discover-net.net), January 09, 2001.

Thanks Lesley, I've always wondered what the difference was. I must say that I admire both the Amish and Menninites for sticking by their beliefs and not comforming to the world. I believe other churches could learn a lot from them.

-- bwilliams (bjconthefarm@yahoo.com), January 09, 2001.

bw: Neil & I have never had better friends in our lives! We were invited to join their church (quite an honor), but I told them I would bleed to death trying to hold my dress up with stick pins and the bishops would be at the farm daily to correct me for smoking behind the barn and making homemade wine)..they got such a kick out of that answer they still tease me about it. They are, as a group, the warmest most friendly people. We have been to weddings, funerals, worship, dinners,and always had a buggy or two stop by on a Sunday for visits. I miss my friends very much, but the good news is that a vanload of them are planning to visit us here in Alabama in the Fall....I can't wait! God bless.

-- Lesley (martchas@bellsouth.net), January 09, 2001.

I was just wondering if I had a chance with an amish boy. I think that some are rather attractive and my friend and I have discussed the possibility of being swept up in a courting buggy. I am not joking. Is there a place to go meet eligible Amish boys?

-- e.d. (is_she_weird@yahoo.com), October 13, 2001.