Recently I did some articles for my local paper on growing up Amish since my editor has a fascination with them. My mom is my source. She was Amish from the day she was born until she was in her early thirties. I too was born Amish, but my family left that culture when I was only four. I think like an Amish person, but don't have the experience of living that life. This article (and the following one) were created off of the information my wonderful mom gave me about the Old Order way of living.
Many people are curious about the Amish and their way of life. I had the privilege of being born into an Amish family. Although we left the Amish when I was about four years old, my parents both grew up in an old order Amish community, old order meaning they lived one of the more old-fashioned styles of Amish life. There are several places in the US where large communities of Amish people live. One of those places is Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which I have visited often during my fifteen years living in PA. Some of the Amish in Lancaster have sinks in their kitchens and even carpet in their living rooms. The Old Order were not allowed to have carpet or sinks. So the information I am giving you is from a type of lifestyle similar to Little House on the Prairie.
Beginning in March or April when my mom was a young Amish woman, she would be helping her mother put in orders to Burpee’s seed catalog for the seeds they would need for their vegetable garden that year. They would send out for green beans, peas, corn, lettuce, radishes and spinach. They also planted lots of potatoes, a vegetable the Amish eat in abundant amounts. But the seeds for potatoes come in the form of chunks of potatoes that contain an “eye” where a root can grow out of. They would buy fifty to one hundred pounds of seed potatoes from a tractor supply store called Orfhlin. If the weather was good that summer, they would harvest a couple hundred pounds of potatoes from this amount of seeds. For tomatoes, cabbage and bells peppers, they would usually buy small plants that had already been started. The Amish, like any people, fall on hard times, and some years my grandmother would be worried they wouldn’t have enough money to buy as many potatoes and seedlings as they would need to provide them with food for the following year.
When the weather turned right, usually in the beginning of May unless the cold was lingering on, my grandfather would plough up the garden to get it ready for planting. He used the Farmer’s Almanac to predict the weather since the Amish are forbidden to have TV or radio. The almanac was surprisingly accurate. Sometimes they would get news of a bad frost coming that night by way of a visit from the milkman or some other English person that had access to the news. Typically they did not interact with the English--what they called any non-Amish person--except for strictly business purposes. If a frost was coming, it was extra work for my mother and her two sisters. They had to cover tiny seedlings with overturned buckets or containers and to save the strawberry bed, they covered it with bed sheets or light blankets. The next day, all the coverings had to be removed so the plants could soak up the sun. Several nights in a row, sometimes, they had to cover their plants to keep them from being killed by the frost. “Day by day we had to feel it out,” my mom said. If they even thought it might frost, they would recover the plants. If they took a chance and left them uncovered and the weather did turn to frosty temperatures, that meant they had to start all over with their planting. All the careful plowing, planting, hoeing and caring for the plants would be wasted and they would have to put in that work all over again, and now with a late start due to taking a risk.
Also during this early stage of summer, my mom and her sisters would take count of all the mason jars and canning lids and rings they had. Since the lids should only be used once, they usually had to buy more lids for this next season’s canning. A large Amish family will end up with hundreds of jars of canned produce and meat by fall to last them through the winter until they can plant fresh again.
Even in May and June days could get really hot by ten in the morning in Bowling Green, Missouri where my mom grew up. So to keep cool, they took advantage of the early morning hours to do things like strawberry picking or tending their garden. If you passed a strawberry field in Amish country, you would see the older women bending from the waist to grasp the red berries. My mom and the younger women would kneel and pick and sometimes crawl along the patch if the straw was clean enough.
The women would also take their work outside under the shade trees where they might catch a breeze. they would clean green beans by snipping off the ends or pop shiny, new peas out of their shells or pull the husks off gleaming, golden corn.
To keep their house cool during the day, they would cover the windows with dark curtains that would keep out the heat of the sun. By afternoon, even the dark curtains did not keep the house cool enough, so my mom would sometimes go for a visit to the dark, cool basement, just to get a small break from the heat. She remembers my grandmother using a cool rag to wipe down her arms and face to cool off. In the evenings, after the work was done, the boys would go swimming in the pond while the girls waded in shallow creek water under some shade trees.
Falling asleep was not always so easy. The windows were open with screens put in them to keep the bugs out. But there wasn’t always a breeze blowing and the upstairs where the bedrooms usually were was now hot and stuffy from holding the heat all day.
Mothers hand-fanned their babies to keep them cool long enough for them to fall asleep, or they would lay them on the cool floor just so they could get a bit of relief. The older children grew immune to the heat as the summer wore on, being able to fall asleep in spite of the heat. Then early in the morning, before the sun was up, they would get up to start their day over again, hoeing, picking, cleaning the vegetables that would be their food all year long.
The women would also take their work outside under the shade trees where they might catch a breeze. they would clean green beans by snipping off the ends or pop shiny, new peas out of their shells or pull the husks off gleaming, golden corn.
To keep their house cool during the day, they would cover the windows with dark curtains that would keep out the heat of the sun. By afternoon, even the dark curtains did not keep the house cool enough, so my mom would sometimes go for a visit to the dark, cool basement, just to get a small break from the heat. She remembers my grandmother using a cool rag to wipe down her arms and face to cool off. In the evenings, after the work was done, the boys would go swimming in the pond while the girls waded in shallow creek water under some shade trees.
Falling asleep was not always so easy. The windows were open with screens put in them to keep the bugs out. But there wasn’t always a breeze blowing and the upstairs where the bedrooms usually were was now hot and stuffy from holding the heat all day.
Mothers hand-fanned their babies to keep them cool long enough for them to fall asleep, or they would lay them on the cool floor just so they could get a bit of relief. The older children grew immune to the heat as the summer wore on, being able to fall asleep in spite of the heat. Then early in the morning, before the sun was up, they would get up to start their day over again, hoeing, picking, cleaning the vegetables that would be their food all year long.
