My Amish Neighbors
We live in an Amish community. We’re not Amish. I’m not sure we could ever have imagined that scenario 45 years ago when we bought our old farmhouse and acreage in rural Chautauqua County. But, to be clear, Diane and I got to our beautiful hilltop first.
The backstory
We had been living here a little over two years and were raking leaves one October morning when two Amish men ambled down our road and stopped to talk. Having lived in Philadelphia previously, we were familiar with the iconic Amish of Lancaster, PA, but had little understanding of their history and traditions and knew of no local Amish. The men, a father and son, explained that they were exploring neighboring properties hoping to begin a new community.
Then they asked, “How are the winters up here?”
“Not bad,” we shared, based on our first two winters. “The township does a good job of plowing, though it can be a bit windy …”
Later that fall several Amish families moved into surrounding farms. And a few months after that, in January, the now infamous Blizzard of ’77 struck. Several feet of snow driven by four days of 40 mph winds paralyzed Western New York. Our road was entirely closed, sealed off by towering drifts. Front end loaders were brought in to help dig us out.
Our new Amish neighbors couldn’t resist reminding us of our earlier comments. “Winters are not bad, eh? Gets a bit windy??” We still haven’t heard the end of it. Yes, the Amish do have a sense of humor and we no longer make weather predictions.
While some in our community may operate a saw mill or work as cabinet and furniture makers, leather craftsmen, or general tradesmen, all of our neighbors have a connection to the land, a sense of stewardship and respect born of their dependency on the land to sustain their plain and simple lifestyle. The Amish are certainly no strangers to the hard work and long days of a farmer’s life. Western New York’s soil types, short growing seasons and increasingly unpredictable weather conditions don’t make it any easier. Their farms tend to be small yet productive, rarely more than 150 acres, a combination of woodlot, pasture and tillable fields. The fruits of their labor provide for their families first but are also significantly reflected in our region’s fresh food supply and local cuisine. From maple syrup and honey to all manner of fruits and vegetables, from dairy products and eggs, to free-range chickens and turkeys, pork and beef, Amish edibles find their way to our roadside stands, our restaurants and our dinner tables.
Amish farming begins with a reliance on sheer horsepower: Belgian or Percheron draft horses. These magnificent animals can weigh nearly a ton and are the engines that drive a wide variety of clever implements—reminders of an agricultural history all but lost on today’s highly mechanized farms. These curious looking mechanical marvels remind me of something out of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory with their pulleys, belts, arms, levers and gear cogs. Common pieces like plows, discs and sickle bar mowers are usually found at every farm. Less frequently used equipment, like a threshing machine, an ice cutter or a grain drill, become shared pieces available to all members of the community on an as-needed basis.
This notion of shared community property and cooperative effort is also reflected in other aspects of Amish culture. The entire community functions as an extended family, and family is the center of Amish life. A house or a barn needs to be built, and a “frolic” is organized to raise the building. A medical emergency strikes and the community finds ways to support the family and help meet obligations. Corn needs to be harvested and husked, and a husking party is called. Oats need to be threshed and that huge threshing machine is pulled down the road to the next farm. Within the individual family unit, children are full participants, helping with chores like hand-milking, digging potatoes, shelling peas or picking strawberries. Of course, the temptation to start a strawberry-throwing fight sometimes gets the best of even the most dedicated young strawberry pickers.
Our hilltop is dotted with Amish roadside stands but it is also common to find Amish produce at area farmers’ markets and non-Amish fruit and vegetable stands. In nearby Clymer, NY, an Amish produce auction, held every Tuesday and Friday from May to October, markets fruits and vegetables to commercial buyers, small grocery stores and restaurants. One local restaurant even developed a relationship with a vendor that has led to a “contract” for supplying all of their broccoli in the coming year. Begun in 2003 to serve the tri-state area, the auction is run by a different Amish community from ours but welcomes produce from Amish farmers throughout the region. While over 75 percent of the vendors are Amish, non-Amish (“English”) farmers are represented as well. Many of the vendors attend regional meetings hosted by the Cornell Cooperative Extension, an important resource in providing access to agricultural research, information on best practices and market trends. The auction has enjoyed steady growth with annual sales now topping $1 million.
Organic milk is a relatively recent Amish contribution to area food sourcing. Nearly every Amish farm has dairy cows and many sell milk to local dairies and cheese factories, but in response to a perceived market, several of our neighbors have successfully certified their fields and their dairy herds as organic, while others offer milk from strictly grass-fed cows. The milk is hauled daily by horse-drawn wagons to central bulk tank locations to await shipment. Unfortunately, because of the relatively small volume of milk involved, it has become more difficult for these farmers to attract willing commercial buyers. It should also be noted that even the non-certified dairy farms are committed to avoiding GMOs and antibiotics in their herds.
With the end of winter, the warmer days and cold nights signal the start of maple sugaring season. Several Amish sugar shacks are tucked into the woodlots around us, including one on our own property. Bartering our land use for maple syrup is a sweet deal in every sense of the word. The experience of stepping into a working sugar shack on an early March morning is a full sensory moment. Steam so thick you can barely make out the workers, overwhelming heat from the fire under the evaporator, and air so sweet you can smell it well before you enter the building. While the annual volume of syrup produced can range widely depending on weather conditions, it’s not unusual for our Amish community to collectively deliver over 1,000 gallons of syrup for local sale each spring.
There are now nearly 50 families in our particular Amish community, and more than 40 distinct communities across New York State. It is tempting to romanticize or sentimentalize the Amish and to stereotype them and their communities. It’s easy to be confused by some of their customs or to see them as contradictory. Yet it is important to know that each community has an independent identity growing from their particular historical roots. While many aspects of their daily life and customs are consistent throughout, some communities are quite liberal while others, like our Old Order community, are much more traditional and conservative. Maintaining the Amish culture within the surrounding modern world presents more than a few challenges and choices, and those choices define their communities.
I’m no Amish scholar. My observations simply reflect a 40-plus-year experience as a neighbor and a friend within this one particular Amish community. The sound of hoofbeats on pavement, the clean line of a fresh furrow trailing behind a horse-drawn plow, the parade of Amish schoolchildren walking down our road—these are the welcome reminders of where we live. It’s a rare and rewarding experience to have a window into a distinctly different culture, made even richer when the window is right next door.
A word about photographs: The Amish value their privacy and in general do not want photographs taken of them. In our community, pictures of their farms, animals or equipment are fine, just no people. Reflective of their conservative Christian faith, photographs of individuals are considered “graven images.”
