The Amish

I’m always drawn to Amish Communities. I have such respect for these decent people that have chosen a simpler way of life…and live it with such dignity and grace.

 

It’s a challenge to try to depict their lifestyle with photography because it’s against their religion to have their face shown in a photograph. Today, I stood in an Amish kitchen at the Yoder’s farm and watched an old lady take homemade bread from the oven…lifting the loaves with careworn hands…her face rosy with the heat from the stove. (The smell was heavenly!)

Man oh man, did that scene cry out to be photographed….the camera almost climbed out of my pocket and took a picture by it’s self! But I beat it back!

We brought back some of that fresh baked bread…and cookies…and jam…Yum!

The ‘little Amish kids’ are adorable…the girls with their tiny white bonnets and the little boys with their straw hats. I notice, by the scuff marks under the swing, that they probably drive ‘their’ mother crazy too….dragging their feet and wearing out their shoes! (smile)09_19_bedside09_19_swing

I loved poking around In the barn…There were beautiful draft horses, thoroughbred buggy horses, chickens with ‘peepers’, rabbits, pigs and tiny piglets, goats, barn kitties, puppies, turkeys, cows, calves, mules and on and on…
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Working in the barn was a delightful Amish farmer…84 years old and still at it. Rock’n on the porch apparently isn’t part of the ‘life style’.

We talked to him for a half-hour or so. He asked me if I’d ever been on a farm and I said I’d spent my summers on my Aunt and Uncle’s dairy farm. I said the barn smell brought back memories. He just laughed and said “does it smell’ in here?” I said “Sure…it smells like childhood!” He tipped back his head and laughed. He said “People come in here sometimes, city folk, and hold their noses…I tell them when I want to smell something good…I go to the barn!”

 
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