Visits with the Amish: Impressions of the Plain Life

Chapter 2: Milking a two-bucket cow

The Amish love to farm. “I think I wouldn’t want to be living if I weren’t on a farm,” an Amish teenager once told me. “It’s exciting—there’s always something happening.” Farming is also a way to keep the family together. When the father works at home, he can take an active role in raising the children, training them in the Amish way of life. The Amish believe that farmers live closest to God. “On a farm, you can see that God is in all things that are alive and growing,” explains Leah Peachy, an Amish woman I met in North Carolina. They are also known to be excellent farmers. Centuries ago, while still in Europe, the Amish were often banned from land ownership and were forced to farm land so poor that no one else wanted it. In order to survive, they experimented with new methods, such as crop rotation. The Old Order Amish today still practice a four-year crop rotation system in Iowa and other states, planting corn for two years, oats for one 13 2 milking a two-bucket cow chapter year, and a hay crop the fourth year. The Amish feel that they are not the owners of their land. Rather, they are caretakers entrusted with the use of the soil. They carefully nourish their fields—preferring organic fertilizers such as manure—so that when they retire the land is as healthy as when they began. If an Amish man damages the soil, he is considered to be as sinful as a thief. As a result, Amish farms are extremely fertile and productive. This chapter introduces the Yoder family, who appear in other chapters in the book. The first time I met Nancy Yoder she came to the door of her large white farmhouse to greet me. She had been quilting with her daughter Annie, then 17. There was a calmness and orderliness about her and her home. It was hard to believe that she was the mother of nine children, with one more on the way, living on a farm without electricity, telephone, automobile, or automatic washing machine . With three children married or working and three children in school, she spent her days working at home with Annie and her sister Regina. They helped her care for Leah, a preschooler. And a few months later, when baby Wayne was born, they helped her care for him. I found the same serene and well-managed homes at other Amish farms. With Amish schools within walking distance, schoolchildren can walk to school or drive themselves in the pony cart, freeing mothers from the suburban tribulation of driving children around town. I never saw an Amish person rushing, although Amish families work hard all yearround and are especially busy during harvest and planting times. Both adults and children go about their tasks in a focused way but without a feeling of pressure. With so many to help, it seems no one is ever left alone with too hard of a job. Golden sunlight stretches wide over the Iowa hayfields in early September. At the Yoder farm near Bloomfield, a girl waves a hearty hello. This is Regina, age 15. Besides household chores, she and her older sister Annie milk their family’s cows and drive a team of horses in the fields. The girls laugh merrily when they talk. “Some people think we 14 part one milking a two-bucket cow are twins, especially when we dress the same,” says Annie with a laugh. Today they wear identical raspberry-colored dresses, white aprons, and royal blue scarves tied under their chins. Both say they’d rather spend their day in the fields than inside the house. “I think it’s great fun to work out,” says Regina. “I feel more free outside,” agrees Annie in her mild way. “Farmwork doesn’t have to be done so fine and neat as needlework.” Their day starts at 6:00 a.m, when their father wakes up the eight children who still live at home. Before breakfast, the girls feed the cows while their father and 22-year-old brother, Dan, feed the horses. All four help with the milking, and then Dan goes off to work as a carpenter. The 12 black-and-white spotted Holsteins all look identical to me, but the girls befriended Jody, Joline, Vera, Abby, Shirley, Tina, Sheila, Fannie...