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SHIPSHEWANA, Ind. — Freeman Wingard is Amish, but he spent the last decade living quite differently than the popular characterization of the Amish as farmers, their plows hitched to enormous draft horses as they eschewed influences of the outside world.
Seems to me the Amish are just like most rural people...the ones like myself that shun the rat race and have found out that chasing the DOW and the lucrative dollar does not equate to internal happiness are fairing well, and the Amish that had outside jobs and were greedy are realizing that the price for that wealth means Amish or not, they are tied in heavily with society.
No big news there.
I've said this before. The Amish really aren't much different then us. In fact in a lot of ways I farm with more yesterday technology then the Amish that live next door to me do.
Seems to me the Amish are just like most rural people...the ones like myself that shun the rat race and have found out that chasing the DOW and the lucrative dollar does not equate to internal happiness are fairing well, and the Amish that had outside jobs and were greedy are realizing that the price for that wealth means Amish or not, they are tied in heavily with society.
No big news there.
I've said this before. The Amish really aren't much different then us. In fact in a lot of ways I farm with more yesterday technology then the Amish that live next door to me do.
The big difference between the Amish and many other small farmers ( BT included) is the Amish wives don't have good paying jobs off their small farms which allows the husbands to be less concerned if the small farm provides a living and pays the bills.
-----" the Amish really aren't that much different than us "
I doubt many Amish farm wives are school teachers earning a good wage and recieving health benefits. That is one of the BIG differences between the Amish and you, BT.
Maybe, but we both have tractors on our farms 24/7/365, we both have phones in our barns, we both use electric fencing, and we both us chainsaws and lawnmowers.
About the only thing I do different is put up my own feed, where as they hire it out from custom hay contractors.
But I suppose I could do that too if I had worked from age 12 years old to age 22 making a wage and putting it into the Amish Kidde for them to distribute. Instead I worked from age 0-22 years old on the family farm "being damn lucky I was getting fed" as my dad often told me.
Take a drive past my house and the Amish place Marmac and you could not tell the difference unless I pointed it out. We really are not that different.
-----" the Amish really aren't that much different than us "
I doubt many Amish farm wives are school teachers earning a good wage and recieving health benefits. That is one of the BIG differences between the Amish and you, BT.
And most of us don't have a puppy mill where we treat the animals like crap.
I'd like to point out that prejudice against the Amish is no different than prejudice against any other group of people, painting them all with a broad brush.
I've known Amish (and been on Amish farms) where the animals are treated quite nicely. They may consider the animals to be more work animals and less pets (much as they consider themselves, come to that), but that does not mean that they abuse them. There are a FEW Amish (just like there are a few "English", as they call us) who exhibit some less than pleasant characteristics, but to fasten on those as being descriptive of the whole is no different than focusing on the less than pleasant characteristics of SOME African Americans as being descriptive of the whole. Just because someone is different and chooses to live differently than you do, or than the majority, in the way the Amish do, does not make them "bad". "Most" Amish do not have puppy mills, any more than "most" English have puppy mills.
If diversity cannot accept the Amish, and even the Republican, as being people just like anyone else, it's not diversity at all.
From the Amish / Menonite farms that I have seen: "... took his family to restaurants every week, made trips to Chicago and vacationed in Florida. That was when, he says, he was earning $40 per hour working in a Northern Indiana recreational vehicle factory."
Does not seem typical.
restaurants?
trips and vacations?
No that is not typical.
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