Amish Immersion

By Lisa Mildred

Why are the Amish on a website about cults?

Why would a young woman dream of immersing herself with Amish, you ask? Because I’m fascinated by cults! Religion in general is very interesting to me, I’m a spiritual person who really likes God, whoever they are, and when I follow my curiosity to learn about different religions and their offshoots, I feel like I’m sort of playing hide and seek with the divine. It would be an understatement to say cults are a curiosity of mine, and I follow my interests pretty dang far.

I’m the sort of girl who’s spent a few hours chatting with the church of Scientology when she needed a place to charge her phone. I’ve dipped my feet in the Ganges river and drank ritual Kava in Tonga. I’ve shot assault rifles with the leader of a sect of the Moonies and gone to the source for church approved underwear.

Author in Magic Underwear and Moonie crown.

In Jamaica I’ve gone deep in the bush to find people who practice Obeah, sat riveted in a prosperity preaching church as people fell to the floor speaking in tongues, and timed my menstrual cycle to be able to visit the most remote Rasta village of the faith’s most militant sect. Whether meditating in a Sikh Temple in India or taking a tour of the Mormon’s Sacred Grove in Upstate New York, I fucking love religion.

One holiday season, I asked for money for Christmas so I could go spend some time in Amish country, talking to Amish people about their lifestyle and hopefully being immersed in their culture during the process. On Christmas morning I was given $100 and a printout of a list of bed and breakfasts in Lancaster County. Having refused to give me money towards a tattoo, a polygraph test, or hiring a hypnotist, I was amazed that THIS was the endeavor my parents chose to financially indulge. I remember very vividly opening the present and bursting out laughing. “I can’t believe this is really happening!” I said through my fit of giggles.

I did some research on the places on the printout, even exchanged contact information with an Amish guy working at the Farmer’s Market in Union Square, but I couldn’t find anything that went beyond buggy rides and quilt shopping. I didn’t want to just observe the Amish, I wanted to be immersed. And if at all possible, churn some butter. Being based in New York, having very little time off from work and no driver’s license was not conducive to this mission, so I put it on the back burner. That $100 sat in an envelope for a few years, and every time I was short on cash, my mother would remind me, “You know, you still have that envelope with $100 in it…” “No! That money is for my Amish adventure, and someday I’m going to make it happen!” I would say right back to her.

I ended up taking a job on an Australian cruise ship for the better part of a year, and when I got back decided to cross some items off my bucket list while spending a few months at home in Pennsylvania where I had access to a vehicle. During that time, I took some jobs that I’d always been curious about. I went indoor skydiving, saw Elton John in concert, and attended an opera. If I was going to make the Amish adventure happen, this was clearly the time to do it. At the recommendation of a Facebook friend, I checked out www.amishfarmstay.com and they matched me with an Amish couple, who I’ll call Eli and Ruth, that would be willing to sit and chat and connect with me, not just give me a sales pitch for quilts and handsome furniture.

 I have a relative who lives in Lancaster County, which has the highest population of Amish in America. We met for lunch before I went to my accommodation. Over delicious Pennsylvania Dutch food, she explained some basics to me: the Amish refer to the non-Amish as “English People,” and that the rules that Amish people live by are determined by their specific church. Two families could be neighbors who belong to different churches and have a completely different set of rules dictated by their Bishop’s; one being allowed to have a cell phone or wear zippers, the other considering these things an abomination.

My relative works in the medical field and she explained that Amish people pay for their medical care in cash, which needs to be approved by the church, and that she’s observed a lot of untreated mental illness within the population. She used to date an ex-Amish guy, and clarified that because he chose to leave the Amish before he reached the age of baptism, he isn’t shunned. Unlike groups like Scientology or Jehovah’s Witnesses, you can opt out of being Amish with minimal drama and still be part of your family, provided you do so before taking the lifelong vow and don’t criticize the church on your way out.

Before she left for work, my relative gave me the most excellent hand-me-down I’ve ever received: A genuine Amish dress. She’d bought it at a yard sale, from someone who apparently had a progressive Bishop who allowed zippers. After making sure it wasn’t disrespectful for me to rock up to my Amish Farm Stay in traditional garb, I put on the dress and drove to my accommodation.

Waiting for the right set of circumstances to have this experience was worth the years of waiting. My experience was totally charmed. I was greeted by a tiny old man, who gave me a tour of his house and property. The first thing he showed me was a map of the world, covered in tacks showing where previous guests were from. They’ve had visitors from all over the world. Eli told me that he and Ruth had six children, all of whom have grown up and gotten married except for a son who is in his thirties and lives at home, which is customary to do until you get married. (…gay?)

Eli showed me his son’s room. The walls were covered in taxidermied animals, explaining that his son gets paid for this work and enjoys it as a hobby. On one wall, there was the rear end of a deer. “My son has a sense of humor.” Eli explained. I died.

Eli said that by remaining single and living at home, his son was able to reap the benefits of having home-cooked meals and all the convenience of being an adult child with a failure to launch. With no living expenses, he’s been able to build a hunting cabin, which he frequently visits with his hunting buddies, who are English people and can therefore drive up there. (Brokeback mountain, much?)

After showing me around the house and explaining how they use gas and rechargeable batteries, but no electricity, Eli said that their congregation is fine with them having phones as long as it’s not inside the house. As a result, they have a “phone shed,” with a landline and answering machine as well as a fax machine for their son’s business.

Eli told me he also has a flip phone for when he travels, which he does quite a bit of. Amish aren’t allowed to drive, but his congregation allows him to ride in cars. He’s been on road trips with English people, and even went on a cruise. They can only fly in an emergency, but every winter they travel all over the United States and Canada by train. This guy really loves his trains.

After showing off their small farm, Eli offered me a buggy ride. I followed him to the barn, where he explained the difference between their Sunday buggy and their everyday buggy, which can carry a trailer behind it, and I got to help him brush the horse. During the buggy ride, he shattered the myth of Rumspringa for me. The media tells us that when youth decide whether or not they want to continue in the Amish lifestyle as adults they run off to live among the English people and do drugs and all sorts of other crazy secular shit. That’s not the case. Rumspringa mostly just means they can have their own buggy and more of a social life. Most teenagers take advantage of this opportunity to engage in scandalous behavior like listening to country music and leaving the house without a hat on. Imagine!

Now you might be wondering where Ruth is all this time, while Eli and I are off joyriding. The answer is: working her ass off. Eli is retired from his career as a butcher, but in Amish country a woman’s work is never done. Once a young woman is married, she stays home and takes care of all the domestic stuff. Cooking, cleaning, canning preserves, making clothes. Like the 1950’s but with no pearls or Valium. And there’s no retirement or pension plan from housework. So, while Eli does the conventionally manly stuff around the house, along with the help of his able-bodied gay son…most of the everyday labor is done by Ruth. Like with English people, women tend to have a heavier unpaid workload than their male counterparts even if she also has a job. Shocker. Every time I looked at Ruth milling around, “Cinderelly, Cinderelly” would pop into my head.

So back to our joyride. Eli was talking about how once in the bluest of moons, a teenager would fall pregnant and be sent away, and it’s very, very embarrassing for her and her family. The Amish tend to marry around nineteen or twenty and have a shit ton of kids, so I asked about birth control methods. Eli said the church has no restrictions for women concerning the pill, but he doesn’t think many use it. “Ruth was always very good about keeping track of things on her calendar and would let me know if we shouldn’t be having sex.”

 …notice there was no mention of men using condoms, or even the classic “pull and pray” method. It’s all on the woman. Surprise.

After hearing a riveting story about how Eli had to deliver one of their babies because the midwife was already busy elsewhere, I took some pictures on the buggy. Eli explained that while most Amish people won’t pose for photos, it’s fine if they happen to be in them. He was happy to take the pictures for me, even though they don’t take or keep photographs for themselves.

Eli was a regular Chatty Cathy, which was delightful. Ruth was soft-spoken and frankly too busy being a domestic goddess to say much, but I tried to get her to contribute during dinner as much as possible. Over some REALLY delicious home-cooked food, they told me about Amish wedding customs. The bride wears a new dress, but it’s a dress she’ll continue to wear in everyday life. The wedding happens in the bride’s family’s home (church happens in the home, as well, each family in the congregation taking a turn to host a few times a year), but they receive their wedding presents as they go to visit each of their guests in their respective homes in the weeks after the wedding. It sounds like they sing a whole bunch of hymns, too. Like, A LOT.

The Amish only have religious music, which they sing themselves. No radios or recordings. I told Ruth I’d been to a concert in Philly the night before. She had never heard of Bob Dylan.

And I’m sure plenty of people who wouldn’t be able to pick one of his songs out of a lineup, but to not even know the name?? There are probably members of ISIS who know who Bob Dylan is, and here a woman from his own generation living in Pennsylvania was clueless to the bard. She also said she’d never heard of the Beatles.

When I think of the joy that the Beatles alone have brought me over the years, be it listening to my 1 Album that I received for my twelfth birthday, just jamming out to my iPod or the radio, or seeing Paul McCartney in concert…it’s a lot of fucking joy. There’s something magical about when a song that you love plays. And she knew nothing of it. The Beatles were as obscure to her as Ruth is to the surviving Beatles.

A life where I’m kept from experiencing Beatlemania…is not a life I’m interested in living.

This couple is in their early seventies. They’re the same age as Mick Jagger and couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. I could have told them he was my boyfriend, and they’d have no context for disbelief. (Read: I WISH!) I asked Eli if he’d ever heard of Elvis. The name rang a bell, but he couldn’t tell you what he looks like. Or Oprah. Or Harry Potter. Eli knew about whatever movie was filmed in Lancaster about Amish people, though. Starring Harrison Ford, apparently.

The Citizen Kane of Amish Cinema?

With her busy schedule as a wheel in the machine of the patriarchy, Ruth had completely forgotten to get milk for the next day. It was dark and too late to be going anywhere in the buggy, so I drove her to the nearest dairy farm. In addition to a room full of stinky cows, there were adorable Amish children there, who were clearly VERY excited to see the English girl. One was hiding in the shadows trying to scare me, so I carried on to the little boy and girl who were brave enough to talk to me. I asked how they managed to get their pigs to grow so big, and if the black and white spots were sign of some sort of infection. They thought I was hilarious.

In the car, I tried to get Ruth to open up, but she remained quietly reserved and mysterious.

Once we got back, Ruth pretty much went right to bed, seeing as she’d need to wake up at the ass crack of dawn to continue the schedule of indentured servitude she’d been born into courtesy of her vagina. But Eli and I stayed up chatting for quite a while. “You have your lifestyle; I have my lifestyle. People sometimes put Amish people on a pedestal, but we’re just people. We just do things differently.”

Eli told me about a son who chose not to be Amish. He opted out so he could drive, and therefore the family wouldn’t have to hire drivers for his business. Ruth and Eli go to visit him every year, and he can pick them up right from the train station, since he drives. And he married a good Christian girl. For the win.

We discussed how Amish students get roughly the equivalent of an eighth-grade education. They’re brilliant at math, despite being forbidden to use sinful technology like calculators, and tend to be successful in business. They also learn about agriculture, but they’re very light on the science, world history, and reading anything other than the bible. I can’t imagine going to school and not reading “The Great Gatsby” or “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I can’t imagine not studying the Constitution. Knowledge is power, after all. But I suppose cloistered religious groups don’t want too much of that going around, as their devotees might develop some critical thinking and trade in their one-room schoolhouses life for excel spreadsheets a world away.

Eli then asked me what I thought of gay marriage. You need to be able to play to your audience, so I treaded lightly. I said how there’s still so much that we don’t understand about human sexuality and so while I understand why it’s taken so long for people to come around to the idea of homosexuality, I think it’s important that they be afforded the same rights as everyone else. Because with our extremely limited knowledge, how could we possibly conclude that it is wrong? Eli’s response was pretty cool, all things considered:

“…I think that a man wanting to marry another man…is pretty weird.”

Just weird. Not wrong. Not gross. Not a sinful abomination. Just weird. Just something that strikes him as unusual and unrelatable. For an Amish dude, Eli seemed pretty chill.

In retirement Eli wakes up at the leisurely hour of six AM, but he still felt it was time for him to hit the hay. As I went upstairs to my room, VERY ready to crash from overstimulation (or perhaps exhaustion, as I might have been a total drunky monkey at the Dylan concert the night before) Eli said goodnight.

“If you need a back rub, I can come up and give you one.” He added. 

“Oh, no thanks. I’m alright…” was my automatic reply.

“Just kidding! Haha! Goodnight.”

In the morning we had an exquisite breakfast made by superwoman Ruth, complete with home-squeezed grape juice which I assume contained her tears as key ingredients. Eli gave me a bunch of business cards; in case I came across anyone else who would be interested in doing an Amish Farm Stay with them.

“I’ve been to New York before, but I didn’t go very far because I don’t know how the subway works. I love trains. If I came to New York, could I pay you to be my tour guide, and you take me in the subway?” he asked.

For THAT Amish adventure, you’ll need to stay tuned for part two of this story. And TRUST me, you’ll want to unzip (or unpin, depending on your church) all the awkward secrets stemming from his repressive religion that Eli casually shared with me during his tour of New York City.

Lisa Welcomes The Amish To NYC, Click the Link Below.