Amish Folklore & Farming

Photo courtesy of http://www.chathamberryfarm.com

Before moving to South Jersey, I had no idea the large presence Amish had here. Our part of Jersey is quite close to Philadelphia where the well known Reading Terminal Market can be found in the center of downtown, full of Amish owned and run restaurants, including the most amazing donuts. But sadly, this post is not about donuts. It's about folklore. And since my part of the country has a high population of Amish farmers, I thought it only proper to look into some of their folklore.

The Amish are best known for some of their peculiar ways like driving horse and buggy for transportation and not using electricity in their homes. As I got thinking about their separation from the modern world and how it related to farming, it struck me that because of their belief against the use of modern technology, Amish farmers must farm much like those first pioneers who crossed the plains. This lead me to delve a little deeper. For simplicity's sake, I'll focus here mainly on the Amish of Lancaster, PA. They are the largest group of Amish closest to where I live.

The Amish use Romans 12:2 from the Bible as their basis for not "conforming to the world." For this reason they use very limited modern technology in order to separate themselves from non-believers and keep their communities tight knit. Many Amish families still plow their fields by horse and they use manure to fertilize their fields instead of modern chemicals.  This conformity to their traditional belief system limits the amount of acreage a family can farm. The maximum is usually about 40 acres per family. 

The Amish are actually not completely void of the use of technology. In fact, they use quite a lot more than I anticipated. How extensively they use technology depends on the counsel given them by their community leaders. In Lancaster, the Amish use tractors to do work in their barns "to power feed grinders, hydraulic systems, ventilating fans; to blow silage to the top of silos; to pump liquid manure; and, a host of other similar functions." The reason behind the limited use of the tractor is mostly because of it's similarity to the automobile, but there are also other reasons. The community leaders fear dependence on the tractor as well as the debt large farm equipment incurs. Large debt could possibly lead to larger farm size in order to pay off the debt, which would take away from their traditional way of life. The leaders also fear loss of jobs taken by the tractor. They are insistent upon keeping jobs within their communities to avoid corruption by working in the outside world. 

Photo courtesy of http://science.howstuffworks.com

Along with limited use of the tractor, the Amish have accepted the use of hay balers as long as they are pulled by horses. They also use a wide variety of other machinery that is horse driven. Their limited use of self-propelled farm equipment has forced them to keep their farms smaller, but even though they don't produce the huge amount that commercial farms do, their small farms produce not only a very substantial quantity in relation to the amount of energy that is used.

Photo courtesy of http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a

Amish folklore continues to influence the decisions they make regarding how they farm. They are continually reaching to find a balance between their traditional beliefs and the modern world.  


Works Cited
Technology and the Amish Farm. Welcome to Lancaster County (2007). Retrieved October 11, 2015.