Quiet Days

The wind whips through the trees. Off in the distance, one can hear the quiet hum of cars on the highway. There's a SUV parked in the driveway near the front porch as I drive past the woodworking shop and park in front of an old silver maple stump. A lone goose walks behind the building used for their bulk store. Their dog, mother to the puppy sitting on the front seat of my car, enjoys a moment of sun on the front porch.

I've several purposes in driving to the Amish farm on this cold February morning. I'm bringing plastic bags for reuse in their bulk store and I need to photograph the last completed quilt. I knock and I hear the usual,"Come on in," from inside the kitchen. Handing off the plastic bags, I ask if there's time to get a picture of All Jassed Up, the 76X82 inch quilt. Listed as a twin bed size quilt, it fits quite nicely on the full size bed in the first floor bedroom. Every one's inside as it is near lunchtime. A friend is visiting and sharing a plastic tub of cookies. A table in the larger room off the kitchen is covered with a half completed puzzle. Several of the daughters are at work on a quilt adjacent to the puzzle table.

On any given day that I visit, I'll see any one of the six older daughters involved in quilt making or a sewing project. One of the daughters has been working on a quilt featuring all the state birds of the United States. She sits quietly at the long kitchen table with an embroidery hoop stitching the state bird of South Carolina.

Today, the same daughter is ironing fabrics strips. I'm guessing it's part of the current quilt project. Loud barking outside draws my attention away from their work. My puppy, now eight months old, is barking at paper feed sacks waiting to go on a burn pile. Mandy Mom sits on the porch ignoring her rambunctious daughter. I step outside to shush the dog. At that moment a white van pulls up. I walk inside and they're guessing who is in the van. "Amish" says one person. Then another person chimes in with the last name of the driver. I haven't noticed anyone laying out the new quilt, but when I glance in the bedroom my eyes feast on a wildly colorful quilt with flower rosettes. "Aha," I think to myself. That's the reason for the name-"All Jassed Up ( Jazzed?). I'm guessing the name is a German dialectical difference.

Mom hands me a book that I'd lent them the day before. It's called
Prescription for Nutritional Healing. As are many Amish I've read about, the family has an avid interest in natural and organic ways. I brought the book to their attention when the Patriarch of the family mentioned an ankle problem. In return for sharing the book with them, Mom shows me a vitamin catalog with prices substantially lower than the discount stores in the area. Daily I learn about new-old time ways to simplify my life. I am grateful for the friendship and their willingness to share their lives with me.

Busy Days and Quiet Nights

Life is always busy on an Amish farm. On any given day there are cooking & baking projects, firewood gathering for the various stoves, woodworking projects, butchering and odd ball events thrust into their lives by people like me.

There's a long wagon totally covered in gray sheet steel with steel rimmed wheels parked by the house. It looks like a hearse and has caused a few humorous events on the farm. One woman refused to come near the place when she saw the vehicle parked next to the wraparound front porch. Assuming someone had passed over, she was either too timid or afraid. I've heard the story and still look twice at the box like wagon. Inside the wood shop, the Patriarch is assembling benches for Sunday services. The Amish have no church building. Services are held at each other's farm on a rotating basis. The wagon is used to transport the benches from farm to farm.

When one enters the large kitchen on the farm, the black kitchen stove and a table off to the left dominate the space. On the other side of the room are new birch cabinets silently testifying to the expertise of the cabinet maker. The middle room on the first floor is almost empty except for a table on which a quilt is in the works and a few pieces of furniture. On Sundays this room holds the benches for services.

I've warned the Yoders of my visit to photograph quilts for the website. We spent time previously ironing out details for marketing their handmade quilts on Seven Roads Gallery. The most difficult idea for me to express is that I not receive any compensation for the work involved in getting the quilts to a larger market. "Mixing business with friends is a sure way to end a good friendship," I repeat in several different ways. In the end we agree that any compensation received above that going for the quilts goes to the Amish school fund. "My time is worth nothing, "I quip repeating a similar phrase of the Patriarch when I ask him for the cost of time and material in making several short pieces of baseboard for the kitchen.

With the help of mom and several daughters, we set up a bedroom for a shot of the quilts on a bed. Then, three daughters hold up the quilt for a second picture. They're standing on a bench in the large meeting room holding it at the ceiling so that the whole quilt fits in the frame.

My wife often remarks at the speed in which the daughters perform any given task. On a Saturday afternoon, we hire a few of the daughters to help shell dried beans hanging in our summer kitchen. My wife is amazed watching their fingers fly. On the Friday night pizza adventure the daughters take to washing the dishes without any mention from us or the parents. In the short time relaxing after dinner, they've got the dishes washed and dried and in the cupboard. The quilt pictures are no different. In less than a half hour I've got pictures all all but one quilt.

Now I've got to go to work putting them on the website composing text and ironing out a few details like figuring out how to program the "free shipping" in our default settings for pricing artwork.

Pie, Firewood and Corn

This is the story of life on an old order Amish farm focusing on their intricate and colorful quilts. Written by an Englischer, I hope I'll not have the taste of shoe leather on my tongue for naive and mistaken assumption about the Amish.

My early contact with the Yoder family was trips to their hilltop farm for organic eggs and a fondness for fresh baked pies. In strawberry season, I get caught up in the smell and taste of ripe strawberries. Smart in the ways of business, their discount on bulk amounts of fresh strawberries entices me to buy strawberries for freezing and canning. At last count we have 44 pints of strawberry jam resting on birch shelves made by the Patriarch of the family.

I set out after breakfast one morning with my digital camera to get background shots for this first post. The long distance shot from the highway seems too distant. I pull in the driveway, turn around and head back out to a spot where I can see the house from a snow covered strawberry field. I let the dog out of the idling car and step over the snowbank. In a second I'm flailing my arms as I struggle to keep the camera out of the snow. There's an unseen ditch by the road covered by deep snow. Pushing myself back up and hoping no one in the house saw me disappear into a snowdrift, I climb back into the car. My dog, one of a large litter born on the farm, declines my invitation of a ride.

She's named after her mother. To tell mother and daughter apart, we call the daughter Mandy Mae and the elder Mandy Mom. Mandy Mae begins barking at a team of horses pulling an iron wheeled wagon. The man driving the team looks like the Patriarch of the Yoder family. I squint to get a better look while trying to shush my dog. Like Mandy Mom, she barks excitedly when she sees horses. Turns out the man driving is the Patriarch's brother. I quickly back the car into the farm yard with Mandy Mae in hot pursuit. "Nice day," says James. "Yup, I'm glad it's sunny," I reply. I walk to the house.

Inside the kitchen several of the daughters are preparing pies for a Haitian benefit auction. Another daughter tends the bulk store when a customer drives up. James follows me inside and we both tease the pie maker asking for a taste. James leaves to shell corn while I ask nosy questions about the typical day in their life for background material.

On this morning, my day started at 4:00 am when I let Mandy out for a brief run. The Amish day starts at 4:30 am. There's no crawling back in a warm bed like me. Dad gets a fire going while the daughters (there's seven) get up. The exception is the youngest daughter who like her brother gets called later in the morning. For the two youngest, school starts at nine. Ample time is allowed for breakfast.

The conversation drifts to the Lone Star quilt I photographed the day before. I'm told that Wilma and Martha designed the color scheme for the quilt. Individual pieces of cloth for the design are cut by hand. A pedal sewing machine stitches the fabric pieces together. Then, the hand quilting process begins. As an estimate, Wilma says two or three persons stitching eight hours a day for a week would probably complete the final stitching of the quilt.

Mom and Dad have driven to Cashton with a neighbor for shopping and firewood cut ends for the kitchen stove. Cashton is approximately twenty five miles away and home to the largest Amish population in the state. Tonight they'll be visiting us for a pizza dinner to celebrate the completion of a kitchen remodeling project begun at Thanksgiving in 2008. The cabinets, two seven foot high shelves for our canned goods and all the trim, molding and baseboards were produced in the small shop on the top of the hill.