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.