P.L. Gaus's Blog: From Ohio's Amish Country, page 3

An Amish Family in Their Wheat Field

Here is a family of Amish people working in their wheat field.  That’s a father, three sons and a daughter.  If you compare this photo with yesterday’s photo, you will readily see what a large job it is to work a farm by the old methods.  It is a difficult task to hold true to the traditions that make the Amish community so distinct.  But that is the Amish way – to hold fast to the old ways and traditions.  It is a lifestyle choice that is as sacred to them as the scriptures.  This will be the theme of my tenth Amish-Country Mystery: the transcendent importance of traditions in Amish society.  I am now almost finished writing the story, and I hope you can wait just a little bit longer to read it.

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Field of Amish Wheat – Holmes County, Ohio

The wheat crop in Holmes County, Ohio, is almost ready to be taken up and shocked.  This photo shows a field that has been partially worked by a family in the Doughty Valley, south of Charm.  We’ll see a lot of this in the next several weeks.  What a wonderful country-side to travel!

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Amish Fathers and Sons – Happy Father’s Day

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Amish Peacefulness – Slow, Quiet and Absolutely Harmless

Hello to family, friends and fans of The Amish-Country Mysteries.  I offer this peaceful image of an Amish father and son as my first posting after a long absence from social media.  I hope you like the photo as much as I do.  News of me and my novels?  Well yes, I am fine and I am still writing.  I have been deeply immersed in the process of writing my tenth novel, and I am happy to report that it is nearly done.  Many of you have written on this website to ask how I am, and I appreciate that very much.  I will dedicate this novel to my fans, who have been spectacularly patient while I have labored over it.

I have also been laboring over a decision about social media.  I do not like what has been done with it on the world stage.  Facebook and Twitter are especially vulnerable to the abuse of violent people and factions, and I have slowly brought myself to a decision.  My website is not subject to abuse, so far as I can tell, and I very much look forward to posting again on a fairly regular basis.  But Facebook, and Twitter especially, are troublesome to me, and I have decided to withdraw from using Twitter, and to withdraw from using Facebook at locations other than the Community Page for my novels.

I apologize for taking so long to arrive at this, and I hope you are encouraged by the fact that I have not forgotten that you very much deserve a tenth installment in the Branden/Troyer/Robertson stories.  I am crafting a novel that will bring you back to all of your favorite characters.  When I have a draft of the novel that I am satisfied is ready for publication, I will let you know that here with a post.  It will not be too much longer in coming.  In the meantime, watch for more Amish photos on this website.

 

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Amish Scenes From Holmes County, Ohio – A Prosperous Old-World Farm

Many of the Amish farms in Holmes County, Ohio, are beautifully kept and quite prosperous.  This is certainly one of those.  But for each farm like this one, there is another that is run more like a fifteenth-century peasant farm, where appearances are not considered to be important.  On those types of farms, we can still see today what it must have been like in old Germany, before the religious migrations of Amish and Mennonite people to America.  Just travel the back roads of Holmes County, and you’ll see history on display.

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Amish Scenes From Holmes County, Ohio – Tricycles for Old Men

We see bicycles and tricycles quite a lot in Holmes County these days.  Even in the hottest parts of summer, there will be someone out on one of these, in almost any part of the county.  The horse and buggy is the iconic image that most of us remember for the Amish, but anymore, it is bicycles, too.  And tricycles like this older man has.  Now, too, Amish men are driving tractors and lawn mowers around on the roads of the county.  Automobiles can’t be far behind.

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Amish Scenes From Holmes County, Ohio – Lambs in A Pasture

We were out in Amish country, Holmes County, Ohio, about a month ago, and there was a wide pasture with hundreds of sheep and lambs.  It was pastoral in an iconic and majestic way, and my wife grabbed this shot of some of the animals.  The lens couldn’t handle the wide angle it would have taken to show how many sheep there really were, but it was easily a hundred, perhaps two hundred, on a single farm.   If you get the chance to drive around in Holmes County one day, be sure to travel slowly.  These scenes pop up everywhere you go.  That’s the secret, really.  Travel as slowly as you can manage.  Perhaps you’ll be lucky enough to get trapped in traffic behind an Amish buggy.  Then you’ll see the old life.  I wouldn’t romanticize it, because it’s a hard life, and I wouldn’t choose it for myself.  But it certainly is beautiful.

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Amish Scenes From Holmes County, Ohio – An Amish Employee Parking Lot

What do you drive to work?  At an Amish furniture store near Maysville, Ohio, the employees ride their bicycles.  The parking lot does not need to be very elaborate.  Do you have a long commute every day?  Think about how simple life like this would be.

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Amish Scenes From Holmes County, Ohio – A Man and His Tractor

We are seeing a lot of tractors on Amish farms these days.  Some of the old restrictions are being lifted.  I think cell phones, as popular as they are, have had a lot to do with the momentum we are seeing toward modernization.  So why not plow a field with a tractor?  And the new hitch in the news?  The men are driving them into town, now, for shopping, too.  Can autos be far behind?

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Amish Scenes from Holmes County, Ohio – An Amish Carpenter Has His Hands Full

The entire congregation in an Amish church will help put up a house, but once in a while, you’ll see a single man adding the finishing touches.  Here it looks like this fellow has his hands full.  And what a nice house this is going to be!  Can you imagine how peaceful and satisfying it would be to have an entire day (week, month) to devote to carpentry of this type?  Few of us in the cities have these types of memories.  Build a house?  Sure, no problem.  If you have all the time in the world.  My grandfather built his own house once.  I wish I had known to ask him what that was like.

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