THE AMISH ANSWER

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ENVIRONMENTALISM AND SPIRITUALITY PART IV

by Pat Stone

IT HAPPENED WHILE HANNAH WAS driving Albert, David, Colt and Claude, four Belgian draft horses that were pulling both the hay baler and the flatbed loading wagon. I was behind on the wagon, grabbing the blocks of fresh May hay the gas-powered baler churned out and stacking them in a 3-33-2-1 pattern.

Suddenly Hannah stopped the team, jumped out, walked into the mow of cut hay just ahead and gently picked up two immature Savannah sparrows. She carried them out of harm's way, setting them in a timothy field that wasn't going to be cut for at least two weeks (until the young bobolinks nesting in it were fully fledged).

I rested, wiping sweat and marveling at this Amishwoman's concern for two baby birds. Then I looked back toward the barn and saw 10-year-old Samuel driving the family's peculiar 65-horse John Deere tractor, with its little pneumatic tires up front, but uninflated, bolted-on rubber ones in back. He was bringing out my next empty wagon. Yes, that's when it happened—when I got my first clue into understanding the riddles of Amish culture.

The Amish are the answer to a question, I realized. All the odd, apparent contradictions I was witnessing were part of an overall cultural solution to a broad, basic problem. A horse-drawn gasoline engine? A tractor with two different types of tires, which hauled things to and from the field but did no work in the field? The fact that I could see the farmer next door loading all his hay loose and then baling it—with an identical gasoline baler—only after it was in his barn? Somehow these things were all answers to the same question.

What was the question?

Ah, that's what I still had to figure out.

Three days earlier, I had driven to the Yoder place in Amish-populated Elkhart County, Indiana. I was nervous. True, Amos Yoder had invited me to visit him at his 65-acre dairy farm. But everything I saw as I got closer, from the horse droppings on the highway to the plain black carriages filled with faces that looked none too happy to see another English (Amish call outsiders English in reference to America's primary language), made me feel out of place.

Then I drove up the driveway of the immaculate Yoder farm (lawn trim and green, barns and home clean and white), got out, met Amos and was introduced to Hannah, his wife. Hannah, short and sturdy, scanned me with eyes at once cordial and cautious. I hardly noticed; I was staring at her clothes. Not the plain, blue dress, the triangular shawl pinned to an apron, the simple white devotional cap. I'd expected all that. No, it was her shoes. She was wearing Sears' sneakers with Velcro fasteners!

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