Arriving and working on day 1

Day 1 12/13/04

I’m writing this first journal entry by the light of a kerosene lantern. Becky, Albert’s wife, gave me an electric one, but I told her I didn’t want to be a weenie so she got me the kerosene one. I still have the electric one as back up just in case. I got dropped off somewhere in Amish Country in Lancaster, PA. The taxi driver and I spent 45 minutes trying to find 759 Grass Fed School Road. Imagine our confusion when Grass Fed Road ended at the 500 block (which we thought might be the same as Grass Fed School Road). She (the cabbie) was starting to get frustrated so I told her to just drop me off somewhere and I would walk around. I was dropped off in the middle of Amish country, 50 degrees and windy with an hour left till darkness. I had no idea where to go and couldn’t phone Albert because the only phone he has is in a shed on the road by his house and his voice mailbox was full. Suddenly, down the road I see a black horse and buggy. Maybe they will know where I can find Grass Fed Farm. As the buggy gets closer, I notice a young Amish woman in it. I try to make eye contact and she looks at me briefly, then continues down the road. It’s getting colder and I have no idea where I am. I see another vehicle, this time a white van. As it gets closer, I see that it is owned by the fire department of Lancaster. I flag him down and tell him my dilemma. He lets me hop in and we drive about a block until we see Grass Fed School Road. The farm was only a block away from where I was. I see Albert and we talk about my trip, etc. I hang out for awhile watching him fill out orders. It’s his father’s farm, and after a few minutes we head to his farm, right down the road. We enter his house and he introduces me to his wife Marie, his dog Sparkle, and his daughters, Barbie (10 months) and the twins Lucy and Lisa (1.5 years old). His daughters look at me shyly and his wife greets me warmly. They pull out dinner that they were warming for me in the oven. It was chicken croquettes. Some kind of green beans with brown sweet stuff and some shredded potatoes with cheese and butter I think. Good stuff. I eat about half of it. A little later he takes me to the barn and puts me to work. The first thing I do is “clean the gutters” which consists of helping push a shovel down a gutter filled with cow poop and piss. It’s pretty glamorous. Albert’s father, Peter, is there too helping out. He introduces himself and makes polite conversation. That night I end up milking the cows (with machines), clean up poop and feed them hay¹. The cows seem half oblivious, half freaked out, by the new face. Maybe they’ll get used to me. I’m slightly tired sore and I’m starting to get a migraine. At least I’m not in Manhattan.

1 Milking Holstein cows is very scary. They are a million and one ways they could kill me in an instant. Kicking in the head, crushing against the metal bar, etc. Steps to milking cows the Grass Fed Farms way:

1. Approach from behind, a little to the side. If I approach directly from behind, they probably will kick my head in. Say, “Whoa” so they know I am there.

2. Put my hand on flank. Start wiping feces and what-not off udders while hand is on flank. Throw paper towel in gutter.

3. Attach milking hoses to udders. Come back when the cow is dry. Try not to get kicked in the nuts backing out.

4. Hurry! The other cows are leaking in anticipation!

Working beside the Amish girls

Day 2 12/14/04

Ok, I’m tired, I admit it. It’s a good tired. My back is sore and I still feel good. I’ll probably still feel good as long as my back doesn’t give out or get too sore. Cows are dirty. They’re more than dirty, they’re filthy. They shit everywhere and I mean everywhere: On their udders, on my shoes, they flick it in my face, they can rebound it off the wall and make it land in my mouth or in their vaginas. I seriously don’t understand why cows don’t have major vaginal infections. They shit right on their vaginas. The poop oozes out of their ass, slides across the taint or no-mans land and then oozes ever slowly, slowly across and in their vagina. They don’t care, they’re oblivious to it. They might even like it. I don’t understand how human women have to pee after sex or they get vaginal infections but cow women can poop in their vaginas and be fine. Maybe that’s why men are attracted to sheep more than cows, because even “the shit in the pussy thing” is a turn off even to potential beastialiters. I like to talk to the cows, when I go to the barn in the morning. When they are all there I like to say “Hello Girls” or “How are my Angels” like Charlie’s Angels. They all look at me when I say it; maybe they are saying “Hi Charlie” back. When I clean their udders before I milk them, I’m supposed to say “Whoa” and touch them on the flank so they know I’m there. When I clean their udders, if they are particularly dirty ones, I like to say in a sleazy voice “You’re a dirty girl,” or “aren’t you a dirty girl” and “You’re a dirty girl...Ain’t ‘cha”. I really get a kick out of it. When I’m done cleaning them or milking them, I like to say “Thank You”. If just feels right. I know if someone was rubbing my nipples against my will I would want them to say thank you also. One of them tried to kick me a couple of times today.

I cleaned and packed chicken eggs today¹. It took me over four hours and I still didn’t get them all done. It’s funny, I’m so used to having someone come and rescue me when I get too tired or have been working at the same task for too long. The Amish simply don’t care. Or maybe they do care, but are just used to doing repetitive tasks for so long that it doesn’t bother them². I was cold and sore in the basement, cleaning chicken poop and vaginal debris off of brown eggs. Chicken eggs are disgusting. Want to know what a chicken egg looks like fresh out of the chicken? Bloody tampon + the contents of a lawn mower bag + egg = Fresh chicken egg. Barn animals are disgusting, yet cute in a strange sort of way. I went on my first horse and buddy ride today with Peter, Albert’s father. We went to Homer Adams’s house to make ice cream. They had a gas powered ice cream machine. Horse and buggy rides are fun. The best part is when the horse poops and the smell hits you right in the face. Peter is nice; he cares about good food and believes in what he’s doing. I’m tired. For breakfast I had eggs over easy, yeasted, soaked spelt bread, some kind of sausage gravy thing cooked in copious amounts of butter. (Albert adds more when Marie isn’t looking). Real milk + yogurt. For lunch I just snacked as the day went on and ate Kefir, raw eggs, cream, and cream with honey. For dinner I had mashed potatoes with butter (Albert added more), chunks of ham, garden fresh frozen peas, and a slice of sourdough spelt bread, and lots of butter. My hands smell like cow poop. Goot-Nat (Good Night)

1 Albert had a hen house with over 3000 chickens in it. It was about the length and width of a football field. He was packaging these eggs to be sold under the Organic Valley Free-Range/Cage-Free label. I asked him how could they be marketed under Free-Range/Cage-Free if they didn’t even get that much sunlight and they were crowded together. He said, “I try to let them out as much as possible, but during the winter it is too cold, they would die. Also, I am only required to give them 1.75 sq ft. of space for each bird to be considered Free-range.” Actually, there is no real legal definition for those types of eggs. Albert wasn’t a bad person or trying to mislead people. It was just too expensive for him to not raise them the way he did.

2 I spent hours in this dusty, dark “free-range” barn working alongside Susan and Naomi; two 14 year old Amish workhorses. I remember them bent over the egg conveyor belt, cleaning the debris off eggs in the fading sunlight. Not once did they take a break, go to the bathroom or complain. I was really able to see the difference between our two cultures. In their culture, in some ways, the sexes are more equal. Even skinny, 14 year old girls have to do the same heavy, manual labor that boys and adults do. And they never complain. I honestly think that was the first time in my life that I chose not to weasel my way out of something. It was at the second, in the dark, allergen filled chicken house of death that I pushed passed that invisible barrier and started to become a man.

Amish insights

Day 3 12/14/04 a.k.a. The Beginning of Pain

My back hurts. Not terribly so but more than it has in a while. Enough for me to say, “Whoa, my back is sore.” It should be, I spent 5 hours today bent over sorting, cleaning and packaging eggs. I literally packed over a hundred dozen eggs. That’s over a thousand eggs touched by me. Hope you like them. Susan, Albert’s sister was there with me. She didn’t complain at all. She’s 14 and she’s tough. Amish-tough. She can do more work and lift heavier loads at 14 than I can now. It’s really quite amazing to see how tough they are. Every half an hour or so I wanted to say, “How many boxes left.” Every hour I wanted to say “Can I take a break.” Every two hours I wanted to say, “Can I do something else?” It’s funny, coming from the English world, (“English” means everyone who is not Amish), I ‘m so used to having someone rescue me when I get tired, or say, “Hey, take a break.” Not here, they don’t care. They do, but they do not take many breaks. I was fortunate today to go to an Amish farmers meeting with Albert¹. It was in the second story room of a country health food store. There were about twenty Amish farmers and about 5 English, including myself. They were discussing raw milk, how they are going to start making it more available to customers, how to make it legal, how permits were not a good idea etc. It’s really quite amazing. Most of them have started getting involved with the Weston Price Foundation, talking with Sally Fallon and reading Wise Traditions. A lot of them have only been starting to drink raw milk again in the past several years, even though they were knee deep in it before. It’s amazing how Sally Fallon, who has probably never farmed before, has inspired scores of Amish farmers to start producing and using raw milk products. I was talking with Albert and he said that they didn’t even eat butter that much before they met Sally and now the whole family can’t get enough of it. AND THEY OWN A DAIRY!!!!² This one English lady has infiltrated and gained the respect of a group of people who are known for being private and separating themselves from the outside world. She is doing something which as far as I know has never been done before; she is bringing Amish and English together in a way that has never been done before in history. It’s great to hear the Amish Farmers talk about how great they and their family feel now that they drink Raw Milk and eat grass-fed meat. It’s touching to hear the stories people tell them about how what they do saves their lives. They don’t seem too afraid yet. And I can tell that they really want to help people. They are going to need English help though. Albert said that the Amish can be ignorant on some things like loopholes and legalities. A couple of the English were there. They had some helpful things to say and offer. One person was a “constitutional scholar” and knew everything about permits, loopholes, clauses, etc. I think he could really help them. The other English were helpful too, they got the meeting sidetracked sometimes and seemed like they wanted to run it. It’s funny, most of the Amish there sat and listened and were patient and asked questions. Most of the time, the English were interrupting, getting off track and trying to run the meeting. One English told everyone that if were going to start as association, “We need to start slow and grow slowly like a seed does.” I was thinking, “You ... idiot, they’re farmers, of course they know how seeds grow. They’re Amish farmers. Before they could tie their shoes they were planting seeds.” I know he didn’t mean it in a bad way, I just thought it was ironic. He seems like a good guy. I think he might be gay. He told me later that he lives with his mom³. I feel really privileged to witness all of this going on. I feel like it is a revolution and I’m right in the middle of it. I caught my first runaway goat today, it was easy. A loose bull almost attacked me. That was a little unnerving. They invited me to go to church with them on Sunday; they are having it at their house. I don’t know if I will go yet. They might need family time. I’m tired, Goot-Nat (Good-Night). Sleep well (Schlof-Goot)

1 This was really quite an extraordinary event. Most Amish are poor and if they are farmers, they are usually even poorer. Organizations and people like, Weston Price Organization and Aajonus Vonderplanitz have created such a demand for grass-fed meat and dairy that many of the Amish are able to support their families by producing these products. Of course the PDA and FDA don’t like raw dairy or family farms and were starting to come down on some of them. This meeting was to create some sort of group or organization to represent these raw dairy Amish and Mennonite farmers. So together they would have more power to deal with these authorities. All the Amish and Mennonite heavy hitters were there. It felt revolutionary. I felt like I was in Lord of the Rings at the part where they were trying to decide who was going to take the ring to Mt. Doom. Or like a Union meeting where emotions boil over and everyone starts yelling, “Strike, Strike! Let’s take it to City Hall!”

2 I found this type of thinking pretty prevalent among many of the Amish raw dairy farmers. They would own pigs, but not eat pork. They would milk cows, but buy margarine. The most common reason was, “We were told it was unhealthy for us.”

3 When he gave me his card, it said his name and “Nutritional Consultant”. Everyone and their mom is a “Nutritional Consultant” nowadays. Even I had cards that said “Nutritional Consultant” and I didn’t know shit.

Life on the Amish farm

Day 4 12/16/04 Little Rest

We got a little bit of a break today. We don’t have too many orders and not too much else to do. The gutters are overflowing though and they will need to be cleaned. Albert and family went into town to go to a health food store. I have some free time to write and maybe call my family. It seems by nature, the Amish are innocent. They know about their professions and how to work hard and they haven’t had enough contact with the outside world to grow suspicious. Albert confirms this. They are always a little suspicious of the English though. There is this subculture of Amish people in Pa. and probably other parts of the world who are pretty strict followers of Sally Fallon. They cook from her cookbook, get the Wise Traditions magazine, sell Nourishing Traditions and The Untold Story of Milk, at their farm stands, sell products and foods from Nourishing Traditions and base most of their dietary choices on what she and the Weston Price Foundation says. Most of them have seen amazing health benefits from it for themselves and from their customers. That keeps them going and makes them feel what they are doing is right. With all of this good information and food, some bad information and food sneaks in. Some of the farmers have been using and selling Adulterated Aloe Vera Gel. They have been getting it from someone named Mark. Albert and some other Amish believe it’s really good for them. This brand that they are using is pretty bad. It has artificial flavors, sugar, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, etc. It’s pretty gross. On the bottle is says “150% Aloe Vera” and it has a bunch of pseudo-science with big words on the back. I wish they didn’t use it, and I don’t really want to tell them not to yet. They are already doing so many good things and their heads are already swimming with so much info anyways. I don’t want to add on it. There is a big possibility for these people to be taken advantage of. I had to help pick 80 dozen eggs in the hen house again this morning. God I hate that place. It’s allergy city. There is a yin and yang balance of milk and poop in dairying. Milk is good and poop is good, but they are not good together. It’s a delicate art to keep them away from each other, you want milk to drink and sell and you want manure for fertilizer. These cows have so much poop on their udders. I try to get it all off but sometimes I can’t. I wonder if people would still drink milk if they knew what the udders look like. Sally Fallon knows many of these farmers personally and has gained a lot of their trust. I hope she doesn’t abuse this trust. I’m reading a copy of Wise Traditions and there is a cartoon about a guy who is drinking ultra-pasteurized milk. His daughter warns him not to, but he does it anyway. He starts throwing up in the toilet and when he lifts his head out, it’s a skull. It’s basically a propaganda cartoon, even though it may be true, it’s still propaganda. I don’t like propaganda and I don’t like science. It’s funny for me to see people who constantly tell me to beware of some science because it is false but then try to convert me with other science. “Ignore this research, but believe this one!” They don’t really address this issue and I think it just confuses people. I wish someone would come along and tell people that they should experiment with themselves instead of believing in research. Just seeing what traditional people ate and then trying it on myself has worked better for me than any science theory. Science is b.s..

My room is a little bit warmer tonight; at least I am not seeing my breath. Marie said I might be able to sleep in the girl’s room downstairs since it is getting colder, they can sleep on the couch. Albert and Marie are amazing people. The whole family is. We all really bonded tonight, after the milking of the cows. We were talking about everything, from food, society to Sally. He really knows a lot. He cares deeply about people and about what is going on in the world. I was talking about how TV and commercials can brainwash people and make them eat unhealthy. He said the same thing is happening now with the Amish and a lot of them have lost their way. He said that the Amish are a step behind the English regarding health and that they are starting to see more disabilities in children like deafness. He says that a lot of it is because more Amish are buying things at stores instead of making it themselves. His Grandfather’s father may have made butter he said, but then it just gradually faded out. He said a lot of Amish are concerned about “cheap, cheap, cheap” and about saving their farms¹. He likes to use hands and arms when he is talking. He’ll also put his hands in prayer position a lot; I like that. He has big hands. So many people know about Grass Fed Farms. Sally Fallon recommends them a lot of people and lists them in Wise Traditions. Aajonus Vonderplanitz, an all raw diet guy, lists them also. We were joking about Aajonus and how Albert always knows who his clients are because they are emphatic about everything having no salt. Aajonus also recommends eating rotten eggs² and sometimes feces. Marie thought that was gross and said she would never try it. I’ve eaten raw liver before so I said I would give it a try. Albert said he would too. We all laughed. Albert said he didn’t know where he’d be without Sally Fallon. He said that he’d probably be just another guy. Sally is really doing a lot for people. She’s only had her book out for about five years and she already is huge. There are over a hundred chapters of the Weston Price Foundation, many people including me are doing better with what she recommends, she is helping restore and bring out of debt small family farms, and now she is beginning to bridge the gap between English and Amish, I feel that I am in the middle of a revolution. It was a beautiful night tonight. It was warm, no wind and the cows wandered onto the wrong field. I had to run out on lush cool green grass and track them down. I raced Sparkle. The ground was filled with potholes. It took forever. Peter said that the cows didn’t want to go in since they got a taste of freedom. It took so long; as soon as the cows were about to go in, they would run out and I would have to get them again. I didn’t mind, it felt great. The cows let me pet them for the first time tonight. They must be getting used to me. Lisa spoke to me for the first time today. They must be getting used to me too. She said, “Gooden Mua” (Good Morning). Lucy is still too shy, but smiles at me when I’m not looking. I’m making French toast for them tomorrow morning; I hope it turns out well. I’m marinating the bread overnight in the batter (a secret recipe for all of you foodies out there). For breakfast I had ham, savory French toast and sauerkraut. For lunch I had cream, honey and cinnamon. At dinner I had hamburger and onions, cheese and tomato soup. Lots of butter with everything. I drank a lot of whey tonight. Major craving: I love whey.

1 With most of the Amish being poor, they are always looking for ways to save money. One of the ways they do this is by shopping at discount food stores. These stores sell food which have already expired or have other problems with it i.e. dented cans which makes them cheaper. Albert feels that this is the reason why a lot more Amish are being born with birth defects. However, he is in the minority. Many of them do not feel there is a relationship between this toxic food and poor heath.

2 This may sound crazy, but it is actually a popular remedy in Chinese Medicine, they are called century eggs. They are buried in the ground for several weeks to several months until they rot. It is supposed to be an aphrodisiac!

Amish are heroes because people want good food...

Day 5 12/17/04

I can’t believe this is only Day 5; it feels like I have been doing this for weeks. I’m bonding pretty well with everyone even Elizabeth, Albert’s mom¹. She’s funny, she’s hardcore Amish. She walks stiffly and slightly bent over, but she’s super tough. She’s refused my help a couple of times. She always talks to me about church. I’ll say “Hi, Elizabeth, how are you doing today?” She’ll say “Are you going to church with us Sunday?” Today I was talking with Naomi (they pronounce it “Yomo” in Penn Dutch) about a Fed Ex delivery she was getting ready for tonight. Elizabeth pipes in and says, “Are you getting ready for church?” I said, “Isn’t it Friday?” Naomi laughed. I spent 2 hours packaging and bottling kefir today. I drank so much. No mas kefir for a little while. I have unlimited access to food here. Anything, I want, I can have instantly, I just need to go to the freezer. Sour cream, crème fraiche, cream, butter, piima cream, whenever I tire of one dairy fat, I move to the other. The cows are letting me pet them more now. I kind of screwed up today. I was alone and was letting the cows in. I forgot to put grain in their stalls beforehand and they got all snooty. They wouldn’t listen or go to their stalls, they just milled around like a bunch of lemmings². And that bull got in again. He loves sniffing the gutter and the cows’ vaginas. He scares me, Marie says they can sense fear. Marie just runs at him and yells and he moves. She says she wouldn’t do that in a field though. Amish women are tough³. Peter was moving hay tonight while we were milking. He had hooked up two of the Belgians (big horses) to this strange gasoline powered contraption. It was a forklift in front, horses in middle, and him at the back with levers and a flashlight. He looked like Merlin or Gandalf. His black Amish hat, his gray, long, wispy beard shining eerily in the light of the moon and backwash of the flashlight. He looked regal, commanding this horse/man/machine mixture⁴. I saw the same look on George’s face (Albert’s Brother) earlier in the day as he was commanding four of the horses with a large manure container thing on wheels. Quick funny memory of a couple of days ago, when I was at the Amish farmer’s meeting, there was an English there who was a constitutional scholar who was giving advice on legalities and loopholes. He was explaining the difference between legal and lawful. He said legal is obeying the government’s laws, and lawful is obeying God’s laws. He said to all the Amish there, “Which one are you going to do?” It was awesome, he was calling the Amish out to see what they really believed. I think that guy could help them a lot. These Amish farmers truly are heroes. Some of them are selling raw milk and raw milk products event though it’s illegal because they know it is helping people and saving people’s lives. They could lose their farms, go to jail, but they are doing it anyways because they truly care⁵. More people should be like them. Goot-Nag. For breakfast I made French toast, onion and cheese omelettes and scrapple. Marie got a break cooking and everyone loved my food. First time making French toast. I let it sit overnight in the marinade. Gave the leftovers to Peter, he loved them too. Lunch was cream and kefir. Dinner was hamburger meat, roasted potatoes and garden fresh frozen peas, sour cream and sauerkraut.

1 Elizabeth is hardcore Amish. She is around 50, looks like she is 60-70. Has a little mustache, stooped over, walks with a limp and always suspicious/slightly paranoid. Works her ass off and doesn’t complain. She was always very kind to me.

2 Grain is the “worm on the hook” for cows. The only reason that they let me get “all up in there” is because they are happily munching on grain. It’s kind of like human females. If I show the cows a good time (dinner, dancing, etc) I’ll be getting some (milk) by the end of the night!

3 Marie was never afraid of the bull. She would run straight at him, grab the chain attached to his nose, etc. I was too much of a sissy.

4Driving a fork lift is hard enough. Imagine driving a forklift attached to 3 horses!

5 The Amish are hardcore. The Amish don’t go to public school. Instead each community has their own one room schoolhouse. After 8^th grade, the children are usually taken out of school to work at home and learn their family’s trade. In the early 1990’s the government began forcing Amish children to go to high school. Albert said that they were sending Amish to jail over it. He said he had a little old lady neighbor who had 15 year old and an 8 year old. She refused to send them to school after 8^th grade because she needed them to help around the house or they would starve. So they threw the old lady in jail and the 15 year old ended up taking care of the 8 year old. 30 dollars a 100 lbs 8 gallons, feed them grain 3-4 gallons grass 2 gallons 50 amos sly snake, meshuganneh (an affectionate term for a crazy person, in Yiddish) bought a cow destroyed it tb, push the small farmers out note from pda “How nice” animal identifications. Get calls every day from new people, “they want good food”. Never seen it grow like this, people want stuff that they have never had aaj (Aajonus) and Sally are doing best job, educating people.”

The sleep and music cure...

Day 6 12/18/04

This morning I was tired. I got up, stretched, drank some whey and went downstairs to milk the cows. Lucy or Lisa was crying. It’s hard to tell them apart. Barbie was crying also. I started singing to myself Jack Johnson’s song, “Times like these, times like those, what will be will be, and so it goes.” They stopped crying. I only know some of the words to that song. I started singing, You Really Got a Hold On Me They were just listening and weren’t crying. They’ve never heard those songs before. “Bischt Meet”, “Are you tired?” “Bischt happy”, “Are you happy?” Marie told me one time that she was putting the girls to bed and they were complaining. She told them they can’t go to bed if they aren’t happy. Now whenever she tells them its bedtime, they say they are happy. I ate some raw beef fat today. We are making tallow so I figured I would give it a try. It wasn’t that bad. There was some meat on it also and I ate some of that too. I felt okay. I then ate a piece of organ meat that was on it. It looked like a liver or a kidney. I got the same familiar good rush that I usually get from eating raw liver. I felt really good. About an hour later. I started feeling really sick. I went home and was in the bathroom. I was trying as hard as I could to poop, because the pain was coming from my large intestine. It was fluctuating a lot, the pain. I was on the floor praying to God to take the pain away. It was probably the worst I have ever felt in my life. If there had been a button which had said, “Kill parents, take away pain” I would have pushed it. I almost asked them to take me to the hospital. I wasn’t relishing a horse and buggy ride to the hospital. I went to my bedroom. I drifted in and out of sleep for several hours. I woke around nine or ten and heard Susan and Naomi, Albert’s sisters chatting in Penn Dutch with Marie and the kids. There’s a hole in the floor in my room right by where the stove pipes comes through. I switched to this room because it is warmer. They chatted for a while, then left. Marie started playing the harmonica. It was a familiar tune. One of those songs which has the same rhythm and notes as the Americana ones but with a European twist. I liked hearing her play it. I crawled over to the hole in the floor and looked and listened. I would see Lucy and Lisa dart in and out of view every once and awhile. The music was making me feel good. It was the only thing that was at the time. She stopped playing and started singing. It was the same song and rhythm but she was singing in German, I think. It was really pretty. It made me cry a little bit. It helped me go back to sleep.

rumspringa

Day 7 12/19/04

I felt a little bit better this morning, but not that much. Albert knocked on my door to let me know he was milking the cows, he knew I wasn’t feeling too well. He said I didn’t need to come if I didn’t want to. After about 30 minutes I felt like I could get up. I stretched and went downstairs. Marie was there dressing the girls for Church. Everyone had to get up earlier so we could milk the cows before church. She said Albert was feeling sick and he was back in bed. The cows hadn’t been milked yet. She said she couldn’t because she was dressing the girls. I asked her if she wanted me to do it. She said to go see if Peter could help me. Church started in about an hour so we needed to hurry. I found George and he said he would help. We rushed over there and started milking and cleaning the cows, we had to work fast. I remembered which ones were dry and which ones had an infected udder. George left when we had two cows left. I tried to milk them but couldn’t get the machine to stay suctioned. I took care of the milk, hayed the cows, cleaned up the poop and came back in. Albert was still in bed sleeping. I made him a vegetable stew with some beef broth so he would feel better. I ate some too. It felt good to help out. I’m still feeling sick. I don’t know if it is because of all the kefir I drank yesterday or the raw meat. The pain was in my intestine so that couldn’t have been from the raw meat or fat because it happened too soon afterwards; I don’t know. I was talking to Albert about Aajonus Vonderplanitz, the raw meat, rotten egg guy. Albert said, Aajonus gets angry if he sends him eggs which have been cleaned. Aajonus likes them dirty and will even partially crack them to make them rotten before he eats them. Albert also sends eggs to Organic Valley and they will send them back if there is a speck of dirt on them or if there is a slight crack you can only see with a flashlight. He said it can be confusing sometimes. I understand. They had church at Peter’s house this Sunday at night, all of the Amish teenagers got together and sang Christmas songs in German. Marie wanted to go, but then I made her a fat omelet and she decided to stay. Albert and I went. It was snowing slightly and the wind was picking up. We were sneaking around outside like we were up to no good. Albert didn’t want to “get caught,” it would have been fine if we did. There were about 30 girls and 30 boys sitting across from each other with some adults on the side. Most were singing, a lot were goofing off, talking and laughing. We saw one Amish teen through the window. He was talking on his cell phone but hiding it behind the song book¹. I asked Albert if that was okay. He said it wasn’t. I asked if I could shine the flashlight on him. He said no, but that he would. We were shining the flashlight on him for about 30 seconds but he didn’t notice. We hung out inside for a little bit. I asked him about rumspringa² and he seemed to get slightly offended. He said producers came around looking to put Amish teens on rumspringa on a TV show. He said Amish people like to isolate for reasons like that. We walked back to the house. It was getting colder and windier. We came home. The kids were asleep. We started talking about life and death, food, etc. We started getting too serious so I asked Marie to play us a song on the harmonica. She did and it was nice. For breakfast I had vegetable stew (onions, carrot, potatoes) cooked in beef broth. It helped Albert and I not be sick. For lunch I had bread, cream and honey. I made them omelettes for dinner, filled with sweet potatoes, onions, hamburger meat and cheese. “Ni Bicsch Dum Mwa?” “How are you this morning?” Schlof Goot.

1 It is becoming more common for Amish teenagers to break their religious rules by using technology.

2 From what Albert told me, Rumspringa is the Amish “Rite of Passage”. The Amish don’t baptize at birth, because they believe that people need to be at a mature age to accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior. Rumspringa is the time of adolescence where they decide if they want to accept Jesus and remain in the Amish church. Different Amish communities have different customs. In the media and on TV, it has been popularized as a “Sin Free For All” where Amish engage in sex, drugs and, yes, rock n’ roll. According to the Amish I spoke to, this is not the norm; they even find it amusing. This type of rumspringa is more common among the New Order Amish; a sect that broke away from the original or Old Order because they wanted more access to technology. In Albert’s community, at the age of sixteen, the Amish teenagers join a church group. This is like a “singles club” where the teenagers meet each other and decide who they want to marry; after which they leave the church group. George said that his church club was pretty good; they would do a little drinking but they didn’t get too crazy. An interesting side note. The Amish remain in the church group until they get married. It was interesting because there were some Amish in the late 20’s who were in that group who hadn’t gotten married yet. Everyone else was 16-19.