Lessons from the Amish - Part 1

By the time you read this blog post, my wife and I will be enjoying the culinary delights of Der Dutchman, a family-style restaurant in Sarasota featuring an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord. And not just any AYCE buffet, I’ll have you know, but one featuring the kind of Amish cooking we both learned to love while vacationing in Lancaster County, PA… otherwise known as Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

Now that we live in Florida, we are 1,000 miles away from the promised land of roasted chicken and noodles, ham loaf, cabbage rolls, apple butter, friendship bread, and whoopie pies. But recently, we discovered that some of the Amish folks in PA, OH, IN, and MI despise the harsh winter weather up north as much as we do and have settled in Pinecrest, a small enclave on the outskirts of Sarasota. Whereas some of them are snowbirds, others have permanently relocated to southwest Florida and opened restaurants, craft shops, farmers markets and the like.

And so, while feasting on my second helping of meatloaf and my third piece of shoo-fly pie, I thought I would share a few lessons I have learned over the years from the Amish.

1. The importance of self-reliance. Should the United States ever suffer an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack that shuts down our power grid and sends us back to the Stone Age, there will be widespread panic, looting, and even bloodshed in the streets as pampered Americans deal with the loss of air conditioning, refrigeration, and any form of mass communication. Just imagine what our country would look like after a week without functioning gas pumps, ATMs, or cell phones.

Meanwhile, the Amish would just keep on plowing and planting… and enjoying the canned meats, fruits, and vegetables they have prudently stored away.

2. The importance of family and community. When an Amish boy grows up and marries, his father usually subdivides his land so that his son can support his bride and growing family. Likewise, if the father isn’t a farmer but rather a craftsman, he has spent years training his son to either take over the family business or start one of his own.

As for the Amish elderly, they aren’t placed in nursing homes or assisted living facilities. On the contrary, the family simply builds an addition onto the main house and cares for grandma and grandpa until they pass away.

And whenever someone in the Amish community at-large has a pressing need, everyone and everything stops until that need is met. There are few things more sentimental and yet instructional than watching a group of Amish men erect a barn in a single day while their wives and daughters cook up a storm for the soon-to-be famished workers.

3. The importance of minding your own business. I saw a meme the other day that showed a frantic lady wearing a facemask asking an Amish man why he wasn’t panicking about world affairs or the latest pandemic. His simple reply was, “Because we don’t have cable TV”.

In other words, so many of the things we concern ourselves with – and spend countless hours worrying about – don’t really affect us and are beyond our control anyway, so why be bothered?

4. The importance of hard work. Amish folk eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, but also their share of red meats and rich desserts. And yet, their average life expectancy is just as long as those of us in the “real world” who gulp down multivitamins by the handful, drink fruit smoothies, and visit (or say we visit) the gym three times per week.

Maybe we should all sell our treadmills and buy a plow horse instead.