Posted on 05/22/2014 1:34:19 PM PDT by Theoria
PA should be glad. Every time I check out FreeRepublic, it looks like those rascals are up to no good!
“Why did God put Mennonites on the earth?”
His answer; “To give the Amishman a ride to work.”
Are we talking about the real Amish? Sarasota, Florida has lots of Amish.
There were a few around Seymour about 40 years ago. I suspect that area and further east are much more populated now than then, too.
“Ohio passed up Pennsylvania as the state with the most Amish sometime back in the 1990s.
Yes. I remember as far back as the early ‘80’s that people were commenting on the ‘flight’ of the Amish from Lancaster Country (PA). That might not be the right word for it, but property values, and the relative lack of good farmland had younger Amish, looking to establish themselves, moving westward.
There was even an attempt to establish an Amish ‘colony’ in Belize, IIRC.
Just south of Iowa City, Iowa is the community of Kalona.
I’d estimate it’s 80 percent Amish/Mennonite.
I love the Lancaster (PA) area - you can’t beat some of the restaurants for serious home-cooked meals! But yes, it is ironic that the “simple life” has fostered such commercialism. I feel the same way when I visit Gettysburg... not nearly the amount of tourist traps, but plenty nonetheless. It’s just weird to think that “entertainment” has come from such a horrific event in our history. I guess that’s just the way of it, though.
Upstate SC has a growing Amish population due to the larger farms to be bought at a reasonable price. This has been a trend over the past ten years....Horse Farms especially. Right across the border in Tryon, NC is horse country.
There are many Amish and Mennonite families from Lancaster County buying farms in my area...north central Ohio.
They make great neighbors...no noise.
The Amish in Central PA still have a lot of fine farms and without the commercialization.
One of my all time favorite trout streams is bounded by their farms. They leave buffer zones along the streams and don’t use a lot of fertilizer or pesticides, so the stream hatches are some of the most diverse I have seen.
You will see them plowing the fields with teams of eight horses. On Sundays along the stream you would hear the clip clop and then up to forty carriages of courting teens would pass by.
They’ve been moving to southern Iowa and northern Missouri in droves for a couple of decades.
I was surprised to see many Amish near Long Prairie and Wadena in Minnesota. They must be hardy folks as my wife and I drove by an Amish woman going home in her horse drawn buggy on US 71 when the temperature was -26 degrees.
The Dakotas, Kansas, any rural county that has seen its population dropping in recent decades should welcome the Amish.
I have the feeling there will always be Amish in Lancaster County, even if illegal aliens have to be hired to pretend to be them.
There are alot more Amish and much more PA than just Lancaster area. They are fine in central PA. Believe me, no one goes there for tourism.
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