My Mennonite Neighbors
 

This one lives about 5 miles from me. Went by one day and he was mowing wheat straw, so I stopped and took a picture. He's sits on a steel-wheeled cart with 4 cylinder, Duetz air-cooled diesel which runs the PTO for the mower-conditioner. There are little sheets of tin, heat shields, screwed over the engine block next to there he sits.
http://www.hedgewoodacres.com/moco2.jpg

Here's a close-up of the same photo

http://www.hedgewoodacres.com/moco72.jpg

I know they have their rules and ways of doing thing, but if I had to hook up a 4 cylinder engine for the PTO, I would just as soon have a whole tractor to do the work. POOR HORSES! That has got to be hot sitting on that engine like that!

Yeah, I don't know the rules either. How is using the engine different that owning an old tractor? I saw on a show one time where they could use modern tools as long as they didn't belong to them.

are they Mennonite or Amish? My Mennonite neighbors own cars and all kinds of tractors.

The Mennonite order is older than Amish. Meno Simons was the founder and where the name Mennonite came from. The Amish come from a later sect that broke off from the Mennonites. I live in the middle of these people, in fact the locals say they're taking over.

The locals ALWAYS say they are taking over, but there are always locals to say it.....Tell you anything?

They do cause a few problems. It's tough to get a school bond election passed, cause the Amish kids quit school early, and if they like buggies on the roads, you have to be careful you don't wipe one out. Even if they have special lanes for them, they like the asphalt better. I used to have to pull to the right and pass them on the shoulder that was intended for buggies, while the buggies stayed right where the cars were supposed to be.

All in all, I have had worse neighbors. FAAARR worse....Joe

The amish are not allowed to use tractors in the fields but can use them as stationary power units. And depending on the bishop they have will dictate as to whether they air tires on the tractors or not. I live near Topeka,IN. that is a large amish community and some of the bishops are at odds with each other on the use of machinery with air tires and cell phones.

Amish and Mennonite are allowed to use engines because they were invented before the founding of their religion. Many have a=loosened th erules to allow tractor use for the negines but not int he fields because it is a more worldly way of tilling th efields.

The Ohio Swarzentruber Amish are supposed to be the strictest. They do not allow SMV signs on their buggies.

http://eightlake.smugmug.com/Ohio-Am...gFJds2jhttp://

They might not be able to use them in the field, but they have no problem using them as "cars" to haul stuff along with people.

That's what we have around here. We try really hard to be nice to them, but they sure are good at taking advantage of it.

I really need to watch what I say on a public forum such as this .... But Swarzentruber sect are generally known to be abusive .... and I do not mean to their animals.

I think the refusal to use the minimum of reflectors on an amish buggy is pure idiocy!

They get wiped out all the time around here. My neighbor's uncle was just killed in a buggy/car wreck a few days ago...funeral was today. Not only are the buggies hard to see, but they also walk on the roads at night...I'm talking about little 5 and 6-year-old kids wearing black or very dark clothes.

Pa. law requires a triangle reflector. Some have gone to jail for disobeying...

they call that religious persecution !!!

The Amish have been around for over 300 years, Mennonites even longer. Both existed long before the invention of modern engines.

I'll take my Amish/Mennonite/Pennsylvania Dutch neighbors over most others. They are friendly, helpful, and hard workers. Their children are polite and well mannered. Our kids get along great.

Guess it all depends on where you live.

I find them very hard working and decent people - but I must say some of them really have some crazy rules to live by - the Amish especially - but then I guess that's their business - if someone wants to ride around in a horse drawn buggy going 5 miles an hour when they could be going 50 or taking a day to clear a hay field when it could be done in a hour - who am I to be concerned -

yup. Why would anybody want to be in a hurry to be at one place, just so they could be earlier at another? Why hurry from place to place when it dosent seem, to gain you anything extra. Whod want to spend the time clip clopping down the road at 5mph, looking at all the scenery, the neighbors places, watching the birds roost in trees, waving or hollering to the neighbors as you were passing by, Maybe getting a quick laugh for the day. Whod want that.
Whod want to be in a hay field lazing away on a horse mower, with the horses doing ALL the work while you just set there and raise and lower the lever and make the trurns if the horses aren't that smart. Whod want to watch a rabbit scurry around the field, or watch a deer as he/they watch you, unconcerned by your being there. Or watch a hawk as it circles then dives for a field rat.

NOW< I will have to admit, handling bales, OR forking off from in front of a loose hay loader, which ive done both, can get tiring. BUT when its your hay, and you've done that work for it. It seems to mean more somehow. I had my hay round baled. I hauled 34 bales off the field with a bale buggy I bought at the sale I go to the first of every month, run by the amish. It liked ta killed me, in the heat, crankin that windless on the loader. Took me 3 days, and I was beat. Know what? I didn't get any enjoyment outa that. Wadnt the same, Me setting on my A on my H most of the time, and then cranking that dang windless. Not near as much satisfaction as when I was putting up bailed squares, OR forking off a loader to make a full load on the rack I got just as tired, but I got more out of it somehow..

The overall point is, Theres different forms of satisfaction to be found, and I envy the amish/Mennonite idea of taking it easy, as the old song said. I do it as best I can with OLD equipment and old tractors, but it aint the same as when I was driving a team in the hayfield running a rack wagon, or later on a #9 mower trying to get over a hang over from the night before, and Florie and Dixie knowing just what to do.

It's rare I've seen an Amish buggy going 5 mph.

Our neighbors in PA, actually, a very nice looking and I would say above average in a lot of ways family, had standardbred horses for their buggies. They kept their harness and buggies the way a collector keeps an old '57 Chevy, cleaning, polishing,... they were sharp looking.

They told me more than once that it was hard to hold those horses back. On some of the flatter stretches, those horses wanted to go, sometimes pushing over 30mph.

A few of the Amish around there would get a thoroughbred but most seemed to prefer the sturdier build of the standardbred horses. At least they did then... Its been a while.

Farmboy - I think its nicer to cut the hay in a hour and have the rest of the day to go fishing, enjoy nature or what else you want to do - and I don't think the guy cutting hay with a horse is out there taking a joy ride - he got to get the hay baled before it rains and he's got a hundred other things to do -and Bellyman they may do more than 5 mph on a straight away but I've seem them just about crawling up a hill -

They are Amish, the Mennonites are an older sect, but the Amish are more strict. Mennonites own vehicles and tractors and do not use horses in their farming.....usually. I too am in the middle of a large Amish population and they work for me on my farm and in my bakery. Hard working, industrious and very cordial. The kids a great and super polite and shy. Us Englischers could learn a lot from them!

I don't know...the OP seems to think the neighbors are pretty sure they are Mennonite. You would think they would know what religion they are.

Sorry, but this is wrong. I belong to a Menno church and I know Old Order Menno's who farm with horses. It depends on the church you belong to.
Our churches are self governing. There are so many ones that we don't always know who is who. You usually Know which is which in your area, but if I go up to say, Lancaster County, Pa which has 33 flavors of plain people, I might see some plain girls riding bikes and say, 'they're OO Menno's"
Only to be corrected by someone from there who actually did tell me, "No, those are Joe Wengers."

The bad thing about plain churches is that they tend to split over the man made rules. That is not good. But that is why there are so many different ones.

Grew up around both groups and all I can say...is there are good and bad in any group of people..

As I said in my post, "usually"....maybe you missed that point.

And I also said that there is a huge population of Amish around me along with Mennonites, and my familiarity is based on living among them and transporting them and befriending them.

And even they will tell you, there are good and bad among the Amish - in fact, they have a translation for "poor Amish trash" just like we call some folks "poor white trash."

Is their really a Amish mafia?

you can always tell amish trash, they will have a old work horse up on blocks in the front yard!

No Amish Mafia in my locale............they laugh about that show and we have heard lots of stories....

There are Menno and Amish near my home place in Illinois, so I try to keep up with issues with them, read this yesterday and cried.

http://www.vice.com/read/the-ghost-r...?Contentpage=1

Well could be ... there is organized crime .... mostly timber thieves and wannabe barn builders. To survive they keep changing the name on their business cards and often need to move into new territories where they are less known.

.... they tend to ruin the good reputation of the Amish making it difficult for the honest ones to conduct business with the English.

We have a small settlement here known to be those who got booted out of the church .... so they get together and form their own church.

Some pics of the carnage... http://www.mapministry.org/news-and-...uggy-accidents

Brighton - yes things like that are horrible - but there are things just as bad and a lot worse going on all over this world - often times little children are the victims - there are a lot of evil people on the earth - evil ranging from the lowest form of human behavior to cheating and stealing - and it seems things are getting worse all the time - sometimes I wonder why God doesn't just distroy the whole place -

Very interesting. We had a go-round with a barn building "company" last summer who claimed to be ex-Amish (they have a new church now) and they all had Amish/Menno names. They were pretty shady but we won in the end. :D