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Henry and Jen are a married couple in their late twenties, who live in a double wide trailer about 6 miles outside of town.

Henry works as a local mechanic in a small town of about 1200 people, while Jen works as a Pharmacist. Every morning Henry and Jen get up at 6:00 AM, do their morning chores, feed their two horses, a dozen chickens, and the pet cats, Tammy and Prince. After gulping down a quick breakfast, they jump into the old farm truck and head into town together, to put in another 8 hour shift at work.

In the evening Henry swings by and picks up Jen from the Pharmacy, and they drive home together, usually in silence. They do the chores, eat dinner, watch an hour or so of Television, and then off to bed to catch some sleep, so they can do it all over again the next day.

                                              The Lapp Family

Henry and Jen will never be blessed with children. The animals on their small 7 acre farm help to fill that void a little.

Henry and Jen are just an average American married couple, content to live the average American life, make their small mark in their small world with a handful Read more »

The night was quiet. In the distance I could hear the frogs croaking around the little pond outside our woods several hundred yards away. All the chores were done, the cows were turned out to pasture for the night so they could munch on the fresh grass over night. I could hear the occasional soft moo from a satisfied cow who had its udder relieved a few hours before from us milking it, and now it was getting its belly full. Way in the distance I could hear a Coyote yapping. several seconds passed until I heard another answering it from a neighboring woods. On such a clear night out in the country, miles away from any major City or Highway, the sounds of the night carried for miles.

I was 9 years old. Still fresh and innocent about life. I was in that stage where Babies came down from heaven and into the bedroom on a cloud. Where if you fell down in the dirt, God would appear, literally, pick you up, brush you off, kiss your hurt spot, and then vanish into the thin air again. A time when mom and dad were my heroes, elders within the church were always right, and I fully trusted every adult I met and what they had to say, because that is what you do at that age. Aww but if only we could all hang onto the innocence of childhood for just a little longer!

Usually when supper was over, after crawling into my bed with my little brother, I would fall asleep right away. Maybe it was from the long days in the fields, or maybe falling asleep quickly is just something a 9-year-old boy does.
However, for some reason this evening I was laying in bed completely aware of my surroundings, the quiet, sultry summer night, and all the sounds in it.

And than I heard it. The distant, faint, clip clop of a horse’s hooves falling on the asphalt a mile away. A buggy traveling at midnight in the middle of the week??? I sat alertly upright in bed. Something wasn’t feeling right here. As the sound of the clip clops got closer, I glided silently from my bed to the second story window of our farmhouse. A farmhouse Built about a quarter of a mile back from the asphalt road that ran past our 255 acre farm nestled out in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin. As I peeped out of the window, I watched the buggy come to a halt in the field across the road from our place next to the Amish farm half a mile away.  In the shadows of the tall trees, I watched as 3 men climbed off of the buggy with pitch forks. I slowly froze with fear as that night I watched my very first act of the something few people from the outside world know anything about. Something that lies deep within the heart of the Amish communities. Something that is only muttered in undertones for fear of getting visited by “The Amish Mafia” Read more »

In last week’s Blog I gave the top 10 reasons why you may not be cut out for the Amish life. I must admit here, I hold my breath after each blog I post, until the first few responders give their feedback. I often seem to walk on a fine line of where to not go with a subject. In other words, although I have been out for almost 11 years, I am not quite always in touch with what is politically correct.
Take for example, the first response I received after my last blog, by a woman who had a husband that was held in the war for many years, even after he wished to retire. This woman was upset, and rightfully so, about the fact that I made a comparison to the Amish life being tougher then going through boot camps. In my exact words, “if you think the military, boot camp, the grueling workouts in the rain, etc, as tough as that might be, you can still take comfort that you can always throw in the towel and drop out at any moment”.
If you read the Part I, and thought I was rather hard on the Amish life in some areas, I probably was. However, take note that I only did it to DE-romanticize, or educate some of the many people who wish to join. I can also assure you that I left areas out that I could have talked about at length, and probably will sometime in the future. Areas that need to be addressed. Now is not the time and place.
I personally felt unsettled all week knowing I left a story half told, and knowing that without fairly telling the top 10 good reasons why you just might make it among the Amish, I was doing the entire Amish community a huge disfavor.
Indeed, when I keep hinting around the edges about feeling Read more »