Why Would a Whole Amish Family All of a Sudden Not Be Amish Anymore
WORKING eighty ACRES, AMISH PROSPER AMID CRISIS
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August 28, 1986
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The mules fussed and the wagon's steel wheels rattled in the rose-lit dawn as Samuel Beiler, an Amish farmer, headed up the colina this morning to his fields.
It is the tobacco harvest season in Lancaster County, and Mr. Beiler, his wife, Mary, and his v children were flanked past other Amish families cutting the waist-high plants and hauling them in to 100-year-old barns to be hung from the rafters and air-cured.
The ingather, worth $2,000 an acre, is i of Mr. Beiler'southward master sources of income, but by no means the only one. On his 80-acre farm, Mr. Beiler raises corn and alfalfa to feed 50 milk cows.
At a time when leading agricultural economists have declared the small commercial family farm a relic, Lancaster County'south 1,200 Amish subcontract families are thriving. With diverse crops on small farms, with a bourgeois approach to farm applied science and with abiding manual exertion, even by trivial children, this region's Amish have largely escaped the high debt that has put 250,000 to 300,000 family unit farms out of business since 1981. 'You Get Also Large'
''This isn't the kickoff fourth dimension things have been tough, and it'southward non going to be the last,'' said a twoscore-year-old Amish man from New Holland who asked not to be identified. ''Our leaders know this. If you become too big, yous make a package in good times. But you lose a parcel when times turn bad.''
The Amish are providing a stable economic base to a county with i of the nation'due south most vibrant farm economies. Country prices are climbing. Farm implement and supply stores are busy. Banks are open and pursuing new farm customers. The value of the total farm output in the county is more than $700 one thousand thousand annually and rising steadily. Sloping fertile Lancaster County is crowded with white farmhouses and silos spring from the valleys similar silver-topped mushrooms.
''There'due south no hole-and-corner,'' said Mr. Beiler. ''We've been blessed with fertile footing, and we piece of work, mayhap too difficult.''
Despite this modesty, some agronomical authorities insist that Amish farm practices and economics are another indication that the get-large-or-become-out theory that has dominated American farming for more than than thirty years may no longer exist valid. The Systems Are Diverse
Amish farmers protect themselves from the cycles of blast and bust in agriculture past operating diverse product systems. About accept herds of milk cows and grow feed corn, alfalfa, hay, wheat, tobacco, vegetables and fruits. Some raise poultry and cattle. Others breed horses and raise mules.
The Amish also avoided Government farm supports. The programs require farmers to idle acreage as a requirement for receiving benefits. ''Nosotros don't need handouts,'' said Mr. Beiler. ''Nosotros need to work every foot of land that we own.''
The Amish community of Lancaster Canton numbers six,500 people and is growing quickly. Although the Amish ain less than a quarter of Lancaster County's five,000 farms, their system has been used as a model for the Mennonite and ''English'' farmers in the region.
Amish farmers generally till 70 to fourscore acres, enough for one family to handle, merely ane-5th the size of the average American farm. The average non-Amish subcontract in the canton is not much bigger.
Mules and horses haul implements at a price Amish farmers say is one-third that of a tractor. The Amish purchase mechanical harvesting equipment that is pulled through fields by teams but whose machinery is powered past independent gasoline or diesel engines. They Piece of work to Cut Erosion
The Amish developed advanced programs for rotating crops, applying manure and fertilizer and growing along ridge tops to lessen erosion. They buy the best seed.
A result is that Amish farmers produce as much corn per acre as bigger farms in Iowa, or as much milk per cow as Wisconsin's dairy farms, but at far lower costs. Pennsylvania State University estimates the cost of planting an acre of corn at $115. Mr. Beiler and other Amish farmers say they can put the crop in the basis and harvest it for under $35 an acre.
An important source of savings is in the cost of labor. From the time they are toddlers, Amish children are regarded as important additions to the subcontract organization. Children are educated in 1-room schoolhouses until the eighth course, and then become full-time helpers. Eight children in a family is not unusual. 'They Take to Work for It'
In a tomato field ringed by feed corn near Beloved Beck, xxx miles east of Lancaster, i Amish farmer, Sam Stoltzfus, explained the source of his people's strength. He said that Amish families helped i another at planting and harvesting and that children were taught that they were central in the community. ''We have to eat,'' he said. ''We take to feed the children. And they have to work for it, merely like we did.''
The lessons are simple, but they have been proved workable over centuries. Only a handful of the Amish have been forced out of business organisation since 1981, co-ordinate to the Amish and canton bankers.
Subcontract finance experts say internet profits on Amish farms are unusually loftier. An Amish farm of 80 acres, 40 cows, five acres of tobacco, vegetables and fruit can earn a gross annual income of $125,000 or more than. Considering of their organized religion's demand for ''plainness,'' almanac expenses for feeding, habiliment and housing an boilerplate Amish family with half-dozen children total $half dozen,000 to $8,000. Amish farmers generally have moderate debts, principally in loans for land.
Most Amish share the costs of mechanized equipment, dividing the purchase of a baler or corn harvester amidst 3 or four farms. Among More Profitable
Their net income commonly totals $25,000 to $twoscore,000. Coupled with off-farm income from the auction of quilts and other handcrafts, the Amish take operations that are amidst the nation's more than profitable commercial family farms.
''The Amish farmer puts all the mod models to shame,'' said Paul Whipple, a long-fourth dimension farm consultant who has many Amish clients. ''They don't take their coin tied upward in machines. They aren't looking to buy out their neighbors. They put their money into the best land and they have care of it improve.''
Other experts say the Amish system would non work for most American farmers and their families. ''People just don't desire to work that hard anymore,'' said Jay W. Irwin, the Lancaster County farm agent.
Yet the Amish successes, said Mr. Irwin and Mr. Whipple, suggested that smaller farms might exist more suitable.
After dark, Mr. Beiler brings in his mules and his family retires to a large kitchen lit by a gas lantern. His youngest daughter sleeps in Mrs. Beiler'southward lap. The boys sit on a bench. Mr. Beiler, his 40-year-sometime optics vivid despite a total day in the field, sends his sons to bed and asks: ''Tell me about the farmers in Iowa - what went wrong?''
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/28/us/working-80-acres-amish-prosper-amid-crisis.html
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