What about Amish Butter?
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Well said. I live close to some Amish and a ton of old order Mennonites. I've seen one too many children's stools in front of rocket stoves and suspiciously young girls with babies.
Generally seem to provide for the other members of their community, but the organization of that community isn't great. And that's what I know about them, which is little given how insular they are.
I did have a sit down meeting with a Mennonite business owner about doing a website for his company, which was one of the strangest encounters of my life.
No electricity in their homes, but I guess for businesses they break that rule?
All Amish are allowed to use battery-powered devices but not grid power. Most are allowed to use diesel generators. There's a very real possibility in the coming decades that they become the world's primary users of alkaline batteries which is very funny to me.
afaik "the english" (that's you) are allowed to do that kind of technology for them as long as they themselves are not doing it. and then they also have some basic electrical stuff (lights esp.) and will use off-grid power sources for them and such. it's iirc more of a glacial pace of adoption rather than a total ban
It's probably useful to differentiate between Amish and Mennonite here. Mennonites I know use mad technology for business, including planes. The Mennonite homes I've been in (not many, but a couple), did not have electricity in them, and had root cellars, oil lamps, etc.
An Amish dude did some windows for me and I didn't see any vehicles at his home, and used hand tools, near as I could tell. But idk, this probably changes so much between different communities and shit. Every time I go to town to get groceries, I see Mennonites in aldi. I don't believe I've seen Amish there. The only interactions I've had with the Amish I had to drive to them.
Always slightly uncomfortable.
very good point and to clarify on my post my experiences are primarily w Amish people so any anecdotes i have are with them and not Mennonites.
i know mennonite communities with cellphones and amish with enterprise grade photocopiers (for maintaining ag records and 3rd party auditing).
among the Plain Communities, Mennonite communities tend to use more technology, but ultimately the adoption and use of any technology is decided upon by the community on a case-by-case basis. i.e. having a phone+phone line available for community emergencies, adoption of certain kinds of equipment for production. there's always an internal, community logic to the decisions.
it's interesting to see and compare to capitalist modernity / consumer culture where every bozo is told by a screen or a sales engineer to want the latest planned obsolescence gizmo or fuel-eating treatmaker. it's not perfect or even always good, but it is a process that bypasses a lot of bullshit.