They manage a lot of the dairies here.
This has been Amish country "forever" and the Amish are against violence of any kind, so it is particularly sad that they were caught up in the war between the states at Gettysburg. Eighty percent of America's Amish are located in Pennsylvania, but the numbers are growing because of having lots of children (average seven per family.) Contrary to statistics in other Christian religions, the Amish church has a really high membership retention rate - in the high 70 percent range.
The Amish are exempt from forced education of their children beyond the eighth grade on religious belief grounds, and they do not accept social security or any other form of government support. They were possibly the first to believe in separation of church and state.
We saw several buggies out and about this Sunday morning as we drove through. Not wanting to be intrusive I snapped this quick pic as we were driving by at about 50 mph. Can you tell that their buggy has a glass windshield? And this horse appears to have dainty hooves, but we noticed most of the horses were possibly Morgans. (For you non-horsemen, a Morgan is like a Clydesdale - think Budwieser.) Their legs and hooves were massive, their hindquarters, too. All the better to draw the farm machinery around as Amish people don't go in for modern technology.
You know how we have automobile dealerships? How cool is it that the Amish have buggy dealerships? I guess I thought they were, like, made one at a time to order, but no. There on a street corner was a whole sales lot full of buggies. I love it! Wish I could buy one and drive it back to Texas. Whoo-hoo, that would be fun! Yes, sir, it surely would be.
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