The (Very) Old Order Mennonites

**Out of respect for the community's desire to avoid publicity, I have used a fictitious name for the nearby town and any individual in this internet post.  I am happy to share more specific info in person.  Also, sorry this post is super long; the stories just shot out of my fingers!**

In the Summer of 2016, Nico went to Tillers International, a traditional skills and agricultural school in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to take a draft horse farming class.  In sharing his desire to live and farm petrol/electric-free, he learned of a plain group in Riverside, Kentucky that lived very primitively.  For example, Nico heard that they chose to use a horse-powered threshing machine, a huge 19th century implement, which effectively means they were growing grain without a combine.

Now to really understand what's going on here, you may need a minute of back story (I did!).  Nico got this crash course while at his class at Tillers.  Getting grain off the field is very challenging without fossil fuels.  A combine is a sizable modern machine that streamlines (or literally combines) three processes - reaping, threshing, and winnowing - right in the field, and is run at high RPMs which requires an internal combustion engine of some kind.  The advantage is that you can allow the grain to cure on the stalks in the field.  Before the combine came out, you had to cut the stalks down a week or so before they were cured, bind them into sheaves, and then lean the sheaves together in shocks to dry in the sun.  If you were late to cut the stalks down, the cured grain would mostly fall out of the grain heads and onto the ground as you were mowing it.  Amish and other old-fashioned farmers were hard-pressed not to incorporate the combine since it was such a labor-saving device.

A horse-drawn grain binder, "The King of the Harvest Field".
Image found in online search.

All that being said, it's very hard to find people or communities growing grain petrol/electric-free.  The grain binder, a predecessor to the combine, is the icon of the pre-modern times and is a dead-giveaway of a "technology holdout".  Nico still had hope to find someone knowledgeable about these obsolete techniques, especially since the grain binder was once such a common piece of farm equipment.  It can be still be maintenanced today, however, the canvas conveyor belt that feeds the cut hay into the binder needs to be specially made.

On the train back to Virginia after his class in Michigan, Nico struck up a conversation with an Amish couple and ended up talking late into the night on their shared 15 hour train ride.  Right away, Nico learned that this man was the owner of an Amish farm equipment manufacturing company, and having heard at Tillers that there are still Plain communities who stock the canvas conveyor belts, naturally, he brought up the grain binder.  Little did he know that the grain binder was such a line in the sand that separates the progressives from the holdouts.  The man said that some Amish still use grain binders, and he'd heard they still use such machines in Riverside, but that Nico was "asking about a tool from a bygone era".

Two horses walk around a horse power sweep.
Image found in online search.

Now, when you get told you're doing something "from a bygone era" by an Amish man, you may start to feel like you're headed in a bit of a problematic direction.  But if you know Nico, "no" is not a period, it's a comma.  Eventually Nico tracked down a video of 8 horses, bridled together around a carousel, called a "horse power sweep".  The horses were following each other in a circle to run a saw mill.  And if discovering that video wasn't thrilling enough, after some further research he learned that the particular group of Old Order Mennonites in the video were committed to living without petroleum, electricity, or the internal combustion engine.  What's more, they were based out of Riverside, that same small rural Kentucky town that was referenced at Tillers and by the Amish man on the train!

Months later, in October 2016 at a farming event led by Anne and Eric Nordell at Beech Grove Farm in Trout Run, Pennsylvania, Nico initiated a conversation with some Amish folks attending his same workshop.  He asked if they'd ever heard of the Old Order Mennonite community in Riverside, Kentucky.  One man at the conference said he did believe he knew someone within the requested community, but didn't have contact info on him at the moment, so he took down Nico's mailing address in pencil, on the torn off corner of a piece of old newspaper from his driver's van.  He stuck the note in his pocket and said he'd let Nico know when he found the address.  Not too promising.

Months later, in late Winter 2017, a letter arrived in the mail.  The Amish man from the conference answered his request!  The man wrote the shortest of short letters, greeting Nico and giving the mailing address for his contact in Riverside, who we'll call Abram.  Nico was glowingly delighted to now have in his possession, the contact information for someone in the only Old Order Mennonite community living fully petrol/electric-free in the United States.  Nico quickly wrote Abram a letter introducing himself and asking about the Riverside community.

More months later, in late Spring 2017, a letter arrived in the mail.  Abram answered Nico's letter!  They corresponded over the next several months.  Eventually Nico asked if we could visit their community.  Abram said we could visit, when would we come?  At that time we had a host of details to work out for our upcoming trip to France and an entire house to pack up, so it was our turn to take some time before responding to the letter.  We eventually made arrangements for July.

The group in Riverside is much larger, more spread out, and has been around quite a bit longer than Caneyville, the community we visited prior to Riverside.  Around 100 families live within a seven-mile radius, where each family runs their own farm and business.  The community came out of a leading from God to take a more radical stance on technology, by maintaining their traditional, pre-engine farming methods.

Finally, July had come, and we found ourselves in Kentucky.  As we drove through the countryside getting very close to the address Nico had written to and received letters from, we began to see row after perfect row of all types of vegetables.  Beautiful tomato plants, melons, squash and pumpkins, eggplant, onions, and tons of yellow peppers.  At the road's dead end, we found Abram's locally renowned market, just closing up for the day.  A large percentage of their market patrons are Bosnian, who had come to the US as refugees, and to whom yellow peppers are an important cuisine item.  Abram, probably in his late fifties, and his unmarried, adult sons were bustling about, making sure the shop was in order for the next day, and they were a lively bunch!  I was at first reminded of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, except there were only four brothers, and as far as I could tell, none of them were planning to cart off helpless maidens through the snowy mountain pass to be trapped, and eventually fall in love with the lonely, unsocialized men.  (Ugh, who decided that plot line is ok?!)

Abram's daughter and sons.
No, just kidding, her dress is not "plain"!
Image found in online search.

But seriously, these guys didn't seem lonely and did appear to be socialized, and they were nearly bouncing they were so excited.  They boisterously welcomed us into their home where their mother and sister had prepared a delicious dinner.  They had even bought ice cream for dessert, which I imagine was a pretty big deal for them to have in the dead of summer.  When everyone sat down to the meal, Abram guided the overflowing table to bow their heads to give thanks in silence.  In the midst of the hustle and bustle of excitement and arrival, the still silence washed over us as we felt the presence of the Spirit blessing and filling our hearts.

Abram and his wife had set up a similar schedule to what we had in Caneyville, but instead of a home base to return to each evening, we were to have lunch and dinner with a different family each day, then go to a new household to sleep each night and to join for breakfast the next day.  We were there Thursday dinner through Monday breakfast, and it was a whirlwind!  In that time we visited with upwards of 10 families, plus any folks that stopped in to meet the visitors from "society".  What irony that the Old Orders whirlwinded the fast-paced city folk with their slow-and-steady ways!

Between Caneyville and Riverside, I told our story a hundred times.  At some point I had a cultural realization that even though Nico had written them many letters, which were somewhat passed around each community, one single hard copy of a letter can't touch everyone.  Most people didn't know a thing about us.  This opened my eyes in two ways.  First, I couldn't believe their generosity and trust!  They really welcomed us into their sheltered company with great hospitality, especially not knowing who we were.  I didn't feel like there were any walls blocking our connections, though I know there are many things about us that they don't want influencing their community.

And second, though they're surrounded by the information age, they have done a remarkable job preventing it's influence.  I am a fish in the water of these modern times, and I sometimes don't even realize how I'm affected by the systems of the day.  If I had received an email (because it would more likely be an email than a letter) from someone that wanted to visit us, and I had organized folks in our community to host them, I could instantaneously forward the email to all the hosts at once, sharing who the new people were that our community had agreed to entertain.  This was not the case for them.  When I was in their company, I could tell our same story with the same words every time, over and over again, not having to embellish anything unless to amuse myself.  For some reason this second realization of experiencing how people function without modern communication systems was particularly striking to me.

Early on in our visit, we were introduced to Hannah, a ninety-something-year-old woman and the widow of the community's founder.  She shared with us that before they resolved to adopt stricter technology boundaries, her church took a stand against growing tobacco, a very cutting edge decision since this was before smoking was a proven health concern.  In addition, we assumed they had only tasted the internal combustion engine era and quickly rejected it, still skilled in their old ways, but Hannah told us she hadn't washed clothes by hand before they made the switch, and the group had to re-learn many things that had been lost over the several generations that tested the new technologies.  Nico asked her what it was like when she and her husband left the church they were in to start this new one with their spirit-led technology convictions.  She thought a minute and told us, basically, that it's just what they had to do.

Since we're interested in and have been transitioning to a lifestyle similar to their own, I really enjoyed seeing how these folks lived completely off-grid in every way.  In our own lives, we've yet to let go of the flush toilet (though we've made some valid attempts), washing machine, and hot water heater, so amidst my interest to see any and all systems they had, I was specifically interested in these three.  I was intrigued that each house had slightly different systems and enjoyed seeing all the options.  Some got their water from a spring and some from a cistern.  Some had pumps inside the house and some had regular sink spigots.  Some had showers and some only bathtubs.

Everyone had an outhouse.  A few were located within a closed porch but most were a few steps away from the house.  They were all pretty stinky, and I made a mental note that we needed to do some good research before relinquishing the flush toilet, to avoid nearly unbreathable conditions in the necessary.  Also, we've seen some ingenious latrine options in a couple communities east of Charlottesville in Louisa, Virginia.  Our overnight hosts offered us chamber pots for our bedrooms, a practice I only imagined in ancient history, but obviously still useful in this context, allowing us to not have to go outside in the middle of the night.

While we were in Riverside, life's realities found us needing to do laundry again, providing a hands-on learning experience!  We heard some folks had horse treadmills to run their washing machines (like the one we used in Caneyville), but the family we were staying with in Riverside when our laundry-washing needs hit, did not.  I was glad for this, to get to "study" under someone who had a lifetime experience of hand-washing clothes, with no alternative of an electric machine across the street... thanks, Wettigs!  :)

Washing machine - ringer on the left and stick on the right
to pull back and forth, swinging an agitator in the basin.
Image found in online search.

The family had added a room with a cement floor attached to the back of the log cabin they had inherited.  In this room was their wood cook stove, their washing station, and a bathtub surrounded by sheets hung as a privacy curtain.  When done with the bathtub and washing basin, we let the water drain right onto the floor, and the water flowed to the middle of the room were a drain took it out of the house.  Moisés and Yanni loved splashing on the flooded floor!  A daughter in her mid-twenties was still living at home and she offered to do my laundry for me, but I wanted to learn!  We filled a washing machine (see photo) with water from a hand pump and washed my clothes in three loads.  Moisés and Yanni caught the clothes as they came through the ringer to be gathered in a basket, then we hung them on the line outside to dry.  The ringer doesn't get nearly as much water out as the spin cycle on an electric machine, but I pushed away my doubt that the clothes would dry by dinner to trust that these people know what they're doing!  And it all worked out.  When we arrived at the home that was providing our overnight accommodations later that day, our dried and neatly folded clothes had already been delivered to the house!  That's hospitality!

Water was heated on the wood cook stove, where the "home fires" were always burning.  Many houses had one stove indoors for the winter and another outdoors for the summer.  The models they used were unlike ours at the Downstream Project, in the sense that they had huge fireboxes and the air intake could be shut down to almost nothing.  This allowed them to keep it running from dawn to dusk without burning through much wood.  A pot of water was always on the stove top, slowly heating on the gently smoldering fire, and they could easily rekindle the fire again to make the next meal.

Out of the many things I didn't expect, hot showers was near the top of the list.  I was pretty sure we'd have to forgo showers for baths, or at least do some real fancy footwork to make a functional shower if we eventually abandoned indoor plumbing one day.  In several houses we stayed in, they had a tank of water on the second floor that could be filled with hot water, with some cold mixed in to the desired temperature, hooked up to a gravity-fed shower on the floor below with decent water pressure.  Simple, cool!

Since Riverside is nearly 10 times larger than Caneyville, there was more age diversity.  In Caneyville every family we stayed with had young children, but in Riverside, though I'm sure there were many young families, most that we met had children in their teens and twenties.  After almost every meal we had, the parents would suggest to their pre-teen or teenage children to watch our kids so we could talk, that is, if their kids hadn't already offered.  By my own experiences, when I try to imagine a life where the women are raising a bushel of children, all while minding the home and family needs, without the use of modern technology, I just can't imagine how they do it without burning out.  Nico is sure that their ability to do all of this happily stems from their strong family unity and child-training traditions.  I learned that in this time-honored culture, older families send their pre-teens and teens around to help the younger families out, doing their every day home tasks and chores!  They don't just watch children so the mother can get some work done, they willingly wash dishes, make dinner, and do laundry for the mothers.  I was very interested and excited to hear this inside information of how the community takes care of itself.

Speaking of big families, an eye-saucer moment happened for me at lunch one day.  We had been invited to the home of a couple in their seventies.  As the wife was setting the table, she told me about her family.  "How many grandchildren do you have?" I inquired.  "67," she replied casually, "and 26 great-grandchildren."  I was not able to hide my astonishment and burst out, "Wow, 67 grandchildren!  Isn't that a lot?"  But logically, it's not!  If families all average eight kids, then they would also average 64 grandchildren and 512 great-grandchildren.  I had just never processed these numbers and it was hard to fathom.  That's nearly as many grandchildren as my entire grade level in elementary school, and more great-grandchildren than there were students in the entire building: kindergarten through fifth grade.

At one point during our visit, the schedule that Abram had set up for us needed a slight shift, which meant that we needed to cancel a pre-planned buggy ride transporting us between two locations.  In favor of face-to-face communication, members of the church in Riverside don't have telephones, so we couldn't call and tell the couple not to come.  I really appreciated seeing how this change in plans was worked out.  We felt bad because we thought it would be a huge burden to communicate this new message without the instant communication methods we're familiar with, but to them it wasn't a big deal, just a part of daily life.  The message had to be communicated in person, and because they had always lived telephone-free, they had several ideas how to deliver it.  We ended up simply stopping by their house and leaving a note on their front door because they weren't home... no big deal!

Nico shows Moisés how the water wheel works.

One of our overnight hosts happened to be the owner of the community's saw mill.  Though Riverside's saw mill had a horse power sweep, the majority of the year they ran the mill with a water wheel, engineered to run off a man-made pond (dug out with implements pulled by horses!) that overflowed through a tunnel under the mill.  It rained quite a bit while we visited the Caneyville and Riverside communities, which is unusual for the summer months, so the pond was unexpectedly full.  When we told the family who owned the mill how interested we were, they invited us to come down and see the water wheel in operation.

Nico and Moisés posing with the saw mill's
log tongs.  The tongs grasp the log, and
stay clamped on by the gravity of log's own
weight.  On a 4:1 block & tackle, it can then
be easily raised or lowered, or moved left
or right on a track above Nico's head.

On our way down to the mill, I asked the daughter of the family, "You live so close to the saw mill, isn't it loud?  Can you hear it from your house?"  She seemed surprised at the question and said that she'd never heard it from the house.  Arriving at the mill, no one was wearing earplugs, and Nico brought the volume level to my attention: only the moderate sound of a blade cutting wood, as when one saws by hand.  It turns out that the ear-splitting, high-pitched scream I think of with electric saws comes from the motor, not the wood being cut.

We were invited to join the Riverside community for their church service on Sunday morning.  Their congregation is so large that they have two meeting houses, which take turns hosting a service in English, very helpful for "seekers" like us, with the other service being in German.  I asked what to expect in the service and was told, "Well, it's a couple hours long... first we sing a song, then we have the first sermon, which is usually short, only about 30 minutes, then the second sermon.  Then we sing another song to close."  Nico hadn't asked what to expect, so he was surprised.  :)

On Sunday morning before the church service, we had breakfast with a couple who still had one daughter in her early twenties at home.  As I helped the mother-daughter duo clean up breakfast, the mother questioned my choice to wear earrings.  Throughout my time in Caneyville and Riverside, I had kept my hair in a low bun on the back of my head, feeling like this was the most respectable way to look since I don't wear a head covering.  Until Sunday morning's breakfast, I had never once given thought to my earrings.  By pulling my hair back, they showed more obviously... whoops!  I didn't have a good answer to this woman's inquiry, and I appreciated her boldness to have asked.  The mother assumed that people get their ears pierced for a showy appearance, as if to say, "Look at me!" and I'm sure there are some people for whom that's true, but it's not true for me.  I often forget about my earrings and hardly change them, so then why have them?  It was a great question, but since my brain takes a while to mull things over, I didn't have an answer until much later.  After we were already gone, I realized that wearing earrings is the same to me as the women in their community having different colored dresses.  It's not showy, but it is fun!

We arrived at the meeting house in two buggies, since our family plus our host family wouldn't all fit in one.  The men gathered in a circle on the right side of the building and the women on the left.  As each new person arrived, they walked around the appropriate circle to give "a holy kiss" to everyone in line, then take their place at the end of the line to welcome the next folks.  At the appointed time, the men and women each entered through a door on their side of the building and sat on their side of the meeting room.  There's a nursing room on the women's side where the mamas can still hear the sermon.  The opening song was in German and each syllable was sung loud and long and slow.

Children are expected to sit quietly throughout the service, of course.  Since we hadn't yet practiced this type of sitting still like the other children had, Nico gave Moisés a good pep talk before the service.  Inside Moisés could put his head in Nico's lap and Nico rubbed his back.  Nico reports that the men around them were very supportive and understanding of the attempt to have Moisés sit still in the service.  This experience of sitting still for so long was really stretching for Moisés, who eventually fell asleep and Nico laid him on a sweater on the floor.  Yanni, on the other hand, slept through the first half of the service, which was helpful!  When he woke up, I tried to nurse him as long as possible, but he was full of energy and wanted to bop around.  We went outside and stood with another mother and toddler until the service was over.

I was delighted to see a woman from Caneyville at the church service!  It was so pleasant to see a familiar face, though I'd only met her a few days before.  Her in-laws lived in Riverside, so she and her husband were in town for a visit.  I asked her if she felt awkward at the Riverside church since her head covering was different, and she replied with a friendly grin, "Yeah, but I don't look as oddball as you!"  I think that meant she was glad I was there, too.  :)

Read more about this
thought-provoking book.

On Sunday afternoon after lunch, many family members and friends of our host had come over to meet us and visit with each other for a bit.  By this point, I had grown accustomed to the natural, yet intentional-seeming splitting of women and men when we were in a large group.  This time the women were together in a circle of chairs indoors, and the men pulled some chairs outside to talk together in the yard.  I was asked if we'd ever read the book, Henry and the Great Society.  I'd never heard of it.  They gave a high recommendation for the short chapter book, and because they had plenty copies of the book around their community, they gave me a copy that was there in the house.

Toward the end of our visit, as Nico and I reflected on our time in this "bygone" community, he likened our presence there to the Superbowl.  We really felt like the entertainment of the season for them!  Everyone came out to see us!  We wore unusual clothing!  We talked quickly and loudly about things they agreed with, and probably some things they didn't!  One time Nico sang, "This little light of mine" Negro-spiritual-style, clapping and stomping along.  Afterward they told us, "We sing that song too, but not like that."

While we will learn many things about petrol/electric-free living during our apprenticeship in France, one thing they have compromised at l'Arche is grinding grain.  Even in their mother community, grain was ground with an electric motor.  Nico realized that being trained in the l'Arche bakery, which uses a modern, state-of-the-art mill, would require him to learn an alternative method of milling later and elsewhere.  He was excited to have direct connections to the wealth of knowledge in the Plain heritage, and particularly this Riverside group, only a couple states over from us in Kentucky.  (See a quote from Wendell Berry on how the Amish can teach an important lesson for our times.)

We hope to interweave what we learn from the wealth of knowledge and heritage at both l'Arche and the Riverside community.  While we were in Riverside, we got to see an 8-horse power sweep in action, grinding corn in a major agricultural feed mill, which not only ground the feed for their whole community, but also for farmers in the surrounding area.  The man giving us a tour at the feed mill told Nico that enough grain could be ground for a bakery with a one- or two-horse treadmill.  Yes, electric-free grain grinding is still happening!

Life is slower in the Old Order Mennonite community in Riverside, and I think they appreciated how interested we were in their way of life.  It seems like they don't often have people coming through that are enthusiastic about their lifestyle and have already begun a transition away from "the great society".  I imagine most people that come through either see them as a nuisance or a novelty, as Lucas Shrock-Hurst once coined about the Petrol-Free Jubilee bicycle tour.  We were so delighted and honored to have been welcomed into their circles, and we hope our paths cross again.