As distinctive as their clothes are their horse-drawn buggies – the Amish being forbidden to drive cars. And there were a gratifying number of buggies clattering along the byways around the neighbouring towns of Bird in Hand and Intercourse (yes, really, and my teenage daughter inevitably photographed the road sign to amuse her friends back home).
I noticed two companies offering tourists rides in Amish buggies, but instead we opted for a 90-minute minibus excursion organised by The Amish Experience, a well-established company based in Bird in Hand. Pottering along the country back roads at a speed little faster than the buggies, Jim kept up a steady stream of facts and figures.
We learnt, for example, that all the non-Amish, regardless of nationality, are known as “English”; and that even in death, they shun ostentation – their gravestones being small and identical. We had to hold back on a scheduled visit to an Amish cemetery, however, because a funeral was in progress. Several buggies were lined up outside, a poignant sight that might have come from 200 years ago.
Jim pointed out the “phone shanties”, upright garden sheds that looked like outside toilets, but actually house a telephone used for doing business with the “English” (phones aren’t permitted in the home itself). Then there were the tractors with metal wheels – and thus too uncomfortable for taking further than the farmyard. Horse-drawn implements are still widely used in the fields.