The Amish Cultural

THE AMISH CULTURAL
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(April 05, 2012)
The Amish Cultural
The Amish is one of the many groups that live in the Northern part of America. They are about just one of the many groups in America. The Amish community is astonishingly different from everything that goes around in America (K.N.Dastoor, 1997). They are just like Aliens in a different world, they just follow their beliefs. Their life is dedicated to a list of written or oral rules known as the Ordnung, which basically outlines the Amish faith and helps in the definition of the culture and what Amish is all about. The Ordnung may highlight almost every aspect of their lifestyle including the dress code, hairstyles to the different methods of farming. Interestingly the Ordnung varies from community to community (Powell, 2012).
Amish farmers are some of the best producers of food worldwide. Their produce is extremely produced with a lot of care and hard work. They rare and breed animals, produce organic foods. Since the primary mode of subsistence is farming, it’s with no doubt place them as horticulturalists. They plant a lot of a lot of crops every year depending on the different season they experience. The gardens are mainly tilled by women. The tilling is usually done by equipments that are mainly powered by petrol, such as tillers or rather may be pushed by human or pulled by horses. By doing so they enhance that no farmer will buy more land to compete with other farmers in the community. The crops are applied chemicals and pesticides. Amish group are tillers and the people of the land and tillers since time in memorial (Kraybill, 2003). Actually when young people marry they are given parcel of lands by either the grooms or bridegrooms father. This is a measure taken so as to ensure they have the capability to start and take care of the family, in the long run able to run a Family. Food is never sold if the family can afford another form of income. As discussed above it is seen that they are purely horticulturists.
The farming practices used were adopted over 300 years ago. Their farming methods are more diversified more than other societies (Kraybill, 2003). Animal manure is used to keep the land generally fertile. In addition to farming they alsomanage woodlots for hardwood lumbers, nuts, wood stains and fuel. All the families have vegetable gardens which women manage. Organic foods rich in legumes are mainly grow in their farms and the manure contribute much to ecological benefit for the Amish people. Although pesticides are used most insects and disease cycle are broken (Kraybill, 2003). The farms are characterized with operating on extremely efficient nutrient cycle for nitrogen. The foods they produce create a diversity of ecological zones that servesas habitat for rich biodiversityon their farms.
In the past 20 years the land rates and cost to purchase land have significantly risen making the Amish people to opt for other ways of survival. This has made them to become well known industrialist, this has also been accelerated by the fact that the soils are no longer as productive as they were in the past and to some extent reduced the produces. They have become good carpenters and now make furniture and other wood work items, the carpentry work is mostly done by the men whilst women sew quilts and clothing’s to supplement incomes. They have quality handcrafted furniture which is usually marketed by the roadsides stands featuring baked products. They have also taken advantage of the booming tourism industry as a means to sell their quality goods and earn their living. Been solely reliant on farming is not that good and that is what Amish people have discovered and turned industrialist and also as a way to earn a living although farming is also key.
Amish people cannot be referred as fully agrarian state. Agrarian are communities that solely depend on agriculture as the only source of income. In the past the Amish could be referred to as agrarian with the Mennonites society but have evolved over the years to become industrious in the business sector as illustrated earlier. Foraging is the act of exploiting and searching for food resources. Amish people are globally known as tillers of the land and cannot be considered as foragers, since they grow their own crops. Basically foragers can be considered as hunters and gatherers. Amish families are also known to rear and breed animals, in the dairy and diversified livestock farming. Natural breeding is preferred to artificial insemination, which is also a method dominant with their dairy cows, dogs and horses. This helps increase this helps to increase diversity within the livestock species (Kraybill, 2003). Holsteins are the dominant dairy cows; animal livestock farms have pastures that are permanent. Also rotational grazing is practiced on the pastures and crop fields after harvests. This well written facts guarantee that the Amish society are not pastoralists.
The Amish have endorsed Christian belief. The beliefs include the Dordrecht Confession of Faith. Although they there is formal teaching in respect to theological doctrine they are more concerned about practising their faith. They do this by following Jesus daily teachings and loving their enemies, further forgiving their insults. They are generally shaped by the martyr tradition, since their religious forbears died in the sixteenth century because of their faith (Powell, 2012). Thus many Amish practises are based o...