By Kevin Williams
I have so much "Amish in the News" this week and several of the articles are pretty in-depth and who has time for that? So I'll divide Amish in the News over a couple of days this week.
AMISH CULTURE CLASH in 1958: This is a super article about an incident in Ohio in 1958 where some Amish parents were jailed for days for failing to surrender their children to authorities. Basically, the kids were being found "truant" because they didn't show up for high school. But the Amish don't believe, generally, in sending their kids to high school. So it was a classic clash between mainstream USA laws and more obscure Amish religious beliefs. It would take another decade or so for the US Supreme Court to grant the Amish permanent relief when it comes to keeping their children home through the eighth-grade.
MILLIE'S BAKED POTATO SOUP: Check in with Amish writer Millie Otto who tells you how her week went and shares a recipe for "baked potato soup." Click here.
I could show you a gazillion photos like this I have taken over the years. This is a typical sprawling Amish farmstead that has been in a family for a long time. There is a little brick outbuilding, a perfect sized for a little dawdy haus. But there are also additions going out at all angles from the main farmhouse and those are often dawdy hauses also. Sometimes Amish farms are multigenerational with grandparents, parents, and grown adult children all staking out a spot, especially in densely populated Amish areas like this home outside Grabill, Indiana.
DAWDY HAUS: A dawdy haus is an addition to a farmhouse or sometimes a separate stand-alone unit on the property where an Amish family will house an elderly parent or parents. This system works pretty well, an infirmed Amish person won't have to spend their days in a nursing home they can be with family but not have a whole homestead to care for. And I've seen some Amish families "rotate" an elderly parent. I knew an Amish woman who had an elderly mother who would come stay in the dawdy house on the property for a month or two and then move on to her other daughter's house a mile or two down the road and so on. This can work well too allowing the parent to spread out their time among their adult children and it "spreads the work" out..,.because being a caregiver is work, I don't mean that as a negative. Anyway, click here to read more about Dawdy Hauses AND how you can enjoy an in-home Amish dinner or breakfast in Geauga County, Ohio's Amish community. You should absolutely try to take advantage of this if you are in the area!
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