On the way to school (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
(Christian Science Monitor) For Jacob Beachy, life moves along much
as it always has. Every day, there are the 35 cows that need tending, as
well as 90 acres of farmland. His is the life of an Amish farmer, in
which family, work, and faith intertwine on one plot of Ohio land.
Yet across the street, on 60 acres that were once a farm, stands a
sprawling new mansion, complete with a multidoor garage. A few years
back, that land sold for $1.4 million.
“When we moved here in 1968, we thought we were in the sticks,” Mr.
Beachy says, rocking in his living-room recliner. “All of this was
working farms. It’s changed a lot.”
Indeed, for America’s
Amish, much is changing. The Amish are, by one measure, the
fastest-growing faith community in the US. Yet as their numbers grow,
the land available to support the agrarian lifestyle that underpins
their faith is shrinking, gobbled up by the encroachment of exurban
mansions and their multidoor garages.
The result is, in some
ways, a gradual redefinition of what it means to be Amish. Some in the
younger generation are looking for new ways to make a living on smaller
and smaller slices of land. Others are looking beyond the Amish
heartland of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, seeking more space in states such as Texas, Maine, and Montana.
