Today I watched an Amishman in a straw hat and a short coat
shoveling snow from the end of his driveway in a wind chill of about -17°. He was shoveling the snow into a wheelbarrow
and moving it to the side of the driveway.
Apparently the township plow came through, broke through the
drifts and deposited snow at close to 4 feet high across the entrance to his
farm drive. I would guess that today is
milk pick up day and the milk truck drivers will not cross large piles of snow
to get to the milk house. If the pile is
still there when the milk truck driver arrives he will just drive on to his
next stop. The farmer will then be left
with but one option for the milk that does not fit in the storage tank—dump it.
That’s just one of the many cruel points at which Amish
farmers and the English world come together.
For the uninitiated, to an Amishman, anyone who is not Amish
is English.
A non-Amish farmer would simply slip the shovel on the front
of a tractor and widen the drive in about four swipes from inside a heated
cab. A non-Amish farmer would also have
some help to get the job done while on the Amish farm everyone else was
probably engaged in a time-sensitive chore.
I had the briefest of urges to stop and help until reality
hit me. Had I stopped I would have been
in his way, I would have had no shovel and I would have slowed down his
progress. In very many ways the Amish
are to be admired for their “simple life” and their industry.
Now I am wondering why the township snow plow driver couldn't
have taken five minutes and pushed that pile out of the way?
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