An Amish Saturday

It’s not every day I have a roadside conversation with a barefoot farmer. But yesterday was not just another summer Saturday. Here’s what happened:

My wife and I were driving along back roads through the heart of Pennsylvania’s Amish counties when we saw a compact white wooden stand with some vegetables in quart paper containers. Given that we were a four-hour drive from home, I didn’t think purchasing anything was a good idea. But I was kidding myself: the red peppers and corn looked tempting. My wife knew I was fretting about passing them up.

“Why don’t you go back and get something?”

I couldn’t say no. I admired Amish farming techniques from my first visit to the area three decades ago. They have embraced organic farming. Their use of horse-drawn equipment echoes methods little changed since the Roman Empire rose and fell. Amish farms remain strikingly fertile and productive. I have often they were doing something right, at least when it came to agriculture.

So yes, I would purchase something. Back I went and pulled up aside the stand.

The gorgeous, slightly hot red peppers nearly overflowed their container. The price? Two dollars: a steal by the standards where my wife and I live.

However, before reaching for my wallet, I felt a presence near me, as if a spirit had materialized. 

Turning toward the farm house, I saw a real flesh-and-blood woman wearing a simple, long dress and a white prayer cap. We were nearly the same height, so she could look me in the eye through her thin glasses. But I had the sense she was seeing me in ways I could not conceal.

We talked red peppers. They were grown in her garden, something the woman communicated to me with something as close to pride as Amish religious practice probably permitted.  I had to suppress my curiosity about her: She was Amish, an exotic species, living apart from contemporary ambitions. Her community was defined by centuries-old practices that defied what Americans often call “progress.”

It was when I paid that I noticed her large, seemingly misshapen feet. They weren’t dirty -- rather, the farm’s dark soil seemed a part of her tanned skin, like an inherited genetic trait. The dark threads and patches appeared to continue along her legs, suggesting her relationship to the earth, her labor, and a strict, spiritually-driven way of being.  What I perceived as that life’s rigor and contentment was something I took with me, along with the quart of peppers.

When I returned to the car, my wife asked me if I were glad to have returned. I said yes, and then I checked my feet. They had a little bit of the farm’s soil on them. That’s something that doesn’t happen every Saturday for me.