March brings the first soft breezes and crocus buds of spring, as the earth awakens after its winter-long sleep. I can only assume this new season of life and fertility explains why the Agricultural Council of America has named March 21, often the first day of spring, as "National Agriculture Day." But how much do you really know about farming? In honor of the equinox, Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings is here to plant some seeds of knowledge among your weeds of agricultural ignorance.
The Debunker: Can Amish People Use Electricity?
Bad news for hipsters who have just discovered knitting and beekeeping and home-churned butter: the Amish were doing all your old-timey hobbies before it was cool. These Christian traditionalist sects, a modern offshoot of Swiss Anabaptists, maintain their separation from the secular world by avoiding many modern innovations and luxuries. In the words of "Weird Al" Yankovic's 1996 hit Amish Paradise, they "party like it's 1699." Yankovic also claims that the Amish "shun fancy things like electricity," and that certainly jibes with our idea of candlelit Amish homes, kerosene-lit buggies, and so on. The problem is that this stereotype is almost entirely untrue. Most Amish love electricity—couldn't live without it, in fact.
Now it's true that a typical Amish Ordnung—a community set of rules—will prohibit hooking up homes to the power grid. You never know what worldly influences are going to come in via the junction box! But other uses of electricity are usually just fine, says Erik Wesner, the Amish-curious author who maintains the Amish America information site. (The Amish are shockingly bad at keeping their own social media up to date, for some reason.) The days of candles, windmills, and kerosene lanterns are mostly gone, even in Pennsylvania Dutch country. Today, homes are lit with battery-powered lamps, and many farms run diesel generators to produce the electricity that powers their fridges and washing machines. Some less conservative Amish even install solar panels to heat their water and power the electric fences for their livestock. Amish buggies are still drawn by horses, but for safety reasons, their vehicles have had battery-powered electric lighting for almost a century.
In the manner of many modern Jews observing Shabbat, the Amish are creative about the workarounds they use to accommodate technology without overstepping the spirit of the Ordnung. Some Amish plug electric devices into their produce stands—this is okay if they rent but don't own their places of business. Similarly, where phone ownership is still forbidden by the community, an outhouse-like "phone shanty" may be built at the end of a road, so that locals can still have access to the phone for business reasons without falling prey to its technological wiles. Maybe some of my Amish readers are enjoying this piece right now at an "Internet shanty," who knows?
Quick Quiz: What specific ethnic term do the Amish use for all non-Amish people??
Ken Jennings is the author of eleven books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.