Seven Amish Farms

Seven Amish Farms by Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry's "Seven Amish Farms" contrasts the emptying, consolidated farmland of typical Midwestern country with the densely settled, diversified Amish farmlands of northeast Indiana, where he and a companion spent March 20 and 21 touring farms as guests of William J. Yoder, a respected breeder of Belgian horses. Yoder, born and raised in the community, took the author to farms belonging to himself, four of his sons, and two sons-in-law. Yoder's own eighty-acre farm, owned for twenty-six years, had been nearly ruined by row-cropping and rental before he took it over: buildings poor, no fences, sandy soil that blew away, potholes of quicksand under the plow, and only about five loads of sorrel hay in the first year. Through traditional Amish practices dating to the seventeenth century—diversification, crop rotation, heavy use of manure, and seeding of legumes—he rebuilt the soil's humus and fertility. The farm now yields 90-100 bushels of oats and 100-125 bushels of corn per acre. His rotation runs from alfalfa into two years of corn, then oats, then wheat and alfalfa again, with alfalfa held for two more years and cut twice annually. Horse manure, favored for its light texture, and cow manure are applied differently across the fields, supplemented by modest chemical fertilizer and lime. Berry details Yoder's actual per-acre costs for seed, fertilizer, and herbicide, showing corn produced far more cheaply than by conventional methods. Of Yoder's eighty acres, sixty-two are tillable, with additional rented pasture and cropland. All fieldwork is done with horses; an old John Deere tractor supplies only belt power. Twenty-two horses were on the farm at the time, including brood mares and stallions, with Yoder normally keeping around thirty head for his breeding business and his winter "urine line," collecting pregnant mare urine for a pharmaceutical company, which requires him to board neighbors' mares and buy extra hay. Berry praises the soundness of the horses' feet as a sign of Yoder's honesty and judgment, and notes that despite his horse expertise, Yoder keeps a diversified farm with milk cows, hogs, and heifers, all well fed, plus gardens tended by Mrs. Yoder. The Yoders' seven sons live in the community: Floyd at home, Harley and Henry working in town (Harley also a farrier), and Richard, Orla, Mel, and Wilbur each settled on their own farms, along with sons-in-law Perry Bontrager and Ervin Mast. Together the seven families farm 537 acres, each having taken over run-down land now being restored through the same traditional rotations. None wishes to own more land than they can pay off. High land prices and especially high interest rates are the chief obstacles; the sons have worked piecework at Redman Industries, a mobile-home manufacturer in Topeka, to fund their farm purchases. Mel, who owns fifty-seven acres, shares detailed income figures: a $43,000 gross from hogs, milk cows, horses, and wheat, netting $22,000 before interest, and he was preparing to return to town work to manage interest payments. Berry uses these farms to argue against the "economy of scale" of conventional agribusiness, contending that Amish small farms are productive, profitable, and soil-conserving, citing John A. Hostetler's Amish Society on their doubling population over twenty years even as conventional farmers failed. He argues that the Amish farm economy cannot be reduced to simple industrial accounting because it involves unquantifiable values of family, community, and stewardship, contrasting a Mobil Oil advertisement's boast about petroleum-dependent corn yields with the far cheaper corn Yoder grows without heavy fuel and chemical inputs, substituting horses, feed, manure, and community relationships for petroleum. He ties this to Amish religious practice and neighborliness, quoting Hostetler on land that "if treated violently or exploited selfishly...will yield poorly." The synopsis closes with Berry's account of the continuity between generations: Yoder helping his sons with equipment, labor, and advice without domineering over them, and children learning farming by working alongside their parents. Berry recounts Wilbur's memory of learning to drive a team as a small boy sitting in his father's lap, then being given the reins himself, crying out "Whoa!" in fright as the horses began plowing up the corn, with Bill walking behind telling him "Come up!" and, when the boy cried, encouraging him: "Don't cry! Go ahead!"

By Wendell Berry · First published 2019 · Genre: Literary Nonfiction, Essay, Environmental Writing · 5,136 words

First lines

IN TYPICAL Midwestern farming country the distances between inhabited houses are stretching out as bigger farmers buy out their smaller neighbors in order to "stay in. " The signs of this "movement" and its consequent specialization are everywhere: good houses standing empty, going to ruin; good stock barns going to ruin; pasture fences fallen down or gone; machines too large for available doorways left in the weather; windbreaks and woodlots gone down before the bulldozers; small schoolhouses and churches deserted or filled with grain.

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Amish culture · rural life · farming · sustainable agriculture · traditional practices · community · family farms · land stewardship · agrarianism · religion · simplicity · self-sufficiency

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