Day 18 12/30/04
I went to learn how to bake bread today at an Amish woman’s house named Sara. I was picked up by a driver. He was a fat older man, crew cut gray-black hair. His truck was a phallic symbol. Diesel, big ass truck, red, extended covered cab and six seater. The stick shift was like 2 feet long. The seatbelt almost didn’t fit around him. A couple of minutes after I got in the car, he started smoking a pack of Kool’s. His lips were brownish purple. We talked about different things. How exhaust brakes work, how good the soil is here in Lancaster etc. He gets paid to drive Amish people around. He picked me up 45 minutes late. He said he would pick me up at 1:00. I was dropped at Sara’s house. She lives right near the highest point in Lancaster. It’s beautiful. A lot of trees, hilly, good view. She was a nice, short, slightly plump woman, she welcomed me warmly. She makes the soaked spelt and sourdough breads that Albert, Jon-Lee, and Peter Aeschelman sell. A lot of people love her bread. We bonded pretty quickly. We talked a lot about bread, Weston Price stuff and the Amish. She was talking about how the Amish have gotten away from their roots. She said that there are different kinds of Amish. She and Albert and several others are Olde Order Amish. There are several other different kinds, mainly called the New Order Amish. They originally split because they wanted to use more technology and the Olde Order wasn’t OK with that. She said that the New Order Amish have a lot more problems with people not agreeing, drugs, alcohol etc. The men don’t have to wear beards, they can drive cars. She said that when you turn 16 (for new and old order), there are different youth groups you can choose to be a part of. Some really party hard and some don’t. She doesn’t know how to make good sauerkraut. Albert knows it, I know it and she knows it. She wants to learn how to make better ‘kraut. Her bread is pretty good. She had two kids who were running wild1. One was named John Richard. She said he likes fire and is always getting into things. I forgot the other’s name, he is 3 and he doesn’t speak yet. He says a lot of sounds though, only John Richard understands what he means. I asked her if she was doing the Weston Price diet when she had any of her kids. She said no. We started talking about her kids issues; some have bad teeth, etc. She talked about it in a half sly/secretive, half guilty, half amusing way. Similar to the way that Homer and Lisa talked about their kids. She talked about how when some or the Amish people have a lot of various vague ailments like, chronic fatigue, etc. They say "They’ve got the Lymes”, like Lyme disease. She says it’s really just bad nutrition, but that’s a popular thing to say. She also said a lot of young Amish try to be farmers but have to give up because their backs start hurting after a couple of years. She said that they were a lot more attractive back in her day than now. She attributes that to bad nutrition. Her kids were running wild. Her husband had loaded some hay into the barn and her kids pushed ten bales out for fun. She laughed and said, “Look at them go.” The driver picked me up at 11:30. He started smoking right away again. He talked about an Amish woman he dropped off who was cooking some potato chips in lard and chicken fat, he said they were great. I agreed and said, “They’re one of the best things in the world”. He said, “Not better than sex.” I wasn’t expecting him to say that to me. I bet he doesn’t say that to the Amish. It was gross to hear him say that. I agreed with him and said, “There aren’t many things better than sex.” He said, “Well, maybe the birth of your firstborn.” I said, “Yeah, but in a different way.” He said, “Yeah, sex is more delicious.” His wife had a stroke and almost died. I can understand why, if she lives like he does. He said they both tried to quit smoking together and then they started up together again. He was drinking carb watcher diet root beer. He said his wife was on a special diet for diabetes. “No sugar because that causes triglycerides and no fat because that causes cholesterol.” She must be pretty unhappy; no wonder she wants to smoke. When he dropped me off, he helped me carry some meat he was transporting into the freezer. He was wheezing a lot. He wanted to say hi to Naomi. He said she is a smart kid. A lot of the older English that come around seem to dig Naomi. She’s pretty friendly. For breakfast I had chow-chow, colostrum with honey and yogurt, lettuce and an apple, some cheddar cheese. For supper I had some sausage, frozen Jersey cream and chow-chow. I told Albert as we were getting broken eggs to feed to the pigs, that I bet the next big thing is going to be a person who says that wild game is the only good kind of meat to eat and that you need to eat it raw2. Watch for it, I guarantee it will happen.
1 English aren’t the only ones who have a hard time controlling their kids. Though most Amish control their children pretty well, others have a hard time disciplining.
2 I am pretty satisfied with the Primal Diet by Aajonus Vonderplanitz that I am doing right now. It is pretty “extreme”, but then again “extreme” is merely culturally relative. If I lived in a traditional African Tribe, eating raw beef and cows blood would seem pretty normal to me. Anyways, there is always some new guru coming out trying to push the envelope. So I bet there will be some guru that says only wild, non-domesticated food is healthy.
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