Part I - Agriculture, a supplement to the Big Rapids Pioneer Newspaper. Used with permission.



At top, Sawmills, like this one on 7 Mile Road in Austin Township are common in the area's Amish community to supply community needs and marketing into the lumber industry for pallets.

LABOR OF THE LAND - STANWOOD AMISH LINK THE PAST WITH THE PRESENT
By Richard A. Santer, Special to the Pioneer

Let our thoughts, our words and deeds, ever be pure, kind and good. Let us see the good in our fellow man, that we may love our neighbors as ourselves. - An Amish Morning Prayer.

A few hundred years ago few would take note if a horse and buggy slowed them on one of Mecosta County's southern roads. Neither would be surprised by farmsteads without TV satellite dishes and utility wires connected to homes and barns, or men with full beards, in homemade clothing fastened with buttons or hooks and eyes plowing with multi-horse teams on small general farms.

Periodic community building neighborhood barn raisings involving up to 125 men and grain threshing bees would be common place. Women tending gardens barefoot in long dresses of dark solid colors raise and feed a family of six to a dozen children. Children expected to do daily chores would be the norm to help assure family survival - carrying in wood for cook stoves, drawing water, helping with cooking, baking, washing dishes and clothes, milking, picking off tomato worms, tending younger children plus quietly observing elders quilt or do some woodworking.

Now these signs and activities identify the enduring culture in America of a Reform Protestant denomination - The Old Order Amish. Today the Amish may seem different, but in comparison they are similar to our pioneer settlers and since 1982 have become an important part of the economic, social and cultural fabric of the county. As in the logging days, with the recovery of the forest, the hum of sawmills piercing the air and the sounds of singing by the faithful "keeping the Sabbath" on Sundays can once again be heard in the vicinity of Stanwood.

The now nationally recognized Stanwood A?mish Settlement was begun by four closely related families from Ashland, Ohio in Austin and Deerfield townships. Presently its farmsteads of about 100 families extend east from the U.S. 131 freeway in Mecosta and Aetna townships to Hinton's 80th Avenue and lie between the south county line abd 8 Mile Road. Most of the families trace their roots to Pennsylvania of the early 1700's.

Richard A. Santer, Phd, is an emertius professor of geography who has interacted with the Stanwood Amish neighbors since 1982.

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