Amish

It's harvest time, and this Amish family in Paradise is hoping for a profitable crop from its 16 acres of tobacco. The family has 92 acres, and also grows wheat, corn and hay. The Amish auction their tobacco three times a year.

AS A National Rifle Association member and NRA certified firearms instructor, I am deeply offended by Signe's editorial cartoon that has NRA members serving up innocent schoolchildren on what appears to be a sacrificial altar. Do you really believe we sanction or tolerate the killing of innocent children? I am as appalled and disgusted by the Amish school slayings as, I'm sure, all other NRA members. How dare you use this tragedy to portray us as child-killers? Congratulations to you and to the editors who approved the printing of this drivel - you have managed to cheapen yourselves as well as all of the decent people at the Daily News.

"The Amish would rather have something new than old so we bought what they called their old junk," Daniel McCauley said. As he talked, McCauley took from between two pieces of acid-free paper a sampler decorated with letters of the alphabet, a row of crowns, hearts, tulips, trees and birds, all cross-stitched in black, brown and green thread. "It has the whole vocabulary of Amish stitchery, and the woman we bought it from was using it as a dust cloth," he said. "Tell how we got these socks," said McCauley's wife, Kathryn, holding up a pair of purple wool, hand-knitted, knee-high socks with bright red, white and blue scalloped tops.

Dear Anne and Nan: For more than a year I have been trying to find a company where I can purchase Amish dolls and cookbooks. - Cheryl Marble, Greenwell Springs, La. Dear Cheryl: There's a wonderful store in Kidron, Ohio, that caters to the Amish. It's Lehman Hardware and Appliances Inc., and if they don't carry an item, you probably don't need it. They have Amish dolls and loads of cookbooks. Send $2 for a catalog to Lehman's, 4779 Kidron Road, Box 41, Kidron, Ohio 44636. Dear Anne and Nan: What can I do about a picture window over a tub/shower combination short of replacing the glass?

Main Line roofers say they are taking it on the chin from Amish competitors, who are getting a significant amount of work in Philadelphia's wealthy western suburbs. Keith McLean, a Paoli roofing contractor, said he lost a job this month when his bid of $8,000 was $3,000 more than the winning Amish bid. The 38 percent difference in price, McLean said, rendered him unable to compete. "My wiggle room is hundreds of dollars. I don't have three grand" to play with, said McLean, who owns Hancock Building Associates Inc. McLean and other non-Amish contractors say the Amish, who come from Lancaster County and western Chester County, have an advantage because they do not have to pay Social Security taxes for themselves or their Amish employees and are eligible for a religious exemption from workers' compensation insurance, although not all take advantage of the latter.

FORGET the Amish reality show. In case you missed it, CBS head Leslie Moonves has announced plans to create an "Amish in the City" reality show for UPN to track Amish youths in their teenage freedom phase called rumspringa. Frankly, we'd rather see another Amish twist on a popular cultural trend. Voila: The Stoltzfus Beach Diet, a high-carb, all-dumpling diet guaranteed to transform your body and your life. It's simple. You don't need any special equipment or tools beyond one (1)

When two young Amish men and eight people associated with the Pagans motorcycle gang were indicted last month on drug charges, the clash of worlds seemed almost too extreme to believe: Old Order meets road warrior. Buggy meets Harley. Christian meets blasphemer. Abner and Abner meet Twisted and Trog (I'm not kidding about the names). But the Amish and the Pagans have a lot in common. The Amish tourist strip in Lancaster County is a commercialization of the anticommercial, an up-to-date marketing of the supposed innocence and simplicity of people who seem committed to living in the past.

SEPTA may call on a cavalry of crisp-collared counsel for costly and competent advice, but leave it to a Lancaster County Amishman to tell the big-city transit guys how to run a better railroad. From beneath the worn straw hat of Sam Stoltzfus, Amish farmer and gazebo- builder, comes an idea so simple, so logical and, on its face, so cost- efficient that supporters figure bureaucratic naysayers will need to double-clutch into high gear to pooh-pooh the plan. Stoltzfus wants SEPTA, which picks up passengers as far west as Parkesburg, Chester County, to put a station stop amid the bucolic villages of eastern Lancaster County.

At a time when the number of farms and farm acreage have been steadily declining for decades in Pennsylvania, the Amish have been expanding their hold on Lancaster County farmland, despite development pressures. In researching Lancaster County farm sales and Amish registries dated 1984 through 1995, sociologist Conrad L. Kanagy has found that: The Amish gained a net of 137 non-Amish farms. The Amish gained a net of 11,498 farm acres. Though some Amish were selling, they were not selling out: Of the Amish farms that were sold, 82 percent went to other Amish.

I thought the Feb. 2 Amish vacation article was interesting, especially the fact that the winter trips to Florida are not approved by the bishops of Lancaster County. There were pictures of the adventuresome folk riding bikes, playing shuffleboard, etc. Could The Inquirer be revealing something it shouldn't? Is a vacation in Florida really front-page news? Henry B. Coxe Philadelphia.

It's Thursday morning, the air is crisp - 52 degrees - and Audrey Gillespie, Margaret Hunter, Peg Fitzhenry, and Donna Cole are exercising their annual rite of spring: a daylong trek to the Amish and Mennonite plant nurseries that straddle the Lancaster and Chester County line. The itinerary, long familiar to serious gardeners in the region, but virtually unknown to everyone else, is meticulously plotted in advance. It would take almost eight hours and 124 miles to complete, and would include nine stops - eight greenhouses and farm markets that sell plants, with a quick lunch at a Pennsylvania Dutch eatery in Blue Ball, where hamburgers cost $2.35 and lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches a nickel more.

CLEVELAND - Sixteen Amish men and women who have lived rural, self-sufficient lives surrounded by extended family and with little outside contact are facing regimented routines in a federal prison system where almost half of inmates are behind bars for drug offenses and modern conveniences, such as television, will be a constant temptation. Prison rules will allow the 10 men convicted in beard- and hair-cutting attacks on fellow Amish in eastern Ohio to keep their religiously important beards, but they must wear standard prison khaki or green work uniforms instead of the dark outfits they favor.

PITTSBURGH - Late last year, representatives from one of the world's largest energy companies went to the home of Lydia and Sam Mast. The company planned to drill a gas well on an adjacent property and needed to test the Masts' water. By November, the access road had been paved and the rig was drilling day and night into the shale formation thousands of feet below the Masts' seven acres in Lawrence County. "That was the first I knew there was a company called Chevron," Sam Mast said.

AN ODD QUIRK of scheduling this week brought the openings of two plays that, while sharing a common trait, are at polar ends of the theatrical spectrum. Both "The Amish Project," which runs through Feb. 3 at Studio 5 inside the Walnut Street Theatre, and "Catch Me If You Can," here through Sunday at the Academy of Music, are based on actual events. But it's hard to imagine two more dissimilar offerings.   'Project's' new relevance We're sure playwright Jessica Dickey would have preferred that her 2009 piece, "The Amish Project," did not have such of-the-moment resonance for theatergoers.

School shootings have nearly become an American commonplace - always awful but no longer remarkable. Commentators labeled the Dec. 14 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., unimaginable, but history tells us such brutality has become quite conceivable. In one infamously similar instance, a milk-truck driver bound and shot 10 Amish girls, killing five, in the one-room West Nickel Mines School in Lancaster County on Oct. 2, 2006. Carl Charles Roberts IV then killed himself (as did Adam Lanza in Newtown)

A 13-year-old Amish boy was critically injured Monday when a horse-drawn buggy he was in was struck from behind by a pickup truck, according to Delaware State Police. The teen was flown to A.I. DuPont hospital where he remains in critical condition. Police gave the following account: A 15-year-old male was driving the buggy, with the 13-year old male as a passenger. Both are from Hartly, Del. The buggy was traveling partially on the roadway eastbound along Westville Road, just west of Hazletville Road in Camden-Wyoming, Del. about 5:15 p.m. Monday.

LANCASTER - Discovery Channel says its new series Amish Mafia has broken viewership records for its portrayal of previously unseen law-enforcers among the Amish community here. A national ratings system and local feedback indicate people are tuning in in droves to watch Lebanon Levi, Jolin the Mennonite, and their gang of "protectors. " A Discovery executive insisted in a recent interview that the characters were not paid actors, but genuine Amish and Mennonite folks living in Lancaster County.

In his role as a chaplain for the state police and, decades ago, the U.S. Army, the Rev. Grover DeVault held dying Marines in his arms and comforted distraught troopers in the hours after violent shootouts. But even those experiences could not prepare him for the scene six years ago in the one-room schoolhouse in Lancaster County: the bodies of five Amish girls in long-skirted dresses and the gunman lying on the floor of the Nickel Mines school. "There was nothing unique about seeing the carnage," said DeVault, "but he had brought in 2-by-4s, eyebolts, and ties.

NICKEL MINES, Pa. - Members of an Amish community where a gunman killed five girls in a one-room schoolhouse in 2006 are writing letters to reach out in sympathy to grieving parents in Newtown, Conn. A farm services business owner who is not Amish has promised to drive the letters to Connecticut. He said Tuesday that he raised the idea over the weekend with the father of the woman who was teaching the day the massacre occurred at West Nickel Mines Amish School. Jerry Feister of Honey Brook said, "It just seems there's a connection or bond there.

* AMISH MAFIA. 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, Discovery Channel. Moves to 9 p.m. Wednesdays the following night.   "THE AMISH church denies the existence of the Amish Mafia," reads the disclaimer at the beginning of the Discovery Channel's latest "reality" venture, "Amish Mafia. " So it must be real, right? Because why else would the TV-shunning sect bother to deny its existence? If you're OK with that logic - or couldn't get enough of TLC's equally contrived "Breaking Amish" - you're going to love "Amish Mafia," which is from the same producers as the TLC hit and purports to expose the doings of a small group of men in Lancaster County who allegedly grease the buggy wheels for Amish who run into problems they can't handle themselves.