Levi Miller specializes in sweet potatoes and shallots and he also tends to a herd of dairy cows. It takes 45 minutes to milk 26 cows by machine. He uses mules to plow the fields. Both farmers keep horses to drive their buggies (which look like one-person vehicles).

These farmers arise by 4:30 in the morning —the cows are milked twice a day at 5—and go to bed by 8:30. They use electricity in their work but do not do so at home. They rely on their neighbors—craftspeople, tradespeople— to help with the seasonal work. It takes five people to harvest what one person can plant.

A Jewish connection: while eating our lunches on the lawn of Levi Miller, he asked who are the Jews? (He was told we’d be coming.) He then amazed us by stating that we could be related! Apparently, an ancestor six generations ago emigrated from Europe. He was a Jew by the name of Glick. In America, he and his family were fleeing from Indians. All were killed except for one son who escaped and hid in a hollowed log. A spider spun a web across the opening, so his pursuers did not look inside. The son was later adopted by an Amish family, so the Glicks of Lancaster County are now Old Order Amish. We told him that his family’s lore was similar to the story told by Jews about King David who was saved by a spider’s web.

my favorite – you’d think this was an episode of Buffy or something