On a tip from some newfound friends, Eddie and Mattie Petersheim walked into a real estate office in Verdigre over a year ago, looking for land so they could move their family west. They were being crowded off their 84-acre farm near Marlette, Michigan, victims of urban sprawl from Detroit, just 70 miles away. They needed space to grow their farm and room to raise their nine children.
These modern-day Nebraska emigrants weren't headed for Oregon or California. They wanted a homestead in Nebraska. And the way they built up their place on 600 acres of undeveloped country west of Verdigre that they eventually purchased is a lot like how Czech emigrant families started out in the Verdigris Creek valley 130 years ago.
Petersheims are an Old Order Amish family that strives to live as simply as possible, shunning things like electricity, motorized transportation, radio and television, that folks these days consider necessities.
And through their new lives in rural northeast Nebraska, they've opened the doors to alliances and friendships that transcend the typical boundaries of religion and culture.
It was a breezy, cool autumn day when we drove Nebraska's modern-day Amish country over the colorful rolling hills west of Verdigre toward Petersheim's farmstead for a visit. Pulling into their long, narrow drive visibly marked with recent horse and buggy tracks, we thought how much this farm otherwise looked like other farms around the area with a big, white tin-sided building as the homestead centerpiece.
But as we came up a hill and around a bend in the drive, we saw the contrast. Besides a long clothesline, filled with the day's laundry flipping quietly in the breeze and a well kept half-acre garden, a Wood Brothers threshing machine, wagons and signature black buggies stood out from the norm.
There were no noisy diesel engines or gleaming tractors like those on display at Husker Harvest Days. The implements in sight - grain wagons, a straw rack piled with wood boards and horses for real horsepower - are less expensive, quieter and more practical for Amish farm families who keep their lives uncluttered by the expensive distractions of modern life.
I walked up to the door of their all-purpose building and knocked. "Come in," said Mattie. Opening the door, we found Mattie with her hands full, busy jarring up freshly made applesauce from the stove. A sweet, warm fragrance filled the big, open room that serves the family as kitchen, dining room and living area.
With no electric lights, the sun shone brightly through the windows, softly lighting the big room. Bonneted Petersheim daughters helped their mother tend to the apples, while the younger children played around the table.
Eddie and the older boys were in Verdigre, completing a roof-shingling job. Although it's harvest time for most farmers, Eddie's wheat and oats were harvested back in July and have already been threshed, ready to feed his two milk cows and fifteen horses through the winter.
As Mattie continued her work, I sat down on one of their wooden kitchen chairs and we visited about their new life in Nebraska. When they moved onto the property a year and a half ago, there were only a few rundown buildings, so the family started from scratch, Mattie said. They built a home for Eddie's sister, Amelia, then finished the large woodshop that now serves as the family home.
After completing a few contract carpentry jobs in town, Eddie will work in earnest at building a home for the family. We saw that a big excavation had already been started just south of Eddie's woodshop, in preparation for construction of their home during the fall months.
"We like Verdigre," Mattie said. And they are happy with their farm, "but I'll be glad when we can move out of my husband's woodshop", she said.
Fifty Amish families comprised their community in Michigan. But urban encroachment and suburb traffic was out of control. There had even been accidents with motorists and buggies on their gravel country roads.
With new housing developments in their backyard, most area farmers sold out. Those remaining who raised livestock like the Petersheims were increasingly regulated over details like when they could spread manure on their fields.
In Michigan, there were good crops with deep, rich soil and plenty of rain. They raised hogs and operated a dairy, but they knew that their days of livelihood on the farm were numbered there. So the family began searching for a new home.
During initial visits to Nebraska, they looked over property in the southern and central portions. Then one day while stopping for a bite to eat in Royal, town wheelwright, Marlowe Jensen recognized their Amish dress.
Marlowe was acquainted with Amish because of his profession, so he and his wife Erlene struck up a conversation, eventually suggesting a stop in Verdigre.
"Many of the older folks thought we were crazy moving to Nebraska," says Mattie. Perhaps they remember stories from Amish descendants who started a community in Gosper County near Bertrand in 1880.
Bishop Yost H. Yoder led nine Amish families from Pennsylvania to south central Nebraska with the dream of "establishing a church without a spot or wrinkle on the Great Plains". Yoder went back to Pennsylvania a year later to help another conservative group get started.
He died in 1901 and his Nebraska community ended three years later, as remaining families struck with drought and economic hardship moved back east. A lone windmill on Yoder's old farm and the Yoder cemetery with a half dozen grave markers all but forgotten in a sea of cornfields are all that remain of the first Amish settlement in the state.
But Eddie and Mattie were undeterred by the former Nebraska Amish experience so they moved to Verdigre along with John and Ida Mast, Mattie's brother-in-law and sister and their five children who have a farm north of Verdigre, about eight miles from Petersheim's.
Another Amish family purchased land nearby, but backed out of the deal before moving. She said families have inquired about life around Verdigre, but none have committed to move yet. "We'd be happy if more families were coming in," said Mattie. "But they kind of want to see how we get along first."
It's difficult these days for any farm family, but the Petersheim's utilize every resource and talent available to make a living. They raise oats, wheat and hay on thirty-two acres of tilled land and graze their horses on the rest. They hope to clear more land from overgrown cedar timber, to improve their pastures for a herd of beef cattle and to provide more land for crops.
For now, most of their family income is from running a café in Laurel called Mattie's Restaurant. At first, the families served dinners in Verdigre and other communities to help cover living expenses, but the Nebraska Department of Health stopped the dinners because they weren't prepared in a certified kitchen.
When Laurel's L.J. Mallatt and his wife Marion heard the news, they thought how nice it would be to have the family operate a vacant restaurant they happened to own. "I never thought I'd be running a restaurant," says Mattie. But she acknowledges that the venture has worked out.
But working in Laurel and farming in Verdigre makes for some long days. At 66 miles distant, Laurel is quite a drive in horse and buggy and Amish do not drive cars, so Erlene Jansen chauffeurs and works beside the Petersheims at the restaurant two days a week.
On the days they work at the restaurant, they are up at 2:30 am for the trip. Wednesday is cooking day, although they serve a luncheon at noon. Mattie said she had made 120 pies one Wednesday along with bread and rolls.
They serve breakfast all day on Thursdays, along with lunch and dinner. With all the baking and serving customers, they still have time during a lull in mid-afternoon to sing hymns in the back room. "We love to sing," says Mattie, and Marion was a music teacher and musician, so they often sing German hymns for the Mallats and who in turn have taught Eddie and Mattie and their children several new songs in English.
They've found kindred spirits in customers from Sioux City, Norfolk, Wayne and surrounding German communities near Laurel. "Some of the older ones understand a few words when we speak German" because they might have come from Germany or recall their parents speaking German, as the Petersheims do, in the home.
Now Mattie receives letters from around the state, asking if she would operate a café in little towns that would desperately love to have the family living and working there.
For the family, transportation is always a big hurdle. "I wish Laurel were closer to home," she says. "But things are going so well there, that I don't think we can stop now."
Mattie expressed interest in opening new markets for their garden produce. Because they have to hire someone to drive, she wonders whether it would pay to transport their produce to more regional farmers markets where organic produce should draw premium prices. It would work best, she said, if a wholesaler or storeowner could pick the produce up right from their farm.
Finished with the applesauce, Mattie swept up the concrete floor and put a log in the woodstove, then sat by the table and cuddled their one-year-old son on her lap. With German ancestors of my own, I smiled when she murmured gently in German to the children playing around the table.
Many Amish speak Pennsylvania Dutch, a dialect of German, but Mattie said their language has evolved into a mix of German and English. Their church services, held on Sundays at the family homes, are done in formal or High German.
Their children are actually tri-lingual, speaking fluently in formal German, their German dialect and English. Mattie teaches her children through eighth grade coursework. Petersheim's thirteen-year-old son, Andy worked on his lessons as we visited.
But that ends their formal education. In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled that the government couldn't force Amish children into high school. But their children are trained extensively on the farm and in the home to several vocational skills that serve them well - skills like carpentry and furniture making, sewing, baking, construction and animal husbandry, that are never mastered by most folks living in today's world of convenience.
I had met the Petersheims before. I attended the same Northeast Nebraska Resource and Conservation District (RC&D) meeting in Plainview earlier in the summer that they had, where Eddie and Mattie answered questions from the group and talked about their experiences.
They patiently answered questions for well over an hour that evening, generously sharing their culture and dispelling myths along the way.
Eddie talked about their Christian faith and the King James Version Bible used in worship. Their heritage is Anabaptist, shared somewhat with Mennonite and Hutterite churches. They believe that only adults who have confessed their faith should be baptized. But the Amish seceded from the Mennonites in the 1690's, when Jakob Amman taught stringent excommunication rules and shunning by the community for those who fall out of favor with the church.
Their communities operate differently too, with Amish families working and financing their farms individually, Eddie said.
Amish communities developed in Switzerland, Germany and Russia. But the pacifist communities were persecuted in Europe. Amish men today don't wear mustaches or any ornamental clothing like the military because the European soldiers that persecuted them often had mustaches and wore large buttons on their uniforms. Beards worn by married men are based on the Leviticus 19:26 passage, "They should not mar hair on their face".
They immigrated to the U.S., settling in Pennsylvania in the late 1700's. Today, there are over 145,000 Amish living in 25 states in the U.S. and Ontario, Canada, with most living in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Amish families pay income, real estate and property taxes. They don't accept retirement income or welfare, so they are exempt from paying social security taxes if they are self-employed or farming. They go to doctors, often chauffeured by a friend, but they pay medical expenses out of pocket.
They keep a phone, but it is located in an outbuilding, not in the home. It's for use in case of emergency or for a special purpose for the farm or home.
While helping with the applesauce, Petersheim's 14-year-old daughter, Ida, said it takes about 45 minutes to drive from their farm into town with the buggy. And Verdigre residents are getting used to seeing a horse and buggy driving down Main Street.
Mattie grew up in Iowa and Eddie lived in Canada as a youth. When they were first married, they farmed in Canada, but as agriculture opportunities dried up in that country because of production quotas, they moved to the community in Michigan.
I knew ahead of time that Amish families prefer not to be photographed because they believe that there should be no "graven images" of them as the Bible says. So I asked to take a few photos around the farm.
"We don't really like." Mattie started to reply courteously. But I nodded and reassured her I would just like a few photos of their farm, implements and horses. Andy followed me out and pointed me to a group of horses the family was breaking for someone else.
He said I could photograph their threshing machine and buggies. So I walked slowly among the implements, thinking about how my grandfather farmed and how walking around this place was a lot like seeing a living history exhibit in a museum.
But talking with Andy, reality set in that this family is not a group of re-enactors that changes clothes and heads home when the day is through. These folks are truly pioneers in a very real sense, breaking new ground perhaps for future Amish who might settle here.
I shook Andy's hand and thanked him and his family for visiting with me and allowing me into their world for a little while. We drove back down their lane with the grateful thought that it is still possible in this throwaway, hyper-convenience society for a family to exist by the sweat of their brow and by the bounty Mother Nature gives them.