We’re grateful to our Amish community for assistance nurturing Rosslyn’s organic vegetable, fruit, and flower gardens; our holistic orchard and vineyard; and sixty acres of landscape. While there’s much to admire about the dedicated women who have planted and weeded, pruned and suckered, nurtured and harvested for us, I’m especially grateful for their petroleum-free, exhaust free locomotion!
You suspect I jest? I do. Often. But not in this case. I’m actually quite fascinated with their efficiency of 21st century horse-and-buggy travelers.
And not only when our dedicated Amish gardeners arrive and depart, but on most every morning’s bike ride between the Adirondack foothills and Lake Champlain. I often share quiet, winding backroads with these courteous drivers. And last night, returning from Westport at an advanced hour, we witnessed three buggies moving along at a startlingly quick clip despite having no headlights. Only a single, diminutive lantern bounced within each buggy scarcely illuminating the driver, so certainly offering no navigational assistance.
As muscly pickup trucks and stealthy EVs wind through our rural communities, the Amish manage admirably to accomplish whatever locomotion they need without combustion engines or power grid tethers. There’s plenty to be learned from them, and not only for their dedicated industry.
This is a new opportunity for us. One nearby Amish family has been trafficking between our properties, learning quickly what each garden, each plant, each property needs. Since early spring the two to three sisters will arrive in the morning via ultra quiet conveyance. Although it took Carley a little while to become accustomed to the horse-drawn buggy, she’s no longer startled when the staccato sound of horse hooves and the curious crunching noise of carriage wheels on crushed stone awaken her from her postprandial snooze. She perks up, saunters into the screen porch, and observes. The bonneted young women wave, and I return their greeting. Carley watches until the horse and buggy disappear from view.
I’ll close with a short video I shot early in the morning last summer as another Amish buggy for a moment rolled in front of the rising sun.
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