Yeah, 22k chickens running around would be a huge messy disaster. Can you imagine collecting that many eggs by hand too? What an eye opening experience not just for you but all of us readers as well! Thank you for sharing. Hi Karrie, Thank you so much for sharing your story!
I live in Alberta and will really like to go visit the colony you visited last year. Could you shrare their address and contact information with me pls? Thank you very much! My Grandparents lived a few miles from the Canadian border in Montana. We went once or twice a week to a colony. We bought butter, eggs, and bread goods. I remember realizing that they lived differently, but I thought they were so organized and always had a fun homemade game to share.
I would be corrected — no you mean Amish. I had never heard of the Hutterites until I moved to WA. Thanks for the great, informative piece and I love that you were able to take pictures and share this adventure. It will probably answer a lot of questions for a lot of us curious folks! Thanks for sharing this experience!
Hutterite Families - Adolescence - Date, Boys, Dating, and Boy - JRank Articles
A modern example of an outmoded lifestyle that vastly needs improved upon. They look like they are able to garden, cook, clean, probably sew clothes. I bet they would do alright. They are liberated from a mortgage, recessions, lay offs, long commutes, traffic jams, and a lot of other stressful things that community living eliminates.
Well even though I defend them, these Hutterite communities bend their own rules a lot and that threatens the existence of the group as a whole.
An example is internet. Even in communities where having the internet is against the rules, a lot of them do it anyway. I didnt see any bars or chains anywhere around there, except maybe on the chicken cages.. This is not a third world country where women truly have no rights and can be arrested or killed for doing something against their culture, its Canada and America, where help is a phone call away.
Denice You judge so quickly.
I see them at star bucks, garage sales, shopping and countless other places. I am a teacher on a colony and I love it. Trust me those women know how to work. They have their say in their homes and the man of the house does the voting when voting time comes for them. On other issues you are right they have for the most part husbands who totally understand how important their happy wives are to their happy lives. I would just like to chime in as a non-hutterite, non-LDS citizen of Southern Alberta who frequently shops at the Hutterite booth at the Crossroads Market. A close friend of mine also married into the culture although her husband is on the fringe of the colony owning a Tire and Lube business off the colony and by marrying outside the faith he was forced to move off the colony although they are still welcome to be with the family for celebrations and such.
When it comes to not having any internet, that is completely false. Their beliefs are based on communal living. When a person has, he gives. When a person truly needs, he takes. The definition of need is in its strictest form. If you will die without it, you take. When they have a surplus of goods, they use whatever means they need to to sell or give away those goods. In very few cases, that even involves the internet. On the topic of children playing, the children spend a lot of time outdoors when they are young as their mothers are working the yards and going back and forth to the kitchens.
They also spend time in the fields watching their fathers work. They develop an affinity for the outdoors. They are not deprived an electronic type of play, they are just encouraged to play in ways that keep their bodies strong and their social skills engaged. Hand your grandmother a VR gaming system and see what she prefers playing with, a deck of cards or the gaming system? A woman is naturally bonded to a child from birth. She has to be there to feed the child no matter what.
My Visit To A Hutterite Colony {+ How Hutterites are NOT like the Amish}
Women TEND to have a more nurturing temperament as well and so instinctively want to do all of the things needed to care for their child like hold them and cuddle them and bathe them and clothe them. By the time a child is old enough to do something without their mother, the bond of nurturing is so strong that it is more natural to have the woman continue in that role.
During these years, it only makes sense that the husband should be doing something to provide for , or LOVE his wife and family. This is when men find work. In the colony, they work the fields, build furniture, erect buildings and the like. On the contrary, it opens up the opportunity by allowing each other to use the skills they are strongest at. Refer back to the verse I gave before.
Kinship Structure
For a husband to truly love his wife, he must act as her voice. Just like our MP and MLA must act as our voice in Assembly chambers, so the husband acts as their voice in the colony. They are still fighting their battle every time a woman chooses not to speak up for herself. If you do decide to visit one of the colonies, you will likely notice that when you talk to the women alone, they are some of the strongest women you will ever meet.
Behind closed doors, they are well educated, articulate, opinionated, and easily express their thoughts. They keep their opinions to themselves in public so not to make a scene and have a respectful conversation with their husband in private about their opinion when appropriate allowing their husband to act on it.
It is definitely different than what current culture would have us be comfortable with, but it is not so atrocious as Hollywood would have us believe. Thank you for sharing your experience with us! I keep coming back to the picture of the laudry trolley — I love it!! I love learning about other ways of doing things and integrating ideas into my own life.
Based on your site and interesting articles I have begun integrating urban homesteading into my household.
- Hutterite Families.
- This is how the colony looked driving up.!
- Old ways, new world - Winnipeg Free Press;
Unfortunately, zoning does not allow chickens, lol. Those cute laundry trolleys were amazing! I met the Hutterite man who said he made each and every one of them on the colony. He said they are NOT cost effective and very labor intensie, but that everyone loves them.
Maybe google their phone number and just ask. Could be pricey, but maybe a fun thing to have. This of course as anyone can guess was a shock to my whole family who all still reside on the Hutterite community! I would just like to add that their chicken barns are run and controlled like almost every other producer out in the real world. So if PETA were to go in their, well, then they would have to also shut down lots of other egg producers out there. As for no lights in the barn, well, not sure what time of the day you went but there are lights there obvisioisly, they just go out at different intervals during the day so the chickens can sleep.
SO proud of you for joining the true church! I think your comment just made my day. And so glad you liked my post. Have you heard of them?
Old ways, new world
About the chickens, I have my own. The story is these chickens do not suffer they are raised in cages and they are kept in cages of some sort. Like I said unless you let them free well then you are just feeding wild animals or whatever. So what do you want feed for people or buy baby chicks raise them and then just feed the animals.
So in this case where you say 5 per cage at least they all eat and they all drink.