blackbearleather

THANKS!! I have a small retail shop in Lancaster, PA, where I also make everything. I also sell my goods every weekend at an outdoor market in Washington DC. DC is a two and a half hour drive from Lancaster. So, it takes a lot of work, but its worth it to be able to successfully do this full time.

I have an online store. www.BlackBearLeather.com and I just created a 10% off discount code for reddit: IAMAREDDIT

My grandfather and grandmother chose to leave the Amish church to explore their spirituality in a more profound way (I am speaking of my grandparents on my fathers side, I never had the opportunity to discuss this with my mother's parents, who also left the Amish when my mom was still young). There are many nuanced rules and beliefs within Amish life and society. They felt like those beliefs restricted their ability to connect with God and inhibited them from exploring a deeper sense of spirituality.

If I absolutely had to, and the Hutterite absolutely had to try and kick my ass? Honestly, if that guy has been working in the fields everyday for all of his life, I'd probably get my ass kicked. I have't worked in a field since I was 16. But I do have a yellow belt in karate, (which is the lowest belt one can achieve) so I might be able to counter a good bit. Plus I'm super scrappy. But in the end, I'm guessing I'd probably lose that fight in a kind of a UFC wrestling match sort of way.

Actually, I taught myself everything. My grandfather was a leather worker. But he left the Amish church for spiritual freedom, with his family (including my father) when he was about my age. I am 33. Subsequently he was shunned. And left leather working behind. He started a construction company, called Black Bear Structures, with my father.

Leather crafting in my family goes back to my great great grandpa. Who did leather work with my great grandpa. Who did leather work with my grandpa. But when my grandpa left the Amish, that chain was broken.

I picked up leather work as a hobby. And I instantly fell in love with it. It wasn't until I became very serious about it that my grandfather told me of the legacy of leather crafting in our family.

After my grandparents left the Amish church, they joined the Mennonite church. The Mennonite church is culturally very similar to the Amish. The Mennonite spiritual perspective is much more enlightened and much less regimented than the Amish church, which is what drew my grandparents away from the Amish church.

So, while I was never personally Amish, I grew up in a Mennonite church and attended a Mennonite school. I am no longer a part of the Mennonite church. But in regards to your question, my upbringing was very deeply rooted in the Amish/Mennonite way of life.

My extended family is very tight-nit on both my mother's and father's side. I have been to extended family gatherings, including second cousins and their relatives, that has consisted of over 400 people.

The Amish community is immune from paying social security taxes. This is because they support their own elderly. Any Amish house can and often does have multiple generations living in one expanded structure (they'll build onto a house as the need arises). If a family is not in one structure, you can often find brothers and sisters living on separate houses on the same plot of farm land.

In my experience, I have three brothers. I have a dozen cousins on both sides of my family. And we ALL get together on a regular basis. And my best friends are my brothers and my cousins. While this may be similar to a lot of traditional groups, the Amish still have not lost that sense of familial community. If you think about it, 100 years ago, the Amish were relatively normal to the rest of society. Everyone had horse and buggies. The Amish had a particular way of dressing, but it would not have been all that different from the rest of society.

But today, the Amish are very unique, simply because they have maintained the most traditional standards for themselves. And so, in my life, I have been raised to fully appreciate the value of family and community.

As far as how the Amish culture influences my life, I would say it is more about how the Amish perspective has influenced my life. Take a second and imagine life without a car, life without a television, or a cell phone. Imagine riding in a horse and buggy everytime you needed to go somewhere. If you can put yourself in the mindset that you would need to maintain to stay sane in that environment, you can begin to appreciate the simplicity of the Amish existence. You do not go anywhere quickly. Communication is limited to word of mouth. There is minimal 'noise' from the world around you. For me, that has influenced my state of mind and how I view the world. I often find myself needing to simply stop, slow down, and concentrate on the world around me. And in doing so, I reflect back on imagining how it feels to have none of the modern distractions that we face. And in that, I find peace.

I believe this is also one of the big reasons that I love leather work so much. It forces me to stop, focus on the moment, to focus on the task at hand, and to put the rest of the world aside while I work.