If You Leave This Farm

Book excerpt: As a teenage Mennonite girl, Amanda lives with her close-knit family in south central Pennsylvania. Life revolves around hard work, faith, and commitment to the family. She doesnt question the daily routine; its the only life shes known. Her father talks about buying a farm out west with a lot of land in one block. Not only will the family farm there together, but the parents hope to begin a new Mennonite community. To a fifteen-year-old girl, this move begins as an exciting adventure. In If You leave this Farm, Amanda shares the story of her familys relocation to Minnesota and the subsequent challenges they face as farmers, a family, and Mennonites. She tells how the first crop year was a huge failure and her father alone makes the decision to expand the new dairy in an attempt to recoup the losses. This memoir chronicles the years of struggle as Amanda and her younger brother Joseph seek to escape their fathers suffocating and controlling behavior. Intermingled with the struggle on the farm is the effort to become an accepted member of the Minnesota Mennonite community. The change in Amandas fathers behavior and attitude during the first years in Minnesota alienates him and his family from others of the same faith. She shares a mix of emotions as she wrestles with the shame of her familys standing with the Mennonites and the crushing weight of constant submission to her fathers misguided use of his God-given authority.