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March 2008 - Erin Isings
It was early in the afternoon
on a blustery, snowy Saturday when I pulled up to the Steckle farm in
Wellington County to spend the afternoon with a Mennonite family. The
said weather conditions are how I ended up burying my Camry’s front
wheels in the front garden.
“Don’t worry about it,” Joanna
Steckle says casually, brushing aside my apologies. “When my husband
gets home, he can pull you out with the tractor. Now come on in and warm
up.”
I follow her into her large, modern-looking home. The exterior of the
two-story, grey-sided house and the large red barn look like any other
farm in rural Ontario. The inside of the house is very clean and large,
yet cozy, and the smell of dinner cooking in the oven suddenly makes me
feel hungry.
Steckle takes off her winter coat to reveal a simple, modest, calf-length
flowered dress, with a small white veil (often referred to as a bonnet)
that covers the back of her head. She later explains that her choice of
clothing is largely driven by her religion’s principle of modesty.
Her 14-year-old daughter, Lorraine, is in the kitchen among modern appliances.
She finishes washing the dishes, and sits down at the window to hem a
dress. Two other daughters, Suzanne, nine, and Maria, five, look at me
curiously – obviously amused by this strange outsider who has parked
in the front yard – and then rush down to the basement to play.
Like their mother, the three girls are dressed in homemade dresses, but
instead of wearing veils, they wear their hair in two long braids.
Unlike the women, Mennonite men can wear store-bought clothing, but generally
stick to conservative colours and styles. “Dark colours are more
practical for working on the farm. If my husband wore white pants, I can’t
imagine what colour they would be after he finished his barn chores,”
says Steckle, laughing.
Both she and her husband, Melvin, grew up in Old Order Mennonite families
in Waterloo County. Old Order Mennonites aren’t permitted to use
vehicles, and travel by horse and buggy instead. The Steckles left the
Old Order Mennonites a few years ago and joined the more progressive Markham
Waterloo Conference Mennonites. Steckle’s family has no hard feelings
about her leaving the Old Order. She remains very close with her parents
and her four siblings.
The primary reason for leaving was primarily due to their feeling that
a vehicle was a necessity in their life.
Markham Waterloo Conference Mennonites are permitted to drive, but try
to only drive black cars to church on Sunday. “Really, it’s
more of a respect thing to our horse and buggy background,” says
Steckle.
The family’s new lifestyle in the more progressive church is very
similar to before they joined, only not quite as conservative. Steckle
carries a small red cell phone in the pocket of her dress, and she now
has a computer – although it’s not connected to the Internet.
She uses the computer to make brochures and keep the books for her produce
and flower business that she runs from her home during the summer.
It’s important to note that Mennonites aren’t the same as
Amish; the two groups were formed around the same time, but by two different
leaders. Both are Christian and could be considered cousins, like many
other Christian religions. For example, most Old Order Amish don’t
use electricity, but Steckle says a Mennonite family without a phone would
be very rare, even among Old Order Mennonites. There are also different
denominations within Mennonites; those in different groups distinguish
themselves with distinctions that are unnoticeable to the untrained eye,
such as the shape of an apron, the style of the veil or bonnet, and a
front or back closure on the dress.
Steckle got married when she was 22, although she says nowadays 20 would
be considered young to marry; most Mennonite women get married by the
time they’re 25.
Marriage is optional, as is the case with two of Steckle’s sisters.
They bought a house together and work as cleaners for businesses and residences
in a nearby town, while still remaining part of the Old Order. “Their
calendar is always full, and people will come to pick them up and take
them to work,” says Steckle.
As for her children, the girls and their 11-year-old brother attend a
private two-room Mennonite school. “We drive the children to school
because three miles is a little far for them to walk,” she explains.
The language of instruction at school is English, which is considered
a necessity in life; however, like most Mennonite families, the household
language is Pennsylvania Dutch – a spoken language that has been
passed down for generations in their family.
“We made an effort to speak in English to Lorraine before she went
to school. That lasted for about half an hour,” laughs Steckle.
And because she and her husband used English for their business and outside
trips, the children fully understood English before they began school.
After Grade 8, which the teacher has said is equal to half of Grade 10
in the public school system, Mennonite girls learn household chores such
as sewing and baking, and Mennonite boys learn how to work on the farm.
Most Mennonite parents work the farm until they choose to retire, when
the youngest son buys the farm from them.
“We enjoy our work – it’s not like we feel tied down,”
says Steckle, opening a family photo album to show some of the events
of last summer, their busiest time. The photos show the girls canning
peaches with their mother, and “helping” her in the store
by sampling some of the produce. Other photos are of the barn, the house
with beautiful flower beds out front (in the exact location where I was
spinning my tires in the ground an hour earlier), a community effort helping
a neighbouring farmer to clean up after a tornado, and a day trip to the
beach. In order to stay modest, the men roll up their pants and the women
lift their skirts to cool their feet in the water.
When asked what it means to be a Mennonite, Steckle thinks for a while
before explaining: “It’s very much a way of life. Being Mennonite
is a lifestyle, but it is tied to a basic Christian religion. Our faith
is the centre of who we are, and we’re just trying to live out what
we believe.”
And the faith that’s at the centre of their identity is “about
coming to the realization that you’re incapable of achieving your
own salvation, then accepting Christ as your saviour,” she says.
Younger Mennonites generally experience this realization, or “confession
of faith,” in their late teens and the occasion is celebrated with
a baptism.
Lorraine will participate in a rite of passage next year of “putting
her hair up,” which occurs around the time of a girl’s fifteenth
birthday. This involves a ceremony and marks the transition from a girl
who wears braids to a young woman who ties her hair back and wears a veil.
Without a television or a radio in their home, the younger girls finish
playing and come upstairs to draw and colour at the dining room table.
In what little leisure time they have, the Steckles read, play board games
or cards and visit with other families in the area.
Socializing with other Mennonites is an integral part of their life and
Steckle has two church directories – one for the Old Order and one
for the Markham Waterloo Conference. Each entry lists the husband’s
and wife’s names, the wife’s father’s name, their address,
phone number and names of children and their birth dates. There are penned-in
additions in the book where Steckle has added names and birth dates of
new babies in each family. There are also community maps that list highways
and have each farm labeled by the name of the family who lives there.
Steckle often spontaneously invites members of her church to come to her
house on Sunday after services, and on one occasion, she hosted an impromptu
gathering of 36 people. But this isn’t the norm. “It’s
probably a good thing I didn’t know ahead of time, or I would have
made twice as much food as we needed,” she laughs.
As we finish our interview, a pick-up truck pulls in. Steckle’s
husband and son have returned from helping move furniture at the local
school. Moments later, she points out the window, and I see deep ruts
through the snow and into the dirt in the garden. My car is now sitting
in the driveway – exactly where I meant to park it.
Hopefully those flowers will bloom again in the spring. .
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