The One Time I Went to Summer Camp, It Was Amish Camp

When I was growing up, I always heard about summer camp. We’d all be back at school in September, and I’d listen as kids in my class would tell stories of cabins on a lake, boardgames, and camp friends. And it always sounded glorious.

I wasn’t lucky enough to land into a family that had the habit or inclination to send their children to such a place. I spent my summers at the pool. Where I swam laps for my neighborhood swim team, slathered on baby oil, and tried to decide if I wanted Reese Cups or Reese Pieces from the snack bar.

By the time I was eight, I desperately wanted to sleep in a bunkroom with other girls my age, roast marshmallows around a fire while singing songs, and make bracelets that upon my return home would decorate my wrists for the remainder of summer, fading stylishly and, when asked, I would proudly declare, “Oh, I made these at summer camp.”

Summer camp, here I come!

I must have made an impression with my steady, constant requests. The following year, my parents announced that I would indeed be going to summer camp. And with my best friend, no less. We held hands and jumped and squealed with excitement as my imagination unfurled in all its bright and exaggerated glory.

I was going to summer camp!

I don’t remember much about the packing process. Perhaps I was too overwhelmed with my own glee and anticipation, which might also explain the very tragic fact that I missed an important detail.

In fact, I missed the most important detail.

Because, dear reader, I wasn’t going to the summer camp about which I’d been long fantasizing. I wasn’t going to a summer camp with marshmallows and crafts and songs. I wasn’t going to summer camp at all.

Not really.

I was going to Amish Camp.

So, while I was giddy with excitement and an uncharacteristic surge of industriousness, packing clothes and rolling up my sleeping bag, there was, somewhere in the quiet hills of the Ohio countryside, a very real, very working, and very Amish farm, just waiting for us.

Wait… it’s Amish Camp?

That snapshot of cheery kids with rosy cheeks, toothy smiles, and arms flung around each other’s shoulders accompanied by a chorus of Kumbaya started to fade away. But I wasn’t sure what to replace it with. I had too many questions and not enough answers.

Whether it was in the backseat of our minivan or upon arrival, I’m still uncertain, but at some point, between departure and destination, the word “Amish” had somehow seeded, germinated, and taken root in my consciousness. And with it came my first tremor of doubt. I knew as much about the Amish as any other nine-year-old kid in 1983 raised in southern Ohio: they didn’t use electricity, they wore bonnets, had beards, and rode in horse-and-buggies.

Do Amish people sing?

Did they play games… canoe… make bracelets?

Do the Amish roast marshmallows?

Whatever unlucky twist of fate caused my very loving and very normal mom to hear my pleas for summer camp and eventually, after what I have to assume was a rather lengthy research process ultimately decide that something called Amish Camp even loosely resembled the summer camp I had in mind is something that I still cannot comprehend. I imagine intense brochure analysis and conversation. That included sending me to Amish camp? I often wonder what had I done to deserve it.

If you’re reading this as a parent and are considering this as an option for your child. Or if you have, in fact, done this to your child. May I direct you to an article I wrote about why your teenager won’t talk to you? It doesn’t specifically call out Amish camp, but it can be inferred.

And look, I have nothing against the Amish—they make delicious pies and bread, they seem to be a peaceful group of people, and I admire their industriousness. But I was nine. And this was supposed to be fun. Not work. And at Amish camp, we were spared their delicious food in lieu of undercooked scrambled eggs and sheep hotdogs.

Forty years have passed since I left the confines of my very average and, unbeknownst to me at the time, very luxurious minivan, so most of my memories are somewhat elusive and blurry. But in that way that intense emotions will often sear a moment into one’s brain, I remember enough.

Amish camp is not the summer camp I was expecting.

Our daily routine was as jarring as it was unfamiliar. We were woken before the sun, chilly and huddled together in the predawn hours. They split us into small groups and mercifully, my best friend, Elizabeth, and I were together.

Ridiculously, our first day’s “activity” was shoveling manure. That’s not an analogy, nor is it the description for something as horrific as “shoveling manure.” We were actually shoveling manure.

With rubber boots up to our knees and a shovel, we dug into a giant vat of cow shit that was beginning to steam as the sun rose into the sky, hoisted our brimming shovels, and deposited it… where?

I truly can’t recall.

Perhaps we were cleaning out a pen or piling it up for fertilizer. Maybe it was a made-up chore specifically designed for us “campers.” An activity that I can only assume didn’t make it into the brochure. And while I cannot remember the purpose, I will always, until my dying breath, remember the smell.

One afternoon, we stood on the sprawling porch of the main house. Each of us with our very own butter churn. And if you’re picturing an upright barrel with a long wooden pole sticking out from the top that was commonly used by American Pioneers, then you’d be correct.

We stood by our individual churns, naively excited by the prospect of making our own butter. Fresh milk had already been added, so after a brief tutorial, we began.

Days before I had abandoned my dreams of traditional summer camp, but at nine, I maintained a natural optimism that kept a sliver of hope alive. Our excitement quickly dwindled into a solid knot of dread, however, as we spent a few minutes pulling up and then driving down the plunger, realization dawning on our task at hand.

Turning matter from a liquid state to a solid is no small task. Nor is it one well-suited for elementary-aged children, with our spindly arms and fleeting attention spans.

It took us several, agonizing hours. Up-down, up-down, up-down for infinity. Our arms and shoulders burned. Our backs ached. All remaining hope was obliterated as we toiled.

Eventually, I have to imagine that we turned our milk into butter, but whether I can’t remember or collapsed, is really anyone’s guess.

If you find yourself milking goats at Amish Camp, don’t laugh.

Another day, we found ourselves inside the barn for goat milking with the farmer’s daughter. With her goat up on a wooden table and a small tin bucket, she deftly produced a forceful stream of milk. The rest of us were obvious amateurs and could only get a few small drips. The trick, it seemed, was to be aggressive and firm, and I found I lacked both of these things when confronted with the swollen udder of a goat.

Finding ourselves in the outrageous position of squeezing milk from a goat teat, cracked the veneer that had hardened over us throughout the week. And as this young goat-milker proudly displayed her skills, I felt the familiar nudge from Elizabeth’s elbow and a laugh bloomed in my belly.

Instinctively, I knew this girl would be upset if she knew we were laughing, and I summoned all my will to crush the giggle that bubbled in my throat. But my inner strength had crumbled, and a sharp snicker escaped. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. Elizabeth stood beside me, gently shaking with her own uncontrollable laughter. I kept my eyes down on the dirt floor and bit down hard on the insides of my cheeks, trying desperately to stop the fit of giggles that had erupted and taken over.

Eventually, we pulled it together and once the lesson was over and each of us had a turn at milking her goat, the girl told us we could go.

“Except,” she said, “You two.”

Of course, she was pointing at us: The Laughers. And any remaining levity instantly vanished.

“Before you leave, you have to do something,” she said, an evil twinkle in her eye.

We stood frozen.

“You have to drink the milk,” she said.

I gasped in horror as my eyes shot to the half-full bucket of warm goat milk and my stomach lurched. Instead, however, she took hold of a soft, light-pink teat between her thumb and forefinger, angled it up, and squeezed. Unbelievably, milk streamed in an arc from the goat straight into her mouth.

It was like an Amish party trick.

“Now you,” she said after swallowing.

I felt saliva collecting in my mouth like before I threw up. I only liked milk when it was ice cold, poured in a glass, and I wasn’t faced with the udder from which it was produced.

“No way,” I said.

“We don’t have to!” Elizabeth said, mirroring my terror.

“Yes, you do, or you can’t leave.”

Why didn’t we run?

The barn door was open, we could have fled at any time.

My only defense is that, in fourth grade, we were still heavily emersed in Playground Rules and regarded the unspoken power wielded by an overzealous child as The Law. Seeing that we had no other options, we stepped up and accepted our fate.

In hindsight, it was kind of impressive… but also thoroughly vile and mildly humiliating. Which, I’m certain, was the point.

 At the end of the week, when our parents returned to collect us, I can honestly say that I’ve rarely been so happy, the flood of relief is still palpable. As a mom myself, I remain fully dismayed at what possessed our parents to pay money for us to work on an Amish farm and call it summer camp.

The Amish must make one hell of a brochure.