(the following piece is a result of a Professor who requested that I give a presentation on the female experience of the community. it'll feel obvious to most readers- probably a bit lifeless, but it is a placeholder at best for much longer piece still int he works )
What I am presenting is only in part my experience. As a Hutterite female in university, I am very much an exception to the rule. To do some semblance of justice to the variety of roles woman fill on a community, I’m going to take you through a life-journey, so you can see the breadths of this role.
Early Years
Starting at around age 7, I remember my aunt, who had just married and moved to oak bluff telling my mom she wanted me to babysit for her when her baby arrived. From then until I turned 15 I was extremely close with this family and all 5 of her kids. While the adults are eating, during Lehr and Gehbet, During my aunt’s cook and bake weeks, and honestly most afternoons when mom needed a break, I would run over after school to help out.
Babysitting was done in groups: I would meet up with the other girls and we would go to the preschool -a fun enclosed playground in the middle of the colony, where we would empty our wagons of kids, loosely supervising them and rocking babies in the shade- actually have a great time gossiping or reading, until mom or dad came home from work to take over.
Other times, me and some of the boys had treehouses in the windbreak at the edge of the colony, I’d dump the wagon of kids, and play “house” and “school” and “war” with all my older friends, but with our little responsibilities running around our feet.
I was incredibly proud of this responsibility and took it extremely seriously: as I got older this expanded to helping her feed the kids, dressing them, and putting them down for naps, because I knew mom would be coming home from the kitchen or the garden exhausted.
Dieneh Years
On a Hutterite colony, turning 15 means moving from the children’s dining room- and also from the title of “child”- to the adult room and in extent responsibility. On turning 15, my work transformed entirely- I became A dieah- referring to an unmarried woman- and I joined the female workforce in the community.
The schedule and work is along several different calendars:
A dishwashing week for after meals rotates along a four-week schedule. Cooking and bake weeks run along a chronological schedule -the youngest dieneh taking a cook week at age 17. For me, I started with my mom, who continued to cook with me until she turned 45. Going from 5am to 7pm day with your partner, for that week you prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner -as well as a 10o clock snack, or even a 9pm lunch for the men during harvest. It’s very intensive, and is directly followed by the more fun and less stress bake week. Because you’re cooking for 120 different people, you learn a lot about people:
· Anna Basil refuses to eat old fries. Our head cook, Lydia tells me to wait until I see her heading to the kitchen and just re-dunk them, and she thanks you for putting them up “just in time”
· Lisa has dietary restrictions, so make sure the salad wagon is stocked with greens.
· Sheldon comes into the kitchen with his tea at 10-oclock snack to share and you laugh and chat for a couple minutes before going back to work.
· Sam Vetter shops for groceries once a week, and will place some chocolates somewhere in the kitchen for you to find the day after.
There’s also work particular only to the dieneh, like weekly cleaning of the kitchen, shop, school. Because, I am in school, I’m more-or-less exempt technically, but I make a point of participating on weekends- if only to hang out with the dieneh crew.
Seasonal jobs begin in early spring when gardening starts.
The dieneh help plant and transplant in the greenhouse. In later spring we do the planting, and then from June through September, all woman ages 15 to 45 are expected to consistently participate in the communal gardening and food processing. This is probably the most rewarding time of the year and I personally love it:
This is an inter-generation experience: when you turn 15, you show up to the garden with absolutely no what you’re doing. You are taught by all the older woman and are absolutely at the bottom of the pecking order. This includes hoeing, planting, weeding, and then finally picking. Moving on to preserving for winter: we blanch, freeze, refrigerate, can, process- you name it, most of our produce, with two women in charge of organizing this process- another annually rotating job.
As you get older, responsibilities rise, and you learn the process simply from doing.
There is amusement in this as well: Especially the fresh new faces reacting to making wurst or butchering chickens for the first time. Or how everyone inevitably ends up finishing the youngest dieneh’s rows because they haven’t learned talk while working yet. And Finally, around 5 o clock, 10 of us will jump on a golfcart and breaking all guidelines as we rush to our lake to jump in and cool off for an hour before evening service.
Another large part of my life is what I’ll call Community Building. For funerals, weddings, Christmas, easter, thanksgiving- the dieaneh are in charge of decor, food preparation, menu planning, entertainment, and song selection. You’d be amazed at how many hours go into individually cutting out decorations, scouring the internet for recipes, testing them, then multiplying them by 500 -It is the intentionality of evenings spent on these projects: sitting in one of the girl’s living room’s fighting over which themes to use, what skits are funny, or editing the Year End PowerPoint, that form the life and heart of the culture- it makes events come to life and enjoyable for the whole community.
In all the time in between, there is my household to take care of.- a sizable commitment in my own family of 9. Further, as part of community, there is also the older neighbor’s house to care for, grandma needs food when the first bell goes for Essentrog’n, and there’s always young moms with sewing they need help keeping up with. My sister and I are very involved in several community projects in our own time- such as the colony herb garden, making kombuchas and sourdough, or organizing community presentations and recreational evenings. A lot of our time is spent facilitating that.
Moreover, my mom is perpetually dragging us to get behind the sewing machine! Historically, clothes were handmade, but in recent years, especially with menswear, more and more of it is bought. Hutterite women take a lot of pride in their sewing: Just look at the shirts all these guys here are wearing. Notice the topstitching, the design: there’s no standard pattern- my dresses, their shirts, are each particularly drawn, patterned, cut, and sewed -for each specific individual.
As the Hutterite woman age, roles shift as well.
With Marriage, the wife moves to the her husband’s community, where, ideally she is fully integrated and welcomed into his family and community. When you start your own family, it comes full circle as you choose a young girl to babysit, and essentially play a small role in teaching her how to babysit your kids.
Families grow up and children continue to live in their parent’s households unless they marry, with often the children at home careing for aging parents. The average Hutterite female is a full-time stay at home mom, alongside the participation in the woman’s group-work.
Older single sisters on the community remain instrumentally important as well. The respect gained with age and experience, as younger dieneh come up, put them in positions of teaching, facilitating and organizing most community jobs.
Other particular female positions on the community include Head cook, Head Gardener, Essen Schule Ankela (for the children’s dining room), Head seamstress. And then community specific roles exist as well: In Oak bluff, my Aunt Janet runs an osteopath clinic -the Herbal Method, and others volunteer at the school at the kindergarten, music, German school, and art teachers, or work at the shop as secretaries for our colony and business finances.
Upon future aging, the older woman command even more respect with experience, age, and wisdom. Communities include individuals with ailments, mental and physical disabilities, or simply older members who require full-time care, a job that is facilitated by these older women no longer part of the main workforce.
· My Susie-Basel diligently took care of her older sister by twenty years, as well as other woman rotating a day-schedule to volunteer shifts in helping with her care, until she passed away from her progressive Alzheimer’s.
· Sanna basel, well into her 70s, insists on taking care of Marilyn, an older woman who was instrumental in teaching me the ropes when I turned 15 until she suffered a severe stroke around 40, only a few years ago.
Hutterites don’t use typically use retirement or hospice/care, because they are cared for by the community they cared for as well.
The Hutterian lifestyle for its Woman speaks to the legitimacy of more traditional gender roles, and the beauty that can exist within structures that today’s culture often looks down on. These clearly defined gender roles supply a structure that is lifegiving. I have simply never had to worry about finances, the colony industry, or whether there would be a car in the garage for me to take when I commute to school. I do not want to be without the community men, and I do not think they would want to be without the woman who make the community something beautiful to work for.
The female role is the facilitation of life and community, and that is no small task. The woman I know are deeply proud of the roles they fill. In any culture where there is respect, nurturing, and frankly a generosity across generations and between the sexes, this model is not just good, but Transcendent. In this structure, I find a lot of what Jesus meant when he said to build a kingdom of God. if nothing else, there are glimpses of that vision in our everyday life as we work, eat, sing and play together daily.
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