Q&A - Gardening, Goats, and Mennonite Dress. 👉🏻 (why do men dress more modern than women?)

so in today's video I'm gonna be answering a question that comes up over and over and over again ever since I've started this YouTube channel and it's a really good question and I've been meaning to make a video about this for some time and just haven't gotten around to it so today we're gonna dive into that and then also a few other questions for QA so in my own words the question goes something like this why do you Mennonite women dress more old-fashioned and stand so apart from society but Mennonite men very much fit in with society and dress more in modern store-bought clothes many Mennonite women make their own dresses we wear something on her head and we stand out drastically from society so it's a really good question and we're gonna answer it in this video [Music] so welcome to my channel my name is Janine and if you're new here I'd love to have you subscribe follow along today is just a QA video some of you have posted some questions I said I'd like to do another QA so I'm just gonna go through a lightning round of questions try to answer them very quickly and then we'll get to the big question at the end I do want to apologize if I look a little bit haphazard I'm a busy mom I have lots of things to do I was outside working in the garden so I'm pretty hot it's a very hot day and I just came in and the easiest thing to do is just sit down at my kitchen table it's not the prettiest of backgrounds but it's okay I'm a mom this channel just about normal life nothing glamorous so anyway let's get into the questions all right so the first question came from one person it's multiple questions and I'll answer them one at a time quickly how long have you owned your farm and was it in the family prior to your ownership we actually don't currently own the farm it's not in our name this is my dad's farm and he farms land around it once he retires we plan to purchase the place from him so technically we're kind of owners but yet technically not and the other part of the question was in our family prior to our ownership so this actually wasn't the home farm I grew up in and my dad's older years he has started farming more area and was able to buy some more land so this was one of the pieces of property that he owns but he purchased it in like say the last ten years or so I believe it's farming something you both wanted to do from the start the answer is no I technically wouldn't call us farmers as my dad takes care of all the field work in the big farm type of work what we have is more of a homestead hobby farm we have cattle out in the pasture where we raise calves and then like you've seen we've gotten chickens and goats and it's a little bit more of a hobby farm it's not a real farm it's more like a little homestead where we try to grow some of our own food you know we have eggs the goats right now are mostly just for pets but maybe some time if I can acquire taste for goat milk I'll try milking goats but not right now is it the only home that have lived in since you are married and yes we've lived here since we got married it wasn't our plan we were actually planning to move back out to Oregon where my husband is from within like the first year but as things turned out we're still here eight years later I love the entryway makeover did you do anything else with the house we are currently remodeling this whole house and it's gonna be a whole summer fall project no we haven't done anything else yet but there's lots of plans coming up and hopefully things will start rolling here in the next two months do I have a video of a house tour I do not yet but I plan to do that especially once our house is completely finished at least for this year do you ever have tornados in your area they're fairly rare but it does happen moving on why don't you use eye protection when using power tools this is a gripe of a couple people and a legitimate one I do wear eye protection sometimes but probably mostly not simply because I don't work with power tools that often and so often the eye protection I can't find it I go looking for it I can't find it and I'm like what the world I just have to make two cuts or something and I should be more careful but when you're so busy you just feel like you don't want to be hunting half an hour to make two cuts of wood that most likely will have anything that will fly into your eyes I tend to be careless and that's that's a bad thing I need to work on it I should just go and invest in some eye gear and have it laying around conveniently so whenever I use tools it's right there why are you painting your house instead of putting siding on basically because we hate house siding looks on an older house we love these old houses like if you live in an old farmhouse in my personal opinion why ruin the old look with new siding it too in my opinion it never looks good it just looks tacky in my opinion yes it might be a better option as far as just how long it lasts the major project with this house is getting the old lead paint off and that's going to be the main cost once we can get that off and get a fresh coat of paint on it's actually not that expensive to maintain paint like every 10 years give it a fresh coat of paint it's just more than initial cost of getting the old lead paint off what has been the biggest challenge adding the chickens and goats to your farm actually right now probably there hasn't been much of a challenge we have it set up the past year we got like a pasture grass that's full of clover and all kinds of good grass the goats can just eat that and we don't need to feed them until winter and then my husband actually just installed an automatic water so I don't have to be always making sure they have water it just automatically has water there so far they don't goats don't really need a whole lot of care just make sure your deworming them and keeping up with their hooves and stuff that's probably gonna be the biggest challenge is catching them and trimming their hooves chickens on the other hand probably one of the biggest challenges is on these hot days is keeping them cool enough and set up now and the chicken coop hopefully if there's enough air movement that they're okay on these hot days but other than that it hasn't been a huge challenge it's been a lot of fun one time Xander opened the gate and a dog got in and got a chicken so that's what part of the learning process and he had to learn and he suddenly realized yet dogs and chickens aren't very compatible so it was a little lesson for him and I don't think he'll hopefully he won't do it again how it how old is your farm farm house I think it was built in 1900 1905 somewhere around there so what does that make it 120 years something like that number six this question always comes up are you going to have another child it's definitely a good question we do want to have more children I've talked about this in another Q&A Xander is definitely getting older and it's something that was a little bit hard for me to lay down I wanted a child that was a little bit closer to his age as well but soon after he was born I was diagnosed with a chronic condition called ulcerative colitis and it's been kind of a long few years of me trying to figure out how to work with that I'm trying to hear out what works for me and I'm still kind of in that process and it's the type of disease by the way if you want to know more about it I have another YouTube channel talking about my gut issues I don't want to spend too much time here right now talking about it but basically it's a use of the gut where suddenly when you eat food your body completely reacts to it you're pretty much house bound and your body doesn't absorb nutrients from it very well so it's very not recommended that you get pregnant while you're in a flair because your body can't absorb nutrients and it could definitely be harmful to your child so speaking of my health just a little bit of a side note I'm sure many of you have noticed so if you would go back about a year a much thinner and I was actually an awake I was quite happy with but I was so sick last year for months on ends I could hardly eat anything and I'm typically a person that loses weight really hard a lot of people with this disease I mean they have it within a few weeks they're like down thirty pounds or something that has never quite happened to me but last summer I did lose a lot of weight and I was quite tickled with that part of it of course but what happened is when I got better and I was able to get out of my flare it was almost like my body reacted or my mind reacted and went from like kind of a starvation type mode like I was still at a healthy I was at a very healthy weight and I could have even lost more but I'm just saying like from what I had went through through all those months it just seemed like my body switched and before long the weight just kept piling on and I'm just horrified at how much weight I have gained back since that time I'm so happy that I'm doing well and I'm trying not to complain about it but it's been I don't know it's been probably seven months now since I've been really sick over that time I've gained all the way back plus some you can tell it in my face and just overall my clothes are fitting like they should be and anyway so it's confession time but I'm working really hard at getting back on track I'm losing some weight and I've lost them but I have a long way to go to catch back up to what I was before so it's kind of humiliating but I just am thankful that I'm doing so much better now and just one thing I'm trying to do is lose weight and it's always a battle for me so anyway so the speaking of your body absorbing nutrients that's why a lot of people with this condition lose a lot of weight because your body doesn't absorb treants and so thus because of all that it's not recommended a person is pregnant just been something that's been really hard for me to lay down because time just has a way of ticking by and I really hate the thought of having an only child or having a child that's so much older than his next sibling but finally my husband convinced me he's like you know what doesn't really matter we can't just live our life trying to pre-plan everything you know we leave it in God's hands and if we only end up having one child we have a wonderful child we'd love him dearly and I was finally able to lay it down and I find I'm much more peace about it actually just a quick side note was actually a few months ago we were actually really excited because I got a positive pregnancy test but sadly shortly after that I miscarried it wasn't anything dramatic it was really early on so it was just kind of a sad devastating feeling because we were all so excited to be expecting another child but looking back I feel like you know God has everything in control with my health again the heat always our really struggle with it this has actually been the best years so far I believe God has been giving me some answers as far as healing in my life I feel like he has been healing me and I praise him for that and so far this summer with all the heat and everything I've been actually doing fairly well but I have been struggling just a little bit and I believe if I would have been pregnant at this time it could have possibly made it a lot worse and so you know I believe all things work together for good so anyway that was kind of a long spiel again did you grow up Mennonite yes I did do you speak Pennsylvania Dutch in your home at all we don't I grew up speaking it but Nolan doesn't know it so we don't speak it here what are your favorite local stores and restaurants um now that's kind of a hard question I am an Amazon type of girl I used to love shopping but since I'm a mom I just love being at home I do love getting out some but I tend to enjoy the big-box stores Target I go to Walmart a lot and when we do go out to eat we actually very much love things like Chili's Red Lobster and I like to get better at learning all the little local eateries and bakeries that you can go to but we don't eat out that much and it seems whatever we do we kind of know hey this is this good food let's go here but yeah as far as major shopping I often go on Facebook marketplace or thrift stores or just get my necessary things at you know Target Walmart and those type of stores so can't really answer that very well so in the last video I was doing some gardening and I got a fair amount of gardening questions so one of the most asked question was what is that tool that you were using I have it right here my mom actually gifted it to me and it is the handiest type of hoe you could ever possibly imagine it's a lot less work goes much faster does an excellent job and I feel like it is a really good job at keeping the weeds down especially if you catch them when they're young and you just quickly go over your garden when your weeds are small so it kind of has this open I don't know what you'd call this just sort of a loop this is a sharp edge right here and yeah you just scratch over the surface and dig down in and it just cuts through the roots and like I said if you catch it when they're young it does a really good job at just keeping your garden nice go so much faster and it's very easy so this one is called Ames brand and it's called an action hoe I'll have links below I think you can get them on Amazon another question that came up was what kind of spray do I use for bugs now this is something I want to grow in because I definitely wanted to go more the organic route but I went to my local store up here and just asked what they have for organic spray and they have what's called this garden insects spray but I still have a feeling it's not the healthiest even though it says it's for organic gardening I haven't dug into it much I just said please give me your organic bug control stuff and this is what I got it says for use in organic gardening now I'm not sure I should dig into this a little bit more but this works really well I don't like to spray things when vegetables and fruit like tomatoes or whatever are ripened ready and you're actually spraying it directly onto the vegetable but it seems about once a year the bugs come out and start attacking green bean plants and it's usually before the green beans are on and so often one round of spray I just mix this up for the instructions put in a little spray bottle spray all the leaves to spray the sunflowers obviously I don't mind using this type of thing on something I don't eat so I use it on my flowers and it just took care of the bug problem I went out seriously I went out and looked at my green beans and they were just eaten like the leaves were just some of the leaves were hardly even hanging and God anymore so I just sprayed them with this and in a few days the plant is recovered and we're beautiful but if anyone has anything that you like as far as what works and is safe and healthy for sure I haven't researched this much let me know in the comments below does your family not like tomatoes or green peppers yes I especially like tomatoes Noland and Xander do not this year I just decided not to plant your growing spearmint is that what is used to make meadow tea and that is correct although people use different types of teas and it gives different flavors but we kind of use meadow tea as a blanket term for all the different types but my personal favorite is spearmint pretty sure that's what I'm growing out here is your bean water or homemade umm no I think my mom actually gifted that to me again she's been she's so good at giving me these handy little gadgets all right so that wraps up the questions I am sorry if I missed some I had all my questions typed out and I hadn't saved the file and suddenly my computer just died and so I had to go back through all the questions and all the comments and I know that there was a couple before that I had written down that I missed this time and I apologized for that I looked a couple times and couldn't find him I don't know if the person deleted the comment or what but I'm forgetting kind of what they were so sorry if I missed a question it wasn't intentional and now let's jump into the big question that is asked so often on this channel why is it that men women look so much more different old-fashioned in my own words than Mennonite men I'll try to answer it the best that I can but before I start answering this question there's a few things I'd like to say before we jump into it first off I'm sure most of you realize that we are Christians and we believe the Bible teaches modesty and that is why we choose to dress in a certain way there are many different ways of being modest wearing the type of dress that I wear is only in one way of practicing modesty and me answering this question is not saying that this is the only way the Bible accepts modesty not at all this is a blend of culture and tradition that have kind of emerged from history and this is where we are today I just wanted to clarify that one can be modest in today's culture with more modern clothing you don't have to dress the way I dress but this is what we have chosen to do and I personally am very content with where I am and what we have chosen as a family where we worship being Mennonite and also the way we dress now I can totally understand a little bit of the confusion looking on and let me just clarify that there are definitely various types groups of Mennonite our core beliefs are very similar the outward expression how we live our lives very much drastically vary a lot of people know the Amish Amish aren't technically Mennonites but we're kind of similar in some ways now when you look at an Amish man obviously he stands apart very much he has a straw hat suspenders they usually wear actually both men and women wear solid colors a more conservative groups would wear darker colors whereas others would wear brighter more cheerful colors but there is an example of men that would look much more different from society now this topic does come up like in our churches I haven't heard it from various men already when you know when discussions come up that it just doesn't seem really fair that the women stand out so much in society and the men can kind of blend in and so this can has actually led some groups to try to distinctly make the men stand out more and so you have maybe suspenders you know sometimes solid colors certain types of hats but when it comes to men in society let's just dig into history a little bit and see why it's so much harder for a man to stand apart in today's society than a lady and the other thing I want to clarify before we jump into history is I'm not saying that just because this is how it was done a hundred years ago or 200 years ago somehow makes it right you know there's no perfect era of you know just because it's the old ways definitely does not mean it's the right way but by jumping into history you know the saying to fully understand ourselves we have to look back we have to look at history what has made us as a country as a society us as people us as a family what makes us who we are with our culture's our traditions and all that well we have to look back often to figure that out but if you watch dress clothing throughout the centuries throughout the years they have stayed relatively similar obviously fashion changes you know styles change but as far as the modesty aspect let's just look at modesty not necessarily fashion that has stayed relatively the same until the past hundred years let's just look at men for instance so obviously in the colonial area you had kind of the knickers and a kind of that interesting dress the wigs for the men that was obviously distinctly different than now but for the most part when we look at history and men's dress it's just been kind of a standard as far as the modesty aspect men usually were long pants and shirts with sleeves now if we turn and start looking at women that's when things are really changed so you have women wearing all kinds of different styles of dresses for years and you have your hoop skirts and you're more fitted skirts and all this different stuff but still as a whole throughout hundreds of years women have weird modest clothing not always but if you follow what I'm saying most of the body is clothed that has changed drastically within the last hundred years I mean you hit the 1900s and I don't know exactly the years maybe the 1920s 30s and dresses started becoming really really short and you started having your miniskirts and before long you have really low necklines which I think that also went back further but before long clothing just started getting skinnier and skinnier now the amount of undress and today's society especially among women is really stark in comparison to what it would have been maybe a hundred years or so ago now obviously I understand there is still a lot of modest clothing that you can buy today I'm not arguing that effect but I will say it is a lot more difficult to find especially if you want to put together kind of a nice attractive outfit so often it's either a super tight fitting or it has a very very low neckline there's so many things that in today's society are kind of geared toward revealing a woman's body and it can be a lot harder to just find clothing that is practical and modest I said that's kind of goes into another point on why we chose to kind of stick with what we have but we'll come back to that later I'm not letting men off the hook saying that they just stayed modest and women have it I mean there's obviously been changes but let's just take a look at what society today kind of their rules for dress up what's expected of you what is proper let's just say you're going to a dress-up occasion and you are required to show up and respectable attire this is where things really show the change in society and the shift in my personal opinion what was proper for a man to wear throughout the many years in the past is still very similar today he dresses up often in a long sleeve shirt not always but often suit and tie long sometimes shorts are permitted but most times when a man is dressed up he wears long trousers but if he doesn't wear a long sleeve shirt it is often has sleeves when a man has a sleeveless on it's it's not very respectable I guess is what I'm saying so basically when we look at men when they dress up in a prestigious setting environment whatever they tend to cover up women however that has completely completely changed so the amount of skin that can be shown in some of these events and still be classified as classy or proper attire it's pretty astounding now I'm not up to date on all of you know I know there's proper etiquette and I know there's types of clothing that certain women would never wear to some of these events but you know women often will have a strapless top and even if there's a strap it's just like this little spaghetti straps and then not only that but often there's short dresses miniskirts and obviously shorts usually aren't in these types of environments for women suddenly you look at the couple coming through the door when the man walks in he's decently dressed and covered quite often not always but quite often his partner his wife errs fiance or girlfriend is very revealing with skin and sometimes it just seems there's more skin showing than not and so I'm just saying can you see the shift in society the women have really shifted in comparison to the men and so when you look at the Mennonite culture it's much harder for a man to stand out I mean obviously he could wear suspenders but it's not really a modesty issue it's more just an identity issue you could wear certain styles of hats certain types of clothes you know we could make it so the men have to wear homemade clothes as well there's some groups that do that but you know to me that's not real practical when you can pretty much go and buy the same thing at the store you know for us Mennonites it's very easy for us to pick out a Mennonite and you can spot him right away those little details that don't really pop out to other people simply because men have not changed that much and so when men are dressing now very similar to what they have been many years ago as far as just your classic shirt and trousers give and take a few different types of styles then they don't stand apart nearly as much and that is where we women stand apart much more actually I would dare say any woman that chooses to dress in a modest way stands out like I know when I go to to a store I can very quickly pick out families and groups that have this in mind and are very conscious about dressing modestly even though they're buying all their clothes they might be wearing skirts and blouse or even if they're not wearing skirts I just don't know how to explain it you can kind of pick them out and so it's basically more about society having changed so much and us saying you know what we have decided to stay with this type of dress for women and the thing is I choose to be here I'm not forced to be here like I said before I completely understand that there are some things in our culture that is merely cultural but it's something that has kind of blended between conviction and culture and tradition over the years and this is where we are today and I'm happy with it I personally am very happy with it because I really love the church we go to the whole Mennonite as a group we have many flaws and many things that we need to grow in and learn in learn how to change learn how to blend and mesh together ideas sometimes you know we hang on a little bit to the old too long and don't embrace some new changes but there's also a lot of things that I love about the Mennonite culture that if I would leave I would give up and to me that would be devastating and I would never want to miss those things so even if there's some things that maybe are don't completely make sense that yes there's other ways of dressing modestly to some people they just think it's absolutely read it Kilis that we choose a certain dress style when we could still dress modestly and more modernly and to me that's not really an issue because I guess I'm just happy with where I am now another thing that really sets Mennonite women apart is we wear something on our heads whether it's more of a cap style bonnet style type of covering or if it's like more of a cloth piece like a veiling or just people call it various different things we take first Corinthians 11 literally and I plan to make a video on that just kind of our perspective of it I'm not going to jump into that right now but that is another thing that makes us stand apart because we don't wear our hair down and so that's a drastic thing I would say a lot more even than the dresses we wear that is also something that has changed in the past hundred years if you look especially at society and at the Christian Church throughout the centuries women have covered their heads when they go into a church setting and even out and about that was kind of standard as well but especially in worship services and it kind of gradually changed you know some women wore hats and that type of thing and the interesting thing is men always removed their hats when they came in to say a worship setting late to church you'll actually see this still in today's culture somewhat of high regard or honor respects however you say that is in the room or if you're say standing for the national anthem or anything down that line usually kind of the tradition has been men removed their hats out of respect and you'll notice that often women don't it tends to be more in the realm of men and that stems back from this practice of men removing their hats when they come in to church services so once again men have kind of kept their traditions and these things and actually sums back to biblical teaching but women on the other hand have generally quit covering when they go into worship services and we have continued to keep that and so that now sets us even more apart from society today the biggest concern I would have is that we do not let how we dress and that we don't let this thing become religion because we as humans and can so quickly be taken up in identity and feel like what we do is the right way and we feel like we start defending that like it's religion and that's when it becomes wrong what we do how we live our life is just an outward expression of what's in our heart and how we feel we can best without the Christian life and we need to keep that in our minds that this is not religion this is not supposed to be religion Jesus Christ is the person that has changed us it's all about him it's not about being technical it's not about works and all this type of thing it's all about him but the little things that we choose in life to live out a heart change is kind of the outward expressions and we need to be careful that we keep that in the proper balance and make sure that we have it on the right scale as far as how important it is in the Christian walk if you know what I'm trying to say and I am now going to cop out because I've just been talking and I feel like I'm going in circles and I should have made notes and I didn't make notes and if I would have made notes I would have been definitely a lot more on track and now this editing is going to be a nightmare because I've said so many things and reset them and went around and around and around and around and around so I hope you appreciate this video give it a thumbs up if you liked it and if you didn't give it a thumbs down it's perfectly fine but I hope this video doesn't lead to a bunch of hate down in the comments because I always get a little bit annoyed at that it's fine if you want to direct hate at me that's perfectly fine but just leave each other alone so have a lovely day and god bless

Channel: the Mennonite Mom

Views: 79,769

Rating: 4.9555097 out of 5

Keywords: the mennonite mom, mennonite mom, mennonite, mennonite blogger, mennonite vlogger, Q&A, mennonite dress, mennonite men, mennonite women, dress standards, modesty, modest dress, biblical teaching, biblical modesty

Id: 6csbv-DqVJ4

Length: 29min 59sec (1799 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2020