For today’s blog post, we return once again to that upper corner of Berks County known locally as the Eck, pressed against the Blue Mountain ridge of the Appalachians. Rising above the farmland is one of the region’s most recognizable summits called the Pinnacle, or Zinnekopp in Pennsylvania Dutch.

Language learners love talking about “untranslatable” words — the ones that supposedly resist being neatly carried over into another language. Usually, what people mean is simpler: there’s no single word equivalent.

Geburts- und Taufscheine ‘birth and baptismal certificates’ were ways that our Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors recorded their existence. At first handdrawn and colored, then printed with woodblocks, and finally mass produced by larger printing houses.

I’ve already shared a lot about my love of eggs: Making bandboxes and Scratching eggs. And as we get closer to Easter, I thought I’d share a related tradition that I enjoy. Egg trees, at least those indoors, aren’t really a deep set part of our folk culture.

Easter is my favorite time of year. Coloring eggs for the occasion was always a highlight of my childhood. We’d use Doc Hinkle’s dyes to paint our designs. The egg dye was first made in 1893 in Lancaster County and continues to be a Pennsylvania tradition.

Several years ago, I was invited to visit with an elderly Amish husband and wife at their home. The family was among the most conservative Old Order Amish, belonging to a group called the Swartzentrubers.

This past December I was commissioned to make a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch textile to celebrate the birth of a child — an heirloom to hang in the nursery. I decided on an ausgenaeht handduch ‘decorated towel'.

This week I’m starting on my Perkiomen Valley quilt pattern. As I started cutting out the necessary squares and triangles, I was reminded of a strange news report about a quilting party that happened this month 157 years ago.

The Great Depression, 1929–1939, weighed heavily on rural communities in the U.S., and so President Franklin Roosevelt proposed relief, recovery, and reform through a variety of New Deal agencies. One of those agencies — the Farm Security Administration (FSA) — provided relief to rural farmers.

As 2025 winds down, I’m thinking ahead to some craft challenges that I’d like to do in the new year. A few months ago, I finally bought a good sewing machine — nothing professional or super fancy.

Bringing light into the darkness is a common ritual during the bleakest nights of wintertime. The Christmas Eve lovefeast in Moravian churches continues on this tradition.

Young Jacob Gerhard found a secluded spot halfway up a mountain to build a small log cabin.

Yost Yoder died in 1742 and was sorely missed from the old homestead along the Manatawny Creek.

Jerusalem Eastern Salisbury’s church records, kept in immaculate German script, suddenly end in 1791.

In the years after the Revolutionary War, fear gripped tightly around the small Salzbarrick (Salisbury) area nestled on the slope of Lehigh Mountain.

I remember well my mother and grandmother descending below the roadway to pick from the dense thicket of watercress.

Making lace can be extremely time-consuming.

The Pennsylvania Dutch loved to add decorations all over.

There have been far too many heated debates about the purpose of decoration among the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Early on, Pennsylvania Dutch families documented loved ones with fraktur, especially birth- and baptismal certificates, that were often tucked away in drawers and chests, or perhaps folded and safeguarded in the family bible.