Alberta weekend, Post 3: Hutterite visit

We left the ranch after lunch on Monday for the 12 hour drive back to Vancouver. Before that, however, on Monday morning we went to visit a Hutterite colony 20 minutes from Tom and Monica's home.

We had been talking about the nearby colony the previous evening, as Monica has two of the ladies come and clean her house every couple of months, and over the years she and Tom have become friends with their family. We had been fascinated to hear a little about their way of life and jumped at Monica's offer to take us to visit them. They are a group we have occasionally heard about since moving to Canada, but due to their physical and cultural separation, their lifestyle can seem quite mysterious.

From Wikipedia:
Hutterites are a communal branch of Anabaptists who, like the Amish and Mennonites, trace their roots to the Radical Reformation of the 16th century. Nearly extinct by the 18th and 19th centuries, the Hutterites found a new home in North America. Over 125 years their population grew from 400 to around 42,000... Hutterite communes, called "colonies", are all rural; many depend largely on farming or ranching... The colony is virtually or literally self-sufficient, constructing its own buildings, doing its own maintenance and repair on equipment, making its own clothes, etc... Hutterites practice a near-total community of goods: all property is owned by the colony, and provisions for individual members and their families come from the common resources... The Hutterites have preserved and use among themselves a distinct dialect of German known as Hutterite German, or Hutterisch.

Monica phoned ahead to tell the family we were coming to visit. Our group of visitors consisted of Monica, Nicole, Tisha, Roxy, Ben and I. Around mid-morning we drove into the colony and were welcomed by John and Elizabeth and their daughter Anna-Marie, who cleans for Monica. Anna-Marie is in her 40s but unmarried, so she still lives with her parents, as is the Hutterite tradition.

John and Elizabeth were extremely friendly and welcoming, and invited us into their home. The houses are built in rows (see below), and are spacious and double-storey (the lower storey is underground). This particular colony has about 90 members; according to Wikipedia the numbers are usually between 60 and 250 (10 to 20 families), and they build a new "daughter colony" when the numbers get too large.

Anna-Marie's sister, who also cleans for Monica, was to get married shortly after our visit, so we weren't able to meet her as she was visiting her future husband's colony. Apparently two of John and Elizabeth's other daughters (they have 11 children) had already married into this same family... and as there's still one brother left, poor Anna-Marie was copping some teasing!

John, Elizabeth and Anna-Marie gave us a detailed tour of their home. They showed us their kitchen, which was large but did not have a stove and oven, as all meals are eaten communally with the entire colony. They had a microwave and fridge though, for preparing snacks. They also showed us a set of cutlery, beautifully engraved with the initials of the soon-to-be-wed couple - a traditional Hutterite wedding gift.

Downstairs, they showed us a number of bedrooms - there must have been about six - and some of their special belongings. In particular, the ladies each have a large wooden chest (like a hope chest), in which they store things for their married life. The chests are intricately hand-crafted by the Hutterites and are very treasured possessions; one of the ones we saw was 100+ years old. We also saw some very ornate clocks - Anna-Marie said that as they don't have technology such as TVs, computers or cars (except colony-owned vehicles used for work), they are quite into their fancy clocks!

They showed us the wedding outfits made for the upcoming nuptials - the bride would wear a patterned, dark blue dress, and the groom was to wear a dark, collarless suit. Many of the women are evidently very good seamstresses, as Hutterite colonies make all their own clothes. For everyday clothing, the women wear long-sleeved dresses and head-scarves, and the men wear trousers and shirts with suspenders (Aus: braces). Single men are clean-shaven and married men have beards.

After the tour of John and Elizabeth's house, Anna-Marie took us around the rest of the main buildings. We saw the school, which I think had 11 students (although the school was empty when we saw it). We were amused to see a Canucks sticker on one student's exercise book! Hutterite colonies have a male member who serves as the German Teacher, while a teacher from outside the colony is employed to teach the other lessons. As the Hutterites speak German amongst themselves, children don't start learning English until they go to school.

We also saw the church, which was in the same building as the school. It was a simple room with no pictures or ornaments; the seating was wooden benches, with ladies on one side of the room and men on the other. Anna-Marie told us that they have half an hour of church each evening (in German), and I think it was a couple of hours on Sundays. The minister is also the leader of the colony, which is an elected position (the Wikipedia article has a lot of information about colony governance).

We briefly saw the laundry room, where two ladies were working. Then we visited the nursery, where a couple of ladies were taking care of about eight children. The kids were very cute and happy to pose for photos! (We didn't really get any photos of the adults... I don't think they would have minded if we had asked, but Hutterites do have a belief about not taking photos of themselves, and until 2009 they were actually exempt from having their photo on their driver's license in Alberta.)

Our final stop was the dining hall. This was a large shed, and lunch was in progress when we toured it. In fact, Anna-Marie and others repeatedly invited us to stay for lunch, but we had already agreed that we shouldn't as we needed to start our road trip ASAP. We saw the diners from a distance - they were sitting at long tables, and again the men and women were segregated. I think the older men sit apart from the younger men as well. There were actually a lot of people missing from the colony on the day we visited, as they were at the funeral of a young man from another colony.

The tour of the industrial kitchen beside the dining room was very interesting. We saw the book of recipes with the huge quantities required to feed so many people. We also saw an enormous walk-in fridge with the remains of a cow hanging inside, along with lots of bottled preserves etc.

All in all, we had a very enjoyable visit and the tour was fascinating. John, Elizabeth and Anna-Marie were extremely welcoming to us, and the others we met were very friendly too. At the end of the visit, John and Elizabeth told all of us we were invited to their daughter's wedding (and they had an official written invitation for Tom and Monica), and John gave me a hug!

After a quick lunch back at Tom and Monica's, all too soon we were on the road back to BC - with both Tyson and Nicole this time - and we arrived home very late that night. What a wonderful weekend away!