LAGRANGE – Terry Martin, like it or not, knows horse manure.
As a state trooper, he routinely washed it off his patrol car after driving through Amish country, where horses and buggies are as ubiquitous as pickup trucks.
Later, as sheriff of LaGrange County, he cleaned it up outside the local lock-up, where he also installed a hitching post for Amish prisoners. Even in his off-hours, he shovels manure as a horse owner and competitor in mounted shooting contests.
Now, as a county commissioner, he’s looking for a way to keep it from splattering on tourists and townsfolk.
A conflict over horse manure is playing out publicly in this scenic county, home to the second-largest Amish community in the United States, with more than 17,000 members.
Headlines about the fight over manure littered streets and highways are an embarrassment for some. Others fear they signal of growing tension between the Amish and “English,” as the Amish call those outside their faith.
Last week, seeking to quell growing discontent as the number of Amish – and their horses - swells in his county, Martin agreed to test a manure-catching diaper on a horse.
Pre-loaded with 40 pounds of droppings to simulate a real road scenario, the device was strapped onto the rear of a harnessed Amish buggy horse with Martin’s help.
The animal kicked in protest and almost ran off.
“It’s not going to work,” he said, breaking the news Wednesday at a specially called commission meeting. The room was crowded with unhappy residents who want to mandate the devices for their Amish neighbors -- a proposal that stalled as commissioners look for a better option.
“This problem isn’t going away,” Martin added. “We’ve always had horse manure here. Now, we’ve got just a lot more of it.”
Martin said he’s concerned about the tenor of the debate, including in recent postings on social media. One accused him of cowing to “the Amish mafia.”
Steve Nolt, who studies the Amish at the nearby Mennonite-run Goshen College, said the controversy is out of character.
“It’s a little unusual to have this kind of skirmish in a place where the English and Amish have co-existed for so long,” he said.
The Amish settled in this rural county near the Michigan border before the Civil War. They have sustained plain dress and a plain way of life, distancing themselves from such modern conveniences as cars.
They’ve struggled at times to abide by a tenet of being “in the world but not of the world,” Nolt said.
Especially now. The Amish are one of the fastest growing faith communities in Indiana and the United States.
Now at 50,000 people, Indiana’s Amish community doubles in size every 20 years, Nolt said.
Here in LaGrange County, as numbers grow, more Amish are moving away from the agrarian life that underpins their faith and buying up smaller plots of land. That drives up real estate prices and, some acknowledge, has fueled the current conflict.
In immediate terms, more Amish mean more buggies and more manure.
That much was evident Wednesday evening, as a string of buggies were parked along the courthouse square, their horses tied to a block-long hitching post that’s fronted by a large water trough.
Piles of fresh horse droppings accumulated. The county once to paid to have the litter removed once a week. Now, the detail comes around more often.
Kenny Stutzman, who grew up Amish but left the faith, fears the controversy -- not the manure – may scare away some of the two million tourists who visit LaGrange County every year.
Many head to the little town of Shipshewana, an old trading post where non-Amish merchants now sell Amish-made food and wares in quaint shops. The Amish still sell goods at weekend flea markets.
Stutzman works in the town, selling ice cream and rides on a buggy-drawn carriage driven by his Amish son-in-law.
He disputes the notion that manure is a health and safety hazard, as some have argued.
“Tourists come to this town expecting to see some manure,” he said. “I’ve yet to find a tourist who doesn’t enjoy it.”
Misty Miller, a county resident who wants an end to unregulated horse droppings, doesn’t see it that way.
“The tourists come to gawk at the Amish, not because of manure on the road,” she said.
Back in 1995, after a series of fatal accidents involving children on Amish farms, community elders formed the Northern Indiana Amish Safety Committee.
They worked with local officials on a range of voluntary measures adopted by the Amish community, including putting reflective orange triangles on the back of their buggies so motorists could better spot them.
Several committee members attended this week’s meeting, standing in the back of the room. Some privately complained that the non-Amish had forgotten how interdependent they all are.
“Horse manure is what made Shipshewana,” said one.
Standing in another corner of the meeting room was Merv Lapp, who said he grew up Amish in Pennsylvania but left the church as a teenager.
He’d like to see the Amish handle the problem on their own.
“I know these people,” he said. “I know they can do something.”
In some communities, that’s meant the Amish agreeing to stay off certain well-traveled roads and voluntarily cleaning up some of the more popular hitching posts.
But Lapp fears that won’t happen.
“It means a change to their way of life,” he said.