Ohio Amish split over daylight-saving time

MIDDLEFIELD, Ohio (AP) — Some members of northeast Ohio's Amish community are among remaining holdouts who refused to move their clocks forward an hour when daylight-saving time began.

This leaves the Amish in Geauga County and parts of two other counties operating on two times. Those who spring ahead an hour with most of the rest of the nation are said to be on "fast time," while those who don't change live on "slow time."

Sometimes, time zones differ from street to street and house to house.

About 10 of the Geauga County's 90 Amish church districts choose not to change. Bishops, guided by tradition, decide.

"We've always lived on this time, and there's no reason to change," said a bishop at one of the 10 slow-time districts outside Middlefield, the hub of Geauga County's Amish settlement. The man, quoted in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, asked that his name not be used in accord with Amish tenets.

Numerous Amish families with outside business dealings moved their clocks forward.

One dairy farmer said he adjusted to synchronize with milk truck schedules. "There's good and bad with it," he said, "but it does make life easier in some ways. There's a lot less figuring."

The deeply religious Amish shun modern conveniences such as electricity, telephones and car ownership and do not embrace new ideas easily.