Do it yourself steam powered tractor
Flickr user Kevin
Borland captured the amazing image above that still has the gears
in my head turning. This Amish family seems to have evolved to a sort
of steam powered solution to farm machinery, which seems brilliant on
multiple levels.
The homesteading community could learn a lot from observing how the
Amish solve problems in such simple and innovative ways. These casual snap shots provide us one of the few looks into this interesting culture due to their clever rejection of big chunks of
the world.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Here is a very excellent pair of articles about Amish technology in general, including their widespread use of pneumatic and other non-electric power in the home.
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/02/amish_hackers_a.php
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/amish.html
Their limitations on technology are more nuanced and have a better grounding in reality than you might expect. They're also more adaptable than we give them credit for.