Working with the Amish on an Artificial Insemination Ranch (2/3)

I began work the next day, working in the bull desemenating-room (that’s what I called it) where bulls were desemenated (that’s what I call it too, if you follow me). Basically a giant condom-like thing, attached to a machine, would be placed onto each bull’s nether region and after a minute or so the bull would perform what he was expected to do in order for everyone on the ranch to earn a living. And after each performance the bull would do a poo. And it was my task, for the first few days, to scoop up the poo and put it into it into a bin, leaving the desemenating-room nice and clean for the next bull.
Work for me finished at 3 pm (most of the other ranchers had second jobs to go to after that). I bought a second-hand bike to explore the countryside with. In the area where I lived there were endless fields of lush green corn with bright yellow cobs hanging off them. Further away it was hilly. Further away, again, woody. And so on. But everywhere I went, there were Amish. With simple but well-maintained farms. Amish women sitting in rocking chairs under their porches making quilts. Their husbands out in the fields. Barefoot children playing. It was all a bit like the Little House on the Prairie.
Anyway, I soon became friends with one of the guys on the ranch who had been Amish (there were other men working on the ranch who were full members of the Amish community) but had been kicked out of the community for some reason. It could have been for drink because he drank a lot or it could have been for smoking and telling dirty jokes which he did, a lot, too (but he never divulged, and I never asked). Although he wasn't allowed officially back into his old community, he did manage to arrange for me to meet his family and friends: so that I could look around an Amish farm. I didn't know what to expect. But when I got there the Amish reminded me exactly of the country people I was used to back home in the west of Ireland (except that in Ireland they drink a lot, and generally, don't have long, scary-looking beards). I was shown around the farm (they had buggies, and silos, and other things, just like in the film Witness). And I was then invited back into their house for coffee. What I wasn’t expecting was for these people to be so chatty. There were so many questions I wanted to ask, such as: how do you get the grain to the top of the silo; when are you allowed to use an aeroplane, and various other inane questions but they seemed to get their questions in first, and seemed to want to know as many inane things about me, as I did of them. But I was a bit surprised when one of them asked me whether Ireland was in Germany.