OSAGE, Iowa -Members of the Groffdale Conference Mennonite Church use modern self-propelled farm machinery that has been refitted with custom-made steel wheels made in local welding shops, said Peter Nolt, a Mennonite farmer.
Nolt and his family feed hogs and raise produce, which they sell at the Cedar Valley Produce Auction on their farm near Osage.
Nolt's riding lawn mower, skid loader and tractor all have steel wheels. The wheels have two inches of rubber belting with steel cleats fastened to the rubber.
The Groffdale Conference Mennonites don't drive automobiles, Nolt said. They travel by horse and buggy. Steel wheels ensure that tractors are not used as transportation.
The Mitchell County Supervisors have outlawed steel wheels on hard-surfaced roads in the county because they say the steel wheels damage the roads.
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In Howard County, the supervisors and the Groffdale Mennonites worked out an agreement where the Mennonite farmers deposited $25,000 in a certificate of deposit for an irrevocable letter of credit for repairing damage done to roads by Mennonite members using steel wheels.
At previous supervisor meetings in Mitchell and Howard counties, Mennonite ministers have explained that the practice of placing steel cleats/wheels on tractors and other self-propelled farm machinery is a religious regulation of the Groffdale Conference Mennonite Church, and it applies to all baptized members living in various states. They explained it keeps their farms small, and it keeps families at home working together. Members who disobey this ruling could face excommunication.
"The Groffdale Conference Church fears that accepting rubber tires on tractors will lead to use of the tractor for transportation on the road and eventually to the use of cars, which in turn (because of greater mobility) will lead to breaking up their close knit communities and to greater association with the outside world," said Donald Kraybill, an authority on the Mennonite Church in a statement presented to the Howard County Board of Supervisors in November. "This fear that the use of rubber tires on tractors will eventually lead to the car and more worldliness is a conviction that is also shared by numerous other Amish and Mennonite plain groups."
Kraybill, a sociologist at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, has written many books about Mennonites and the Amish including, "Horse and Buggy Mennonites: Hoofbeats of Humility in a Postmodern World," which he coauthored with James Hurd, an anthropology professor at Bethel University in St. Paul. The book was published in 2006 by Penn State University Press.
"Clearly this is a religious practice, not merely a tradition, and as a sincerely held religious belief and conviction it is protected by the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States, which says that, 'Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise of religion,' " Kraybill wrote. "Members of the Groffdale Conference Church live in eight states other than Iowa and these states have found ways to accommodate this sincerely held religious conviction."
Mitchell County Attorney Mark Walk has said the ordinance is constitutional.
