Kevin Williams was a college sophomore in Ohio when he started driving around Michigan and Indiana, knocking on the doors of Amish women with a pitch: write a weekly newspaper column about your life, tack on a recipe, and he'd get it into print. He heard "no" most of the day. Then, in Adams County, Indiana, one woman said yes.

That column, "The Amish Cook," is still running — these days written by an Illinois woman named Gloria Yoder — and it set Williams on more than three decades of reporting on the Amish and other people dedicated to simple living.

His new memoir is Not So Simple: My Adventures Among the Amish, Mennonites, Shakers, and Other Plain People.

Holmes Co., Ohio, is a patchwork of farmland. Modest houses perch on sloping hills and laundry hangs from clothes lines, flapping in the wind. There are horses and buggies – some driven by farmers in straw hats, others by women with their hair covered in bonnets, babies on their laps. Holmes is one of the healthiest counties in Ohio. It’s also the least insured.

Organizers of a planned Amish-themed attraction in east-central Illinois are hoping the project can boost the region's tourism.

The story was produced for Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public broadcasting stations in the Midwest covering food and agriculture issues.