The first thing we need to establish about Amish is that they are not the stable, live-in-one-place-forever people that folks think they are. Quite the opposite. They are quite mobile. It’s easy for them to move; they have few possessions, and are always searching for a better place to live. The grass being greener and with many boys, all of  whom want their own farms, there seems to be communities springing up all over.

Here in the Mohawk Valley, I have seen them come and go, but mostly come. The first was nearby in Ft. Plain. The first “settlers” (my word) arrived about 1979. Now there seem to be hundreds of families. In fact, 5 families are moving away from here to start a new community in  Bombay (Godforsaken country, colder than a titch’s wit) because they cannot find enough land here any longer. Now that’s a change!  They found an area up there that seems to have what they want: land that is not too hilly (remember, they use horses), abundant land with a cheap price, and the likelihood of it remaining this way in the future, so more families can come later on. Amish are like cattle in that respect. There is a herd factor: they do not like living alone, and want to be surrounded by other Amish. It makes sense. To keep their lifestyle as well as their religion, you need a community for support. If you spend all your days working with non-Amish (who they call “English”), pretty soon, you’ll covet their lifestyle and their amenities.  We have an easier (and faster) life.

I have seen, since then, communities spring up in the Richfield Springs to Springfield area (not sure if this is one or two communities), in Glen, and also south of the Mohawk in Ft. Plain. Another one has started north of Little Falls. But that one does not seem to be prospering and growing like the others, which I find interesting as there once was, also in the late ‘70’s, early ‘80’s, one that had prospered in this same area.  But, they disbanded and moved away.

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Therein lies a story. If you asked one one that group why they were leaving, they’d tell you that they did not like having to go steeply up and down hill in their treks to and from town. That’s what Jacob Kurtz told me when I listed his farm. He deeply regretted going, because he knew he’d never be able to buy a farm anywhere as nice or as large in the part of Pennsylvania to which they were all moving, but he would not consider staying behind by himself. The reason he gave me was true enough - remember they go by buggy and when it’s steep, the horses have to walk, not trot. But that is only part of the story. The real reason was one of their leaders, call him Ben Stoltzfus.  I got to meet Ben later on. It was an education.

He listed his farm with me, called me up, and we did everything over the phone or by mail. Ben is an enterprising man. He gave me his Manhattan phone number, where he had  a store to market Amish crafts and goods. That didn’t last. Part way through the process, that phone stopped working, and I had to resort to a letter. He called me back in due time, but I wasn’t in. I called the number he used for that call and got an “Englishman” who took the message. A couple times back and forth, and we finally connected. He had closed the store. And this was how our communications were from then on, which is normal for Amish, at least for the very conservative ones. The Richfield Springs group, which iis more liberal, have their own phones, located near the road in a phone booth, not in the home where you’d expect it. They are supposed to use them only for business, not for pleasure and figure that if they were in the house, they’d be tempted to use them for pleasure.

Ben once told me that if I needed assurances on his financial status, to call his financial adviser. He gave me the number of that firm. He had his hands in a number of pies: the store, the stock market, dairy farming, land speculation (we later sold a piece for him that was completely isolated from any Amish community), and a dairy processing plant.  That much I knew about.  I also learned from a variety of other parties that he was in BIG trouble with the IRS and, secondly, that when he built the dairy plant (which he also listed with me), he was in continual trouble with the Town for ignoring building codes, and with inspectors, for ignoring sanitation codes. To get his attorney to work on his case was like pulling teeth, because the attorney seemed convinced that he wouldn’t get paid. It seems that was also in his history.  Actually, the attorney took the job but pretty much refused to do anything other than get it started. But he had a legal assistant who was not so hard-nosed and I learned to work with him instead and, that way, using a carrot and a stick, was able to pry each needed piece of the legal puzzle loose as it became necessary.

You see, Amish do not fight. They strongly felt that the way Ben was living, burning the candle at many ends, was not a proper way to live and they did not want to be associated with it. Since Ben was a founder of the community, he would be the last to leave. The rest left, rather than fight with Ben over the way he was living and the way non-Amish had begun to think about the rest of them there. Actually, Ben was not the very last to leave. One family said that they had worked here too hard to abandon everything, and they were going to stay,come Hell or high water. They did, for a few years, then moved away one night, leaving the buildings abandoned. A few years passed, and they were quietly sold.

Anyway, back to Ben. In due time, I found a buyer. It was not easy. Yes we had a new , large home, a good barn and a machine shed. But the machine shed had been built too close to the barn to get modern machinery in it. Amish do not use modern machinery. The old stuff they use is much smaller.  People liked the new home, that is, until they thought more about it: no electricity, slightly garishly painted rooms (odd colors, all glossy paint), no modern kitchen, no bathrooms, and no closets.  This led to a standing joke with me - know what an “Amish closet” is? Then I’d show them a row of coat hooks on the wall.

But for every property there is a buyer and we found one in Don Mast. Don was an older man with a very unusual past. He had been born in the Depression, of Amish parents. But he was not raised Amish. His father had been forced to work in a non-approved job to support his family then,  a job not approved by the Amish community fathers, and they ended up shunning the family. I not sure that would happen today.  So Don was raised with one foot on both sides of the aisle. It was a darn good thing for Ben that I found Don. He was the only man I have ever seen who would put up with and understand the stuff Ben was doing.

It was a closing fraught with difficulties. I have mentioned the lawyer. Time after time, I caught Ben in an apparent lie, only to discover when I dug into it, that it really wasn’t a lie. There was an explanation once I knew more facts.  At another time, I discovered to my horror that Ben had listed more land for sale that he apparently owned. This was serious. So we did the phone tag thing. What did I learn? There was another piece of land he had contracted to sell to a neighbor, one he had forgotten to mention. This too came out of the farm, making an already too small parcel even smaller,  and just compounded my difficulties. Ben explained that he thought there was more land there than the Town Fathers thought and, finally, he agreed to come up to “prove” it to me. Now nothing was surveyed here. Most of  what I  handle isn’t. It is very expensive to survey large properties and with our low prices, it is rarely worth it.,  But, it would have been worth it here, but no way was Ben going to pay someone to do that for him! Amish are careful with the bottom line, especially the expense side of it

With characteristic lack of communication, he came up, did his survey thing, and left, letting me know about it after he had returned. I went up and found his marks on the road and elsewhere. Now to make sense of them. With enough time, and a few more calls and letters, I eventually did and - what do you know? - it would appear that Ben was right. He did own more land than the tax maps had him down for. That never happens, except in textbooks. Then, I had to convince his attorney, who had,once again stopped all work.

But throughout the whole messy process, Don kept cool and patient and remained understanding. He may have been the only person on Earth who would have been that way. He was also doing his own legal work (I never recommend this) and kept uncovering one problem after another in Ben’s spider web of enterprise. Headache after headache that we had to work through. The last straw came two days before the closing. Don went up for a final inspection. Normally in those days, folks never did that, but in this case, it was prudent. What were we going to find now? We went through the buildings. Everything was fine. I breathed easier. We walked the fields. They were OK, too. Another weight off my mind. Then we went into the woods - and it hit. That @#$&#% was logging it! You can’t do that. You can’t log contracted property! Hurriedly, I called Ben. This time, it was only hours, not days before he called back. Yes, he had sold logs to a fellow, back in the Fall, way before it was listed.  But he thought that guy was all done when he listed it with me. He gave me the logger’s number. I called him immediately. Here’s the story: what Ben had said was true. He had just  started logging in the fall, then broke his leg. By the time it was healed, it was spring and too wet in the woods to work. Then he got doing other stuff and he was now just getting around to finishing the logging. I explained about the sale and he said - to my surprise - that he had already paid Ben $5000 for the logs (inwardly, I groaned), but he would eat that as it was not Ben’s fault that he had broken his leg and then not done the work. I brightened up. Was I really hearing this? This is really a logger saying this? Would the buyer allow him to remove the logs he had already cut (one day’s worth) and then he’d pull everything out? I wasn’t sure about this - how much patience did Don have, after all? So, I called him, and, yes,  he agreed.

After all this, the closing was anticlimactic. Thank God, I’d had far more than enough excitement over this deal. And finally, I got to meet Ben and his wife. They looked pretty normal and everything went according to Hoyle. The lawyer looked relieved when Ben wrote him his check. God knows what he was charged. I was careful not to look.

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Another time, I listed Simon Yoder’s farm. He had found a new place, closer to the others and not on a main road. Amish prefer to have very private places when they can find them and Simon’s new place was way off a rarely traveled road, all the privacy one could wish for. I suspect this wish for privacy is partly for the same reasons everyone else wants it, and also because they do probably not like getting stared at because they are unusual. They really just want to live their lifestyle and not be bothered with others any more than necessary.  Not that they wish us gone, but they’d be perfectly happy if us English never existed and all they ever had to deal with was other Amish. Anyway, Simon thought he had a buyer some months ago and had been waiting for him all this time to close the deal. Finally, it began to look like his buyer was not going to make it happen and he made the decision to employ me to find someone else. He asked to make an exception in case his buyer did come though. I get these requests from time to time and always accommodate them, simply writing in a clause in the listing that allows the seller to sell to a certain party and not owe us any commission.

We were busy with it and we were there regularly to show it. Simon was very helpful and was great to work with. As fate would have it, our activity spurred his buyer to greater efforts and after a couple of months, Simon called to let me know that his guy was going to buy it after all. OK, no problem, and I pulled the sign and stopped the advertising and showing.  But by now, we’d come to be friends, Simon and I, and I continued to visit him once in a while. He asked me what he owed me for the work I did and I explained, nothing, that we’d made the arrangement so he wouldn’t have to pay us if his buyer came through, as he did. But he thought he needed to do something for me anyhow and finally told me that if I ever needed help doing something that involved labor, to give him a call and he’d help.

Normally, I would never ask anyone to help me, but shortly after he offered, we got a new hot tub and had to move the old one out, uphill, and put the new one in. They are heavy and there were too many trees in the way to have my tractor do much of the work. So, I went over and spoke to him about that. He had no idea what a hot tub was, but was willing to try. We set up a time when his son would be home from school and I went back and picked them up and drove over here. Simon immediately sized up what we had to do. He was in his element. From my years at farming, I am pretty good about knowing how to make physically hard jobs easier, but I was no match for Simon. He taught me many new tricks that afternoon.  When we were all done, he mentioned to me that he was glad to help pay me back for my help to him but that he thought he still owed me a bit of labor. Secretly, this amused me. If he was thinking hour for hour, he was still only a fraction of the time I had spent in his behalf. He had no idea of how much effort I had made in his behalf. Still, I had expected nothing in return and was glad to get this.

Since then, there have been many times the Amish, not just Simon, have assisted me in different small ways without asking for pay. And I have reciprocated, doing some free real estate work, running almost-late tax payments to the Post Office, and even getting them hamburgers from MacDonald’s once (the family was jammed up with work and did  not have time to cook that night, so they  gave me some money and asked me to get them  “Whopper Burgers” from MacDonalds. The MacDonald’s folks did not find that as funny as I did.

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We also show farms to Amish from time to time. It is always fun to spend a day with them and hear their input and ideas on various things. Once the thaw comes, you can joke and carry on with them and have a good time. They usually come up in a van driven by some “English” neighbor, representatives from several families. Once I met a fellow at a motel in Amsterdam. He was not like the others, not at all, and had arrived by train. Amish prefer to travel by train when they can, but normally, that is not an option. I think they prefer to ride on steel and not air (seriously). The man this time was not a normal Amishman, not at least from my experience. I later referred to him as “Yuppie Amish”. He got in late on the train, he and his young son, and they put on their in-line skates and roller-bladed to the motel. He was looking for a weekend retreat, not a farm! He worked for some farm equipment manufacturing firm in Pennsylvania and had traveled all over the world on vacations.  Within the confines of his religion, he was living the good life and was about as modern as he could be and still keep his religion.

You see, not all Amish live the same way. Beliefs and practices are determined by their own community and their own bishops. The Ft. Plain North ones milk small dairy herds by hand, rarely use tractors, and have only wood-sided homes. The Ft. Plain South ones use generators to handle the cattle in their well-improved and very modern barns. Their homes have vinyl siding and they live more like the rest of us, though definitely plainer and without electric in the home. Heck, I even saw a printed T shirt on one of their lines. How modern can you get? These two groups have as little to do with each other as possible and do not want their young folks associating and possibly - Oh the horror of  it! - marrying. I am told there is not much love lost between them. The South folks regard the North ones as backward and the North folks are angry that the South ones paid so much for their land, which subsequently raised the ante for everyone. They do not like their young folks seeing and coveting the easy life the South group lives. But you’ll never hear any of them saying these things.

One unforgettable couple were former Amish. Maybe I have seen them all now. There are not many former Amish. They almost never take in a convert and rarely lose one to the outside world. But this couple was famous in Amish circles. It seems as a young man, he had gone to work for a “English” farmer and had an affair with his wife, who was now sitting in the car with us. A common enough story, but not among the Amish. She divorced the farmer and they married, but this was not the end of the story. They were consequently shunned by the Amish for such immoral behavior, damned to find another religion to practice (which they did - they were quite a religious couple) and forever prohibited to associate with other Amish. If you do not know the Amish, you can never fully realize just how traumatic this can be. They are a group that reveres family and friendship. I have never associated with people as socially oriented as they are. I invited one of my Amish friends over to see our pictures of Hawaii and they came over, dressed up, expecting to spend the entire day, not just a couple of hours.

Another time, Andy, one of my Amish employees, lost his wife (they never even told me she was sick!). I only learned about her death when they said they would not be coming back to work at all that week and I inquired why. I asked what I could do for him. They allowed that it would be OK to attend the viewing, but not the funeral. That was OK by me; I just wanted to show Andy that I cared and supported him. Folks were very friendly to me at the viewing and I learned that when one of them dies, someone from the community will be in their house for days, always awake, so whenever the survivor’s grief surfaces, there will be someone right there for them. 

So, being shunned is a big, big deal, a hurt that never heals. And it was so obvious, talking with this couple. They longed to be near the Amish, but knew they could never be part of them or even be on the same terms with them that I was. Much of our conversation that day centered around questions about the local Amish. Later on, talking with my Amish builder friends (they were working on our home at that time), it was the reverse. They were full of questions about the couple. They knew all about them beforehand, what they had done, where they now lived, and even that they were coming out with me! That did not come from me. When he had called, he did not present himself to me as Amish or former-Amish, just as another dairyman who wanted a modest family farm (though the accent and the name did make me wonder). The Amish grapevine is very well developed and travels at what rivals dial-up speeds.

Another time, Schoharie County had got the notion that having Amish settle there would be a good thing - sell some farm property and drive the values up, and provide a reason for folks to visit the county , to see the Amish settlement. So they hired professionals and went to courting them. The folks they hired knew about promotion, but not about Amish. Nice brochures and all, but they forgot to think about topography. Most of the county is rolling land and it approaches mountainous in the southern sections. Not land you’d want to work with draft horses, not roads to drive buggies on.  Anyway, they managed to lure a bunch of them out to investigate Schoharie County. The county arranged with another agent and me to show them property. The other fellow had them first and concentrated on the central and southern areas. I met them at the appointed time and place and, by gosh, there were several van loads of them. They followed behind me and I stopped at the first place. When we halted, they got out and went in every direction the compass has. It was like herding cats. How could I give my spiel and tell them what each place had to offer? How could I answer questions and tell them about the area?  How could I even round them up for the next place?  A couple of the men realized we had a problem this way and after the first place or two, rode with me so we could talk. At the place with the nicest home, I got feedback from the women. They did not like that one at all. I puzzled this over for many months and, finally, I had it. It was the wallpaper and modern kitchen that they didn’t like!

Now, many agents do not like the Amish. We had a fellow in our firm who worked an area near Pennsylvania until he retired and he positively hated them. He said that once they come into an area, they spread out like flies on shit and canvas every landowner who might ever want to sell in the future and get them to agree to sell to them once the time comes. In time, I discovered that he was largely right. You can’t make money on them - you make 2 sales and lose 20 that way. Now, there are several huge black holes in my territory where I cannot get sales or even listings. They buy them all. I have lost literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of what would have been income.

Let me give an example. A group from western Pennsylvania came up to look. During the course of conversation, they expressed concern about their image with the “English”. They wanted to do things right and start off on the right foot with us. They didn’t, not as far as I was concerned. After they acknowledged that they were not always well liked among real estate agents, I explained the various problems agents had complained about and we discussed ways to address them. Then what happens? I showed them a place that was for sale and a week later, a brother comes in, on his own, to try to buy it - without our help or knowledge. The owner is delighted of course, not knowing our connection, and thinking that he could save the cost of the commission. Luckily for all of us, they did not offer enough to get the owner to say “Yes” and a possibly unpleasant situation was avoided, one that would have cost all of us money, all of us, that is, except the Amish and any lawyers involved. There is a difference between unlawful and unethical. They don’t break laws, but ethics are something that is subject to interpretation, theirs and ours. Once they are established in an area, they have no more use for us and quickly cast us aside. Their many friends and relatives make an effort to learn what property will be coming on the market and if it is one they can use, they buy without the help of an agent. They can be pretty blunt to the landowners about not wanting an agent involved. When it comes time to sell, they all want to try it on their own first and only when they can’t sell it (after exhausting anyone locally as a possible buyer), are they are reluctantly willing to list it, but still not at a commission worth our while. I will be competitive, but will not take something on knowing I will lose money on it. But there are agents who do not know their bottom-line and they’ll take on losing propositions, especially if they are afraid another firm will get it if they don’t.

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So what it boils down to is this. I really like the Amish personally and enjoy being around them. I consider many among my best local friends. Once they know you as a friend and not someone just out to gawk at their lifestyle, they will be as genuinely friendly back as you might like, six days a week. (Never on Sunday.) They take a different approach to life, some of which is positively refreshing  and value-affirming. They are fun to talk to and to joke with. You need to exercise some good judgment in what you say and how you say it, but you do that to some degree with anyone. They are innocent in many ways and you want to protect that.  A few of the things they do make you want to shake them and tell them about the better way, yet, when you ask for the reasons, they usually have good ones. The only time they got stumped was when I asked Andy why the Amish (like me) have beards but not mustaches. For me, it bothers my upper lip. Andy thought a while and finally said, “I guess it’s  just our custom.” That’s good enough.

I will defend them from attacks on their way of living, from upset “Englishmen “ who complain about  horse manure on the roads, on property tax issues, on outhouses and shallow water sources, to hitching posts outside local places of business. I watch out for them on the roads, pass their buggies cautiously to avoid spooking the horses. I do not buy into claims that they mistreat their horses. Yes, they use them. Horses are critical to their lives, not something fun to do for recreation. You don’t mistreat something critical to your life, especially if it is a living thing. I like seeing them around and I am so happy to see land properly used and cared for, to see small farms continue to flourish. I take vicarious pride in watching their community grow and I enjoy see their buildings erected and improved.

It's different as a farm real estate agent. I am increasingly less happy to deal with them as I know many, maybe most, of them will quickly go behind my back if they get the opportunity. They do not particularly want to see ME flourish (if they even think of that). Though they have nothing against me personally, there is obviously no love in their community for agents. They use them only when they cannot avoid it and still accomplish their goals. Still, my job is to sell property for those that engage my services and if I need to deal with Amish and all that entails in order to get a place sold, that’s what I will do Even when I know that by so doing, I am pissing in my own soup, hating something that I also enjoy.