Appliances for the Amish

Lehman's, an Ohio-based company that markets its products mostly to the local Amish, has a lovely full line of kitchen appliances, including my personal favorite, a hand cranked blender.

I imagine the irony of a store marketing itself to the Amish having a website is not lost on them. They also sell a number of electric and gas-powered items, so they're clearly not going after just one niche.

-ed

They did quite a bit of business in 1999 selling to Y2K worriers.

Looks and acts like a blender in every way except you supply the power. Two different gear ratios allow for low and high speeds. Turn 7" long crank and four stainless steel blades spin at speeds from 2100 rpm to 3600 rpm (based on 80 turns/minute).

This sounds like something Dan Akroyd would pitch on an early SNL episode. No prop department needed. Eighty turns per minute is not something you could keep up for very long. I guess they won't be crushing ice.

Equally shocking is the price: $99!

Thanks for the interesting link.

[quote="gleam"]Lehman's, an Ohio-based company that markets its products mostly to the local Amish, has a lovely full line of kitchen appliances, including my personal favorite, a hand cranked blender.

While Lehman's Hardware is located in Kidron, OH, near North America's largest Amish community just south of Wooster, OH, it is not really an "Amish store" although the owners are not stupid. The Amish community has substantial assets and Lehman's finds a wide variety of goods that meet their needs.

Personally, my favorite item is the Servall freezer that operates on natural gas. It was widley marketed through the early 1950's when there was a recall that bankrupted the company. Another small manufacturer bought the tradename and is marketing a modern one.

In a few months, I will be heading to Kidron as I am ordering 4 5 gallon pickle crocks for a couple of friends of mine. I offered to pick it up for them as I will be in that area sometime this summer.

I wasn't attempting to imply that it marketed itself solely to the amish, but rather that they're the primary customer.

Lehman's site says:

Founded by Jay Lehman in 1955 to serve the local Amish and others without electricity, Lehman's ships old-fashioned, high-quality merchandise all over the world.

Jay's vision was to preserve the past for future generations. "I was concerned that some day the Amish would not be able to maintain their simple ways of life because these products would no longer be available," he said. His goal was, and still is, to provide authentic, historical products to those seeking a simpler life.

Apparently Lehman's has competition in the hand cranked blender department:

VORTEX™ Hand Crank Blender runs for only $69.95 over at GSI Outdoors. A trailer hitch table for the blender is available separately.

gleam wrote:I imagine the irony of a store marketing itself to the Amish having a website is not lost on them.
-ed

How would the Amish know about it?

The Amish use computers, especially in their business. Most of the folks that I know will use technology but will not let technology. For example, I have several friends who transport Amish families from Ohio to other parts of the country. However, the Amish themselves will not purchase a car or van as they believe (correctly, I might add) that having a van will detract from their family and community life.

Besides, Lehman's Hardware is located in Kidron, OH. Kidron is the home of the largest livestock auction in NE Ohio. In fact, it is the place where my inlaws would sell their bull calves and old cows. Therefore. many Amish visit Lehman's when they go to market. Also, Lehman's also distributes a catalog and is a frequent advertiser in Amish area weeklies as well as German language papers. Also, they do pretty well by word of mouth.

I buy a lot of my kitchen equipment there. High quality and pretty substantial prices.

jlawrence01 wrote:The Amish use computers, especially in their business. Most of the folks that I know will use technology but will not let technology. For example, I have several friends who transport Amish families from Ohio to other parts of the country. However, the Amish themselves will not purchase a car or van as they believe (correctly, I might add) that having a van will detract from their family and community life.

Come to think of it, last summer, when we were visiting Macinac Island, a huge tour bus pulled up to the loading dock of the ferry and it disgorged an entire busload of Amish for a trip to the island, which is a fitting vacation spot for the Amish, since horse drawn carraige is the only mode of transportation on the island.

The Amish use computers, especially in their business. Most of the folks that I know will use technology but will not let technology

Are we really referring to the Amish or to the Mennonites? If the Amish are using computers, then I presume they don't own rather they use them. In their town centers, are there computer-internet services they can rent by the hour?

I have heard situations where the Amish will not own a phone, but they will liberally use a non-Amish neighbor's phone or go to town to use a telephone booth.

The Mennonites look like the Amish, but they will drive cars, use electricity, have phones and mechanized farm equipment. They are slower to incorporate technology. The Mennonites will consider including a new technology once it has been around 20-25 years.

I met a woman in Southern Illinois in the Shawnee National Forest area, who had Amish build kitchen cabinets for her. They lived just beyond buggy range, so she would pick them up daily in her car along with cabinets and materials during the installation.

Regards,

Cathy2-

It really depends on the communities and the rules that are adopted.

Recently, a group of Amish disassembled my sister-in-law's barn. The barn's floor had collapsed. The Amish wanted the wood from the old barn. They were transported by van to her home (~20 miles away) and they fired a truck to carry the wood.

With the current road situation (heavy traffic) in Ohio, noone wants to carry much using horse drawn trailers. Too much risk and it takes too much time.

A fair number of Swiss people settled around Kidron in the mid to late nineteenth century. Many were from the Bernese Mittelland, which includes the Emme Valley (Emmenthal). There used to be a fair number of cheese factories in Wayne County. They tended to rely on importing cheese makers from Switzerland rather than training new ones, which was probably a strategic mistake. Some of this cheese cut from the huge wheels was outstanding.

My maternal grandmother's father spent a little time there after arriving from Switzerland in the 1880s, married within the Swiss community and then moved to a dairy farm in Kansas. His younger siblings stayed in the area. We lived in Medina County (next county north) until 1953. Consequently, every time these grandparents visited, we also visited relatives in Wayne County. Grandma's remaining aunts and uncles were quite old then. Good cheese and ring bologna were rewards for good behavior. I haven't been there since the late 1960s, so I don't know whether any cheese factories are left. IIRC there was a very good one left on US 30 between Wooster and the road to Kidron, perhaps just a little west of Dalton. This was truly artisinal cheesemaking before the term became popular. The cheese had the nutty flavor of Emmenthaler unlike the bland Wisconsin "Swiss" cheese. But then, maybe having people from the Emme Valley rather than Glarus made a difference.

I have to admit that I am not real up to date with all of the cheese producers in NE Ohio. In the five year period of my second tour of duty in Ohio ('95-00), my in-laws were selling all of their milk to the Brewster Cheese Co. in Stark Co. Therefore, they were pretty well supplied with cheeses from that company.

I have purchased a lot of cheeses from the Holmes Co. Cheese Company in Millersburg, and I found them to be pretty good but nothing particularly unusual.

There are several cheese shops located between Berlin and Walnut Creek in Holmes Co. - one with a Swiss motif that sounds like what you described. I believe that it is Guggisberg Cheese, home of the Baby Swiss or the Pearl Valley Cheese Co. which was founded by a Swiss immigrant family in 1928.