Amish-made houses are a modern trend

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4524378.html ^ | Feb. 3, 2007 | By PHILIP RUCKER

[Dan Evans]

When Joyce Greenfield decided to build a house in the southern Maryland town of Chaptico, she knew she wanted a single-story rambler with at least three bedrooms and fancy bathrooms. At 49 and inching toward retirement, she also needed something affordable — a modular home.

She turned to a community not widely known for home-building: the Amish.

One of a kind Relatives recommended an Amish man in St. Mary's County, John Hertzler. She drove out to his farm in Mechanicsville — he has no phone, being Amish — and described what she wanted. She was thrilled with the price he quoted, $90,000, but was stunned to hear this:

The waiting list was two years long. Even though the houses take only five weeks to build.

Hertzler's family business is thought to be the region's only Amish modular-home outfit — and it has been booming. With no advertising, not even a listing in the phone book, Hertzler Modular Homes has cultivated a following among people looking for a customized and less expensive alternative to the cookie-cutter models that dominate residential developments.

Hertzler can build only one house at a time in his warehouse, and he has been producing at maximum capacity, about 10 to 12 a year. Asked why his houses are so popular, Hertzler was modest, as is expected by the Amish community.

"I don't know," he said. "I'm sure it probably is word of mouth."

Hertzler's business is an example of a recent shift in America's Amish. As farming becomes more expensive, Amish families are turning to making things and selling them to the general public.

Small-business growth "In the last 15 years, there's been quite a rapid development of small businesses, micro-enterprises in the Amish community owned and operated by Amish people," said Donald Kraybill, a leading scholar of the Amish and a professor at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, who wrote the 2004 book Amish Enterprise: From Plows to Profits.

About 2,000 Amish and Mennonite people live in southern Maryland, to which their ancestors migrated from Pennsylvania in the 1940s. Several of the families make furniture, sew quilts, and build barns and sheds for sale.

Hertzler's business is tucked away among the farms of Mechanicsville, the heart of the region's Amish population, where horses draw buggies slowly along country roads. Down a dirt and gravel driveway off a two-lane highway sits Hertzler's warehouse, where he and a half-dozen other bearded Amish workmen labor in suspenders and straw hats.

Using 'Amish electricity' They measure and saw, hammer and trim. Since the Amish do not believe in using electricity or many other modern conveniences, they power tools using what Kraybill calls "Amish electricity." A diesel engine pumps compressed air through hoses to power the tools. The Amish hire electricians to wire the homes.

A typical 1,500-square-foot home is constructed in two long units, which are less than 14 feet wide so they can be transported on roads.

Insulation, doors, carpets and cabinets are all added in the warehouse.

A separate contractor lays a foundation on the home site, and Hertzler hires a crew to truck the home to the property. In one day, Hertzler and his workers put the house together and build the roof.

"As far as I know, they have held up well," Hertzler said.

After about a year of checking in with Hertzler, Greenfield made it to the top of the waiting list in late November.

One recent afternoon, Hertzler gave a visitor a tour of Greenfield's nearly finished home. Planks, carpet scraps and linoleum sheets were scattered across the warehouse floor.

Hertzler buys many of his products and appliances from such mainstream vendors as Lowe's. Because Hertzler doesn't have a telephone, two Lowe's saleswomen drove to his warehouse that afternoon to discuss a pending order.

Hertzler's home-building operation is so low-profile that Lowe's saleswoman Penny Fleming said she "didn't really know that they were even really here" before she started taking Hertzler's orders.

$50 a square foot

In 2001, Hertzler took over the company from his father, John Sr., who started it about a quarter-century ago. The elder Hertzler, 67, still lives next door in a block farmhouse he built years ago. He and his wife raised their six children there.

The elder Hertzler sold his first modular home for $20,000, or about $17 a square foot. "Young couples coming in with a baby in their arms," John Sr. said. "Those were my favorite customers."

Since then, John Sr. estimates, the company has built 330 homes. Today, they sell for about $50 per square foot.

Greenfield, who sealed her deal with a handshake, said commercial modular home vendors offer similarly sized homes for two or three times the price.

The Amish can afford to sell at lower prices for several reasons, Kraybill said: They are exempt from paying Social Security taxes because they have waived the right to receive benefits; many family members work for the business and have a strong work ethic; and the way they operate helps keep costs low. There are no computers or air conditioning, he said.

"They don't have bells and whistles in the shops," Kraybill said. "They don't have air conditioning; they don't have computers; they don't have red carpets. It's just bare-bones."

Once Greenfield made it to the top of the waiting list, she met with Hertzler to design the house. She ordered the largest he would build, 1,680 square feet, with cream vinyl siding and burgundy shutters.

To seal the deal, they shook hands. Greenfield said she was not asked to sign a contract or to put any money down. Hertzler wrote her name and contact information on an unpainted door frame.

Greenfield said she drove to Hertzler's warehouse to check in once a week until construction was finished. By mid-January, Hertzler delivered her home. A yellow crane lowered the two units like coffins into the foundation. Hertzler and his crew assembled a high-pitched roof.

And Greenfield still hadn't paid a dime, although she intended to pay in full once the construction was finished. "I guess they do it in good faith," she reasoned.

Benjamin Beale, a University of Maryland extension agent who works with the Amish in St. Mary's, said transactions based on trust are common.

"There certainly is a sense of doing business the old-fashioned way, on a handshake and a trust in the agreement," Beale said. "But certainly in the general public that's unheard of, isn't it? You go to buy a house nowadays and you go into settlement to sign 60 papers."

[Dan Evans]

I don't in any respect hold them as peculiarly unique role models. I think their pacifism, the very thing that many point to as a virtue, is specifically un-Biblical and borders on irresponsible.

Role models? I think thing that's the wrong way to look at it. Yes, if all Americans were all to become pacifists the country would not survive. Pacifists need us for protection.

But do we need them?

There are those that say we need to workers from South America to maintain our population and to insure a supply of cheap labor. I think we can do the same thing a lot better by nurturing fundamentalist Christians who are willing to do menial work and have about six kids per family.

I think we need the Amish as much as they need us.

[RockinRight]

I could be speculating, but technically, I think that's a MANUFACTURED home, not a modular. Big difference.

[RockinRight]

So would I! I also prefer Amish built over illegal-built.

[Calvin Locke]

I know what you mean. My mother bought some at a state fair (through a store). I think she had to wait about 8 months. It's very solid.

[napscoordinator]

Not for me, but I bet they are built well. The Amish are very hard working. In Annapolis, there is an Amish Market and EVERYTHING is fresh. I love it.

[Dan Evans]

"And so it came to pass that in 1965, the Medicare bill was passed by Congress. As Wayne Fisher writes in The Amish in Court, "Tucked into the 138 page bill was a clause exempting the Old Order Amish, and any other religious sect who conscientiously objected to insurance, from paying Social Security payments, providing that sect had been in existence since December 31, 1950. "

Amish and social security

The Amish objection to insurance is expressed as a reluctance to trust God. Amish insurance is the family and community. When they get old, they rely on family to take of them. That is their social security. If their house burns down, 100 neighbors get together and rebuild it by the end of the week. That is their fire insurance. If they get sick, the community will gather funds to pay for the hospital bills. That's Amish medicare.

We rely on government to take care of us. The Amish have a better way.

[CDHart]

We are in central Missouri, and have many Amish communities nearby. They are, by and large, good people with a good work ethic. Everything they build is quality and well-made.

Carolyn

[Mygirlsmom]

The stuff is expensive.

Not really when you look at it in terms of cost vs price. The price is what you pay. Cost factors in how long it will last, how much use you'll get, etc. Most Amish built furniture will outlast its original owner - they become true heirlooms.