By Tonia Moxley
The Roanoke (Va.) Times
Aug. 3, 2008
Summary: Amish families from across the country have settled in Giles County, opening more than a dozen businesses and contributing to the overall economy.
Note: View a .pdf version of this story, including a detailed map of profiled businesses.
WHITE GATE — Girls in bonnets and boys in hats and suspenders walk to a one-room log schoolhouse. Men drive to town in horse-drawn buggies. Women with purple stained fingers take a break from canning blackberries to greet customers at their family-owned store.
It might resemble Pennsylvania’s Amish country, but this is Giles County. Over the past two decades, Amish families from across the country have established farms and more than a dozen businesses here, boosting the overall economy and offering new services in an isolated rural area.
Danny Kaufman and his family moved to White Gate from Illinois in 2004 in part because they wanted to “live in a smaller community, and we liked the mountains, too,” Kaufman said.
The Kaufmans opened Nature Way Country Store in 2006. Since then it has grown into a grocery store, lunch spot, ice cream parlor and unofficial visitors center for the Amish community. While nobody keeps an official count of the businesses, a variety of things such as horse harnesses, Amish-style buggies and goat cheese are made in the Walker Mountain community.
On a recent Saturday, Preston Stone sat in a bentwood rocking chair enjoying one of Nature Way’s made-to-order deli sandwiches slathered with his favorite jalapeno mustard. He later bought a jar of the mustard to take back to his vacation spot on Claytor Lake. Stone said he grew up in Radford but moved to Charleston, S.C., to work in emergency medicine. For the past four years, he has spent part of his annual vacation in the Amish communities clustered in and around White Gate.
“These are good people,” he said. “They don’t know much about politics, but they’re good.”
He means good, as in friendly. But, he’s also referring to the quality of the merchandise found here such as a hand-built log “camper” he recently bought from Sam Chupp, bishop of the local Amish church and owner of Mountain View Log Homes.
On an impromptu tour, Stone pointed out the gas-powered stove and refrigerator, the shower and a hookup for a solar-powered water heater, all meant to provide luxurious off-the-grid living.
“Just look at the workmanship,” Stone said.
Amish-made products are often associated with high quality and spark keen interest among consumers. But Kaufman is not fond of the phrases “Amish business” and “Amish merchandise.”
“That’s like advertising our religion. Making money off our religion is not what we want to do,” he said. “We emphasize quality. If it’s quality, we’ll stock it.”
Nancy and Lee Payne of Athens, W.Va., came to White Gate looking for chicken feed and adventure. But they said they were also happy to find a nice tablecloth at the Mountain View Country Store owned by Katie Wengerd.
Wengerd and her family came to White Gate from Pennsylvania in 2006 because they liked the theology of the Walker Mountain church, Wengerd said. They also transplanted their business, which specializes in housewares and Amish-style clothing. It opened this spring on Songbird Lane.
At Heritage House Handcrafted Furniture on Mountain View Lane, owner Noah Swarey is still figuring out what pieces he should display in his 2,400-square-foot showroom.
“You wouldn’t believe the variety in Amish-made furniture coming out of Ohio,” Swarey said.
Swarey, a cabinetmaker from Ohio, said he plans eventually to add his own handmade furniture to the mix. In the meantime, he stocks some of neighbor Daniel Chupp’s rustic furniture made from local woods. Chupp’s Brushy Mountain Enterprises is one of the older businesses on the mountain, having opened nine years ago. And it’s growing.
“This has been our busiest year so far,” Daniel Chupp said.
He employs seven people in three workshops and ships cabinets, interior doors and other wood products across Virginia.
There’s a particularly vigorous demand in North Carolina, he said.
Several other woodworking and carpentry businesses operate on Walker Mountain, including Walker Mountain Barns and Gazebos run by Ferman Yutzy, who came to Giles from Wisconsin 13 years ago.
According to the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom, the Amish — sometimes called “The Plain People” or “Old Order Amish” — originated in Switzerland in the 16th century. Theologically and historically, they are linked to the Anabaptists and the Mennonites. Subjected to widespread oppression in Europe, the Amish were saved from extinction by Quaker leader William Penn, who granted them asylum in what is today Pennsylvania.
Today, the largest populations are concentrated in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. It’s estimated that between 30 and 50 Amish families live and work in White Gate and neighboring Bland County, and there are plans to build a third Amish schoolhouse in Giles.
Relations with non-Amish locals have generally been good. But as has often happened in Amish history, their separation from the wider community and their distinct way of life has created some suspicion. One persistent rumor has it that the Amish don’t pay taxes, Giles County Zoning Administrator Craig Whittaker said.
It’s true that self-employed Amish are exempt from Social Security taxes, but neither do they collect Social Security benefits or other government entitlements. They do pay income taxes, sales taxes, real estate and other local taxes and abide by zoning and other regulations, Whittaker said.
And they’ve been good for the local economy by providing jobs for non-Amish locals who have made a cottage industry of providing taxi services.
Patty Proffitt is one of several “haulers.” Some of her neighbors asked whether she could provide them with rides to doctor visits and other errands too far afield for horse and buggy travel. Word got around, and Proffitt said she has several clients, some of whom have paid for rides to Kentucky and Ohio.
“You help somebody and rewards are going to come back to you,” Proffitt said. “I’m a Christian, and I believe that.”
Copyright 2008 The Roanoke (Va.) Times
Sidebar: Even for those ‘off the grid,’ fuel prices still affect profits
By Tonia Moxley
WHITE GATE — A customer stopping at Nature Way Country Store for a drink or a scoop of ice cream probably wouldn’t notice that the coolers and freezers are powered not by Appalachian Power Co. but by a diesel engine.
Nature Way, like most Amish-owned businesses and households, exists “off the grid” using alternative fuel sources such as propane lights. But even the Amish tradition of self-sufficiency hasn’t insulated this small business community from rising fuel prices.
At Ferman Yutzy’s diesel-powered woodworking shop on Songbird Lane, rising fuel prices are biting into profits. Fuel surcharges on the lumber and tin Yutzy uses to build his sheds, small barns and gazebos have added to the problem.
“You hate to go up on your prices,” Yutzy says. But he doesn’t see any way around it.
In 2007, Nature Way owner Danny Kaufman said he was paying about $2 a gallon for off-road diesel to power his coolers and freezers. This month, he’s paying more than $4 a gallon. One recent bill for three weeks worth of diesel totaled about $700.
“That diesel fuel,” Kaufman said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Then he clarified, as residents of Walker Mountain are likely to do when voicing anything that might sound critical.
“I’m not complaining,” he said. “We’re looking at alternatives.”
On the back of a notepad, he sketches a design for a geothermal electrical system he’s heard about. Kaufman said he’s also considering solar, wind and even hydrogen power.
Those outside the Amish community might wonder why the “Plain People” — as they are sometimes known — won’t just hook up to the electrical grid. What’s the difference, after all, between depending on diesel fuel delivered by a truck and depending on the electrical grid to deliver power to your business?
“Amish people interpret linking with electrical wires as a connection with the world,” according to the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom Web site.
That direct connection is prohibited by a literal interpretation of the Bible, in which Romans 12:2 commands followers to “be not conformed to this world.”
And, in 1919, “the Amish leaders agreed that connecting to power lines would not be in the best interest of the Amish community,” the Web site states.
For Kaufman, it’s more about spiritual discipline.
The convenience of electricity-on-demand “might be a temptation to get things we don’t really need,” he said.
Copyright 2008 The Roanoke (Va.) Times
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