An Amish Entrepreneur's Old-Fashioned Approach

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And making money is what Miller Farm is doing. "I can't meet all the demand," says Amos Miller. He relies on additional supplies of product from his brother, John, who "grows the produce that we ferment and process here," and from three other neighboring Amish and Mennonite farmers.

What distinguishes Miller Farm from others, such as celebrity farmer Joel Salatin's farm in Virginia, which has helped popularize nutrient-dense foods, is that Miller has gone national—and done it without modern conveniences. His main concessions to modern life are a generator for refrigeration to cool certain foods and a landline telephone (717-556-0672) to take orders from distributors and mail-order customers. He also relies on FedEx (FDX) for shipping orders to customers.

Courting the Foodies

To market his wares and network, Miller regularly attends events popular with foodie types. At the annual conference of the Weston A.Price Foundation, held in November at a hotel outside Chicago, he and several other Amish manned a large table in the exhibitor area, selling large jars of fermented veggies, maple syrup, and homemade spelt noodles.In December, at a conference in St.Paul, Minn., of sustainable farmers and their customers put on by Acres USA, Miller's offerings were a little different: at breakfast time, slices of dense grain bread slathered in butter and honey; and at lunch, plates of bread with homemade liverwurst and salami.

How did he get all that food to the conferences if he doesn't drive? He rented a refrigerated truck and hired a non-Amish neighbor to drive it. He stored the food in dozens of coolers with refrigerant chemical blocks.

"He's a hustler," says Pete Kennedy, president of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, who mans a booth near Miller's at the Weston A. Price Foundation conference.

The Blessings of Dirt

The conferences bring in not only direct revenues but also customers from around the country. For instance, many of the attendees at the Weston A. Price Foundation conference are involved with food cooperatives back home that are seeking the kinds of foods Miller's farm produces. The orders pour in from individual consumers the old-fashioned way—via snail mail, as well as via the farm's conventional telephone line. The farm receives regular orders from food cooperatives as far away as Florida and California.

While he says he's proud of the fact that "we're making a lot of money," Miller notes that elders in his church worry about the growth. "They discourage us getting too big," he notes, in part because they don't want Amish farmers to be tempted by the marvels of modern technology. "As long as we don't rely on computers and electronics, they're okay."

Miller says he doesn't get frustrated by not having modern conveniences. In fact, when he's at trade shows, he usually can't wait to get back home. "The city is a pretty sterile environment," he says. "But if I did it once a month, I'd get lost, I'd forget what it's like to get dirty."

David Gumpert is a journalist who blogs regularly about the business of health and has written a number of books about small business and entrepreneurship, including Burn Your Business Plan! His latest book is, The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights.

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