An Amish Home for $180,000: Three Bedrooms, No Bathrooms, and an Exterior Canned Goods Pantry (20 Photos)

Here we have an “ultra-basic” Amish home in the Swartzentruber community at Cynthiana, Kentucky (Harrison County). It’s a small, very plain Amish community of under 100 people, and it looks like one of the families here is selling their home and moving away.

As in a lot of cases, in these smaller communities Amish will list their homes in hopes of attracting a non-Amish buyer. That’s because the pool of potential Amish buyers, by definition, in such small settlements is limited.

And this would be a home for someone that doesn’t mind a true “off grid living” vibe, or is willing to “Englishize” this home (ie, install electricity – and plumbing, in this case).

Plenty of people do that, and you can find homes online that were obviously originally Amish builds, which have been modernized in such ways.

This is one of the simplest of Amish homes, build with corrugated metal siding giving it a “workshop” look. Here’s the basic property description via Zillow:

Country living, 5 acres of pasture and tillable ground with a 1100 +/- sq ft Amish home. Built in 2018 the homes includes 3 bedrooms, large walk-in pantry and a insulated exterior pantry for canned goods.

Ample room on the covered front porch for relaxing. The barn built in 2021 has 1 horse stall with hay loft and covered storage on 2 sides. Come take a look and see what this peaceful retreat has to offer.

Let’s have a look inside the home.

Kitchen

Here we have a nice long, simple plain Amish kitchen. There’s no sink in here, but if you look at the very back of the room, you can just make out a light blue water cooler, which is where they keep their H20 supply. A cookstove that looks like it means business. Very basic but homey.

This photo from the other end, reverse direction shows us a better look at the kitchen table, and we can see how this kitchen connects to the next room (what I’m simply calling the “Main Room” below).

So here’s the large walk-in pantry (not the exterior pantry – more on that below). A lot of cookware in this pantry, and looks like the kind for making large quantities of food. Towards the window you see more of the foodstuffs and cooking ingredients.

Main Room

There’s just the one photo of the main room.

A day bed, a hickory rocker, heating stove, sewing machine, oil lamp. Many of the classic notes of a plain Amish home.

Bedrooms

A beautiful quilt in this first bedroom. A baby’s crib close at hand. This is where Mom and Dad sleep.

The second bedroom is the neatest and least cluttered of the bunch.

The things that caught my eye in this third bedroom are those suitcases on the left. I remember that style from when I was a kid. Now, the stand-up roller wheel kind is much more common. But the hard plastic, handle suitcases used to be a thing. I just haven’t seen this type in quite some time.

They are apparently still a thing in some Amish communities. And if you’re wondering, even the plainest Amish do take trips sometimes, to visit relatives in another community, to attend a funeral or wedding, and so on. It just typically takes them a little longer due to stricter travel restrictions in the plainest groups.

So, I know this post says “three bedrooms”, but it appears we have a bonus bedroom. I’m not sure if that’s an error in the listing, if I’m looking at something wrong, or if they’re not counting one of these rooms as a bedroom for some reason. In any case, this one is doing some duty as a storage space.

Canned Goods Pantry

Here is the one photo of the exterior canned goods pantry. I suspect it is either in a separate building from the home or with a separate entrance, thus making it “exterior”. You can see it is a more basic space with the unfinished OSB interior.

The Amish are known to be prodigious canners, and members of this community (Swartzentruber Amish) are probably top of the charts in that department – by one study, canning twice as much as other Amish. That likely reflects their more limited options when it comes to refrigeration.

In this photo I see fruits, corn, green beans, possibly meat… Also, a handful of store-bought cans. I spy something with a “Del Monte” label.

Barn

Here we see two simple buggies parked in a matching red barn.

And inside, a simple interior with a horse stall. See those two ears peeking up over the hay fork?

So there you have it. A very simple home of one of the most traditional of all Amish groups, on a nice chunk of land just 20-some miles north of Lexington.

As noted in the post title, this home is currently on the market at $180,000. It is represented by Chad S. Nichols of Nichols Real Estate. Neat little place.

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