This Tennessee Amish Home Packs A Lot Into Just 768 Square Feet (31 Photos)

I’ll start by saying that I love this week’s home.

Now, I’m not saying I’d love to live there (let’s just say it’s “very Amish”). But as far as visual appeal of an Amish property goes, this is one of my favorites we’ve seen.

Why? One reason is clear without even looking too close at the details: its vibrant color. Reds, blues, purples, set off against warm browns and soft whites, catch the eye just scrolling through the photos.

This is a Swartzentruber Amish home, which is the plainest group, essentially. But I’ve always found it a fun wrinkle that they often have the most visually appealing and vibrant homes of all Amish groups. You can see it in the top image, or in this preview from inside the home’s kitchen space:

Or, in this example from Minnesota.

And that’s often much more the case than more progressive Amish homes, which can at times look, for lack of a better word, a bit dull, or we could ironically say, even “plain.” That’s because they often hew closer to modern American interior styles – and look less distinctly “Amish” as a result. Still pleasant, but in a different way.

This particular home is found in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and one standout of the property is its small size – at least in square footage of the main home, at just 768 square feet.

It does come with several interesting outbuildings, adding to the visual appeal. Here’s the full description via Zillow:

Beautiful 23.65-acre Amish farm offering a unique opportunity for those seeking a simpler, more self-sufficient lifestyle.

The property features a traditional Amish home, a large 50×50 shop, and a 30×30 livestock barn with side sheds, providing plenty of space for farming, livestock, equipment, hobbies, or other agricultural uses.

Consistent with Amish construction and lifestyle, the home does not have electricity or conventional plumbing. With a combination of open acreage, functional outbuildings, and a peaceful rural setting, this property offers a rare opportunity to create your own homestead or working farm.

This home has a ton of interesting details, both outside and in. To start with, here’s a wide aerial view of the property. The home sits at right, with the shop and barn up the lane at left. The whole place is ringed by woods.

And here’s the home from the front. Just one story, with a porch running most of the width of the front. The walkway leading up to it is made of wooden slats laid straight onto the grass.

Here’s an elevated view taken no doubt by drone. Note the dinner bell.

Up on the porch, laundry is strung on lines under the roof. Some potted plants and what looks like a homemade rag rug, common in this group of Amish. The small dark box on the post beside the door looks to be some sort of a mailbox. I’d assume they’d have one by the road so maybe that’s for leaving notes?

This home is in Lawrence County, Tennessee, which has two Amish settlements, both founded in 1944. The larger by far is Ethridge, with around 2,500 Amish people. A second, much smaller settlement of two districts lies nearer Lawrenceburg itself (read more on the state’s communities in our Tennessee Amish guide).

Ethridge is also a parent community to Swartzentruber settlements elsewhere in the South, including the one at Randolph, Mississippi where we looked at a pair of Amish homes earlier this year.

Inside The Home

The 768 square feet is essentially one large room, plus a bedroom off the back. And that one room does a lot.

Here’s the view toward the kitchen/dining end. A blue oilcloth-covered table, with just four chairs. This is likely a smaller Amish family who may be outgrowing the home or simply moving to a different Swartzentruber community, which happens often enough in that group. To the lower right, I see what looks like a rolling crib for a little one?

A closer look at that kitchen/food prep area. You’ll notice there is no sink here. Some of these plainer homes have hand water pumps, but I’m not seeing one here. Utensils neatly organized and a classic oil lamp mounted at left. We can see the red exterior of the next-door outbuilding, which has a couple of important uses for this family (more on that below).

Here’s a view pulled back into the other direction, showing a grandfather clock and a glass-front china cabinet along the wall. These two pieces stand out for their more fancy look compared to the other furnishings and decor. Grandfather clocks are pretty common in Amish homes though, even these very plain ones.

It’s an unexpected touch of luxury, an apparent contradiction, at least on first look. While plainer Amish especially avoid a lot of wall and other decor, they do allow their functional home items to be decorative, and clocks are a good example of that.

This corner is the sitting and working area. Three more chairs along the wall of the same style as the kitchen table chairs. There’s a hickory rocker, a child’s blue rocker, a treadle sewing machine under the window, and a swivel office chair with a quilt-pattern covering.

Look closer for more fun little details – another pretty wall clock, a pair of black bonnets hung on the wall, hunting firearm – and a couple of jumbo-sized insulated cups for coffee or other drinks. Yes, the Amish need to stay hydrated – and caffeinated – just like you and I do.

Same corner showing the open blue entry door. Lined up on the top left shelf are what appear to be “Estate” brand shotgun shells.

This space has two stoves – here is the wood cookstove. To the left you see the edge of the other stove, kerosene-powered, that we saw earlier in the kitchen space.

And which you can see better here. Three fuel canisters under the burners. This is going to be a lower-heat option for cooking, especially nice during a hot Tennessee summer. And here through the open door we catch a glimpse of a bedroom.

Bedrooms & More

This is the one separate room in the house, the parents’ bedroom. A quilt in greens, blues and purples on the bed, blue curtains hung as a closet of sorts along the right wall, and – cue a grin – some sort of pink glass-front curio case? We also see a Winchester safe for valuables, another common feature in these homes.

The place is said to have two bedrooms though, and as is also common in plainer Amish homes, a bed sits along the wall behind the wood stove we saw a few photos up, made up with a blue and green cover.

To its right there’s a sink for washing up, a shelf of soap and lotion, and a towel on a hook. Seeing what I mean about this home packing in a lot?

This contraption with wooden arms is a drying rack stand, nearby the stove. Several of its arms are extended, with what looks like a wash cloth on one of them. A way to dry laundry indoors in winter, for instance. Note also the hooks on the wall, another standard functional feature in Amish homes.

On the opposite side to the bed we just saw, we have a back entrance door, and another collection of hooks, most of these occupied.

Three straw hats hang in a row at bottom here. Their smaller sizes, as well as the small-sized shoes and coats suggest this home has some little boys. Mom and Dad’s hat and bonnet hang at top. I believe that is a headlamp on the hook at left. Very common among Amish and handy, seen even in the plainer groups.

The Back Porch

The back porch is where laundry gets done. You can see the wringer washer, and the round wood-burning stove for heating water.

The Multi-Use Building Next Door

A few steps from the back door, connected by more of that slat walkway, is a long outbuilding divided into separate rooms, each with its own door.

It appears that two of those doors are entries to a two-seater outhouse, built right into the end of the building. There’s a second outhouse out by the shop, which we’ll get to.

Here’s the outbuilding from the other end. I had to puzzle a bit at first over what we are seeing at left. A woodstove with its pipe leading into an elevated compartment. But if I had to say, this looks like a meat smoker.

Looking through one of the open doorways in the same outbuilding is the wood storage space. It’s handy to have your wood and bathroom close at hand, especially, obviously, during cold winter nights.

So here’s another neat structure which stands out for its different color scheme. This is what’s called a loafing shed, meant to provide protection to animals like horses and other livestock when outside. Now, it might be something the owner built for himself. The color scheme is different, but matches that of the smoker we just saw.  On the other hand, it may have been made by the owner for a non-Amish buyer.

The Shop

Taking a look at the shop building, we can get a sense of what they might use it for. The listing puts it at a 50×50 space, which works out to roughly 2,500 square feet – more than three times the size of the house.

The center section runs straight through, open at both ends, with a pulley rigged up at front. You can see by the size of the opening, the owner could very well be making the types of sheds we saw above.

Inside, we see some of the equipment. I’m not going to try to name everything, but I’m going to guess he is in the shed-making business.

Another angle. I actually mainly want to point out the PVC pipe on the wagon wheel, a non-electric visibility solution adopted in some of these Swartzentruber Amish communities, who otherwise reject battery lighting and the SMV triangle.

Off the shop is a small office. Filing cabinets, an old dresser with an ornate wooden clock on it, and what look like color charts tacked to the wall.

The Barn

The livestock barn has a wing for covered buggy parking, between the wall and chicken coop.

Things that catch my eye here are the large chest freezer, and the doghouse for a family pet.

Here’s the harness and tack corner.

And here’s the shop and barn together from above. That narrow red structure by the fence at left, the one with two pipes on the roof, looks to be a second outhouse.

Placed out by the work buildings for convenience while working; any employees of the business might use this one. I’ll also note the one curious long building by the side of the shop. Not sure what that is used for.

Here is some of the pasture behind the buildings, with a camouflage hunting stand set up at the edge of it. The property has over 23 acres.

This outline gives a better sense of it. Looks like a nice stretch of open pasture in the back, with lots of wooded area otherwise. So, what is the price for this little Tennessee Amish home on a pretty good-sized property?

The home just came on the market a week ago, and is listed at $450,000. It’s represented by Jeff Hood of Keller Williams – Hood Company.

Truth be told, the house is not making up the bulk of this price tag. That’s the land, and I would assume the other buildings, which together add several thousand more feet of square footage.

A non-Amish buyer would have some upgrades to make, assuming they didn’t want to really “rough it”.  They’d be adding wiring, plumbing, a bathroom, and heat and air. Like I suggested at the top, it’s not a place I’d be ready to move into “as is.” But it’s a really interesting little spot that was a lot of fun to look at, and has some potential to be a great place for the right buyer out there.