If you caught the “Is Amish Life Hard?” post of a couple weeks ago, that was an excerpt of a longer conversation with John Esh. Today I’m sharing the full video of our talk. John is an Amishman living in the Nittany Valley community of Centre County, Pennsylvania. Goot Essa is John’s company. For about the first half of this 27-minute conversation, we discuss Amish…
When you see a crime report about an Amish roadside stand, you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking it was someone stealing money from the honor system cash deposits that a lot of these stands use. Not in this case, though. From WBKO: BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) – The Simpson County Sheriff’s Office is investigating an armed robbery that occurred Thursday, Nov. 30. According to a press…
And I write “Middle of Nowhere” with affection, because I happen to be quite fond of many middle-of-nowhere places. But in reality, this is somewhere – specifically the Sandhills of Nebraska. Amish who appear to be a part of the Michigan Circle (that group has been showing up a good bit here lately) have started up a new settlement in the area of a town…
We learned about Mio, Michigan recently here as a part of the Michigan Circle Amish churches. Now in this photo set by Jim Halverson, a look inside an Amish bulk food store in the community – Country Corner Bulk Foods. This is one of a number of Mio-area businesses. As you can see by the map here, there are quite a few Amish businesses in…
An Indiana man who schemed Amish and Mennonite investors out of millions of dollars has been sentenced after being found guilty of fraud in May 2022. From WNDU: SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) – A Goshen man has been sentenced to just over eight years in prison and has been ordered to pay over $2 million in restitution for his role in an investment fraud scheme….
“Don’t feel sorry for us, no,” John says with a chuckle. “We’re having a good life.” In this video I interview John Esh. John lives in Nittany Valley in central Pennsylvania and runs the Goot Essa cheese & food company (Full video transcript below). John sat down for a longer conversation with me a week or so ago. I’ll be posting that full video soon….
Back in 2019 we had a look at the Amish and hemp farming, a trend that emerged after Pennsylvania legalized hemp cultivation. Now four years later, a new piece at DailyMail.com looks at “the booming business of Amish cannabis farmers” with a visit to the retail location of Lancaster County Cannabis, owned by a 29-year-old Amishman who goes only by his last name in the story…
Right off the bat, this home has two things that stand out about it – its small size for an Amish home (1,192 square feet), and its fancy design. In fact, it reminds me of the style seen in the million-dollar Amish home we looked at last year. This home has a Garretsville, Ohio address. Garrettsville is in northern Portage County, which would make it…
I was happy to see that Goot Essa owner John Esh appeared on the “Seen Through A Glass” podcast recently to discuss his cheese & food business. John has a nice casual discussion with podcast host Lew Bryson. He explains how he came to cheese-making, and specifically European-style cheeses. In case you were wondering about the Amish and cheese, John notes that there is a…
Jim Halverson checks in with a photo set from a Swartzentruber Amish barn-raising. This took place back in the summer as should be obvious from these photos. If you missed it, we recently took a closer look at the Amish barn-raising via Burton Buller’s excellent film The Amish Barn-Raising Day. In it, we see footage of two separate barn-raisings (in Ohio and in Pennsylvania), done…