Inside An $85,000 Amish Home & Store (25 Photos)
We return to Kentucky for this week’s Amish home. This is an interesting set – we get a look at both a plain home, and inside a simple variety/food store.
So this is another 2-in-1, so to speak. You get a store building in the deal (though I assume not the contents of it – and not all under one roof, like in the recent Henry County, KY property).
There are some eye-catching details here. Those include the bathroom lighting, and the wall decor in what looks like an office. The house, as you can see, is a modest one-story, with what appears to be a converted attic:
And the store building is of a similar size, though not quite as large:
This property is in Hart County, which is where we find the state’s largest Amish community – the 19-church district Munfordville/Horse Cave settlement.
The description from the Zillow listing:
Property includes: 4 (possible 5) bedroom home, LARGE “store” building, 3 other detached buildings and is situated on 3.76 acres +/-. The interior of home features: 4 (possibly 5) bedrooms, 1 bath, LARGE open kitchen/dining area, beautiful hardwood flooring, large walk-in pantry and partial upstairs. (Home & buildings do not have electricity).
Possibly 5 bedrooms? I guess that means you can convert one room into a fifth sleeping quarters. The home is 2,024 square feet, by the way. Here’s the salesier part of the listing:
3/4 of the home was built in 2006! The possibilities for this property is endless! Ranging from having a business conveniently beside your home, to also having a mini farm. There is an unbelievable amount of storage with thiis home! Properties like this do not hit the market often. Presented at ONLY: $84,900
Looking inside, we see a simple home. Two different types of stoves in this photo, though I don’t see the exhaust pipe for the first one:
Looking closer, it looks like there are several lamps tucked into the lower level of this stove. So I don’t think this stove is currently being used a stove.
Lighting is not the best in this photo, but here we see a modest kitchen with very plain cabinetry, and curtains of the rich blue color you see so often in Amish homes.
A lamp with metal heat shield hangs from the center of the room to distribute light when the sun goes down:
Checking out the well-stocked pantry:
First floor bedroom:
A glance inside the bathroom. The candle is what I was talking about:
Fancy candle holder. I’ve not often, or ever, seen something quite like that in an Amish bathroom:
Moving upstairs, one of the second-level bedrooms:
This upstairs bedroom looks, let’s say, snug:
And here’s the office decor I was talking about. The first thing that catches my eye is the assortment of antler mounts on the wall. Nothing too unusual about that for an Amish home.
But on looking closer you notice this nice display case of arrowheads in the foreground. Someone is a collector here. I wonder if any of these were purchased, or all found?
Now over to the store. I like the simple cozy feel of this store. Nothing fancy or pretentious about it.
Checkout counter.
Signs always catch my attention. I’ve enlarged this part of it but the only writing I can really make out is a sign for “COUNTRY EGGS” on the lower right (though they appear to be sold out):
Back outside we are seeing part of the property here, and the store’s buggy hitch with a customer’s buggy outside.
Another look at the home.
I already gave away the price for this property in the post title. It’s currently described as “off market”, and the sale history indicates the last time it was actually sold was way back in 1998. So I assume they had this on the market, and then pulled it off for some reason.
Smaller stove
The smaller stove, with no stove pipe, is a kerosene stove. The small vessel on the left side of it is the kerosene tank, almost certainly glass. The wicks are tubular with the top edge sticking out of the burner. When lit, it make a very blue ring-shaped flame, just tinged with yellow at the top of the flames. The three cylinders are chimneys that guide and concentrate the heat to the bottom of the pot without it getting sooty.
Thanks Dan for explaining that.
"Fancy" candleholder in Bathroom
I believe that candle holder is simply a cast iron re-purposed holder for a kerosine lamp. Many kerosine lamps (with wicks and chimneys) have heavy stems (a “foot”) with a hard-to-tip base, all glass. But the lamp for this wall holder just had the usual glass bowl for the fuel, with no base to give it some elevation from a table or bureau. My mother and mother-in-law both had such holders–for our kerosine lamps (not candles!).
I have that same iron holder, but we electrified the lamp.
Interesting. For me with the elaborate design it really stands out in that bathroom, and in general with the entire home decor. It does have a pretty broad base so I see what you are saying about it probably being a repurposed lamp holder.
The House
There really aren’t too many pictures on the walls–I did notice what looked like a map of the world in one of the larger rooms and a calendar on the wall as well. I could do without the antlers. What struck me as well was the very plain looking bedrooms. With a few pictures on the walls and some hooked or braided rag rugs on the floor it would be a little more “cozy”. It would seem as though the Amish, given their extraordinary talent in making quilts, would be adept at making these kinds of rugs, but maybe not (???), I don’t know.
I’m not a fan of antlers either and I agree on the rugs. Probably easier to keep well-swept and clean without them though.
Hi Erik,
I shared with you via email an old article from the American-German Review I found on the Amish while browsing a used book store that sells a lot of old books and magazines. I thought you might like it.
Aj – got that, thank you. It is an interesting look into the past. I might pass it along to someone else who I think might find it of interest as well.
No problem Erik,
I thought it was especially interesting because it’s from 1946 and deals with aspects of technology use among the Amish. I often hear nowadays that the Amish use of non-English drivers and adoption of some technology is a recent phenomenon, but that article shows that even in the 1940s, the Amish were using non-Amish drivers to drive them around and adopting a limited amount of technology that suited their lifestyle.
The stove with the lamps
Erik, the stove with the lamps as it is described is a kerosene stove, the equivalent of a gas stove. The lamps are the burners on which the food is cooked or which regulate the oven tempurature. These are used in place of the woodstove in the summer months or when extra cooking space is needed. They’re very efficient. I have an old three burner one at home with an oven that covers two burners. Some plain people use these instead of a propane stove.
Appreciate the explanation Terry. I’ve either never seen one of these, or more likely, never looked closely, although I should have.
Erik, this property seems to be back on the market at a significantly higher price. At least one of the upstairs bedrooms seems to have been cleared of furniture and there seem to be some changes on the outside of the house. The link in this article will take you to the new listing.