Buying an Amish Farm

[RichZ]

Has anyone on TBN ever bought an Amish farm? We really need more property, but we can't afford more land in our own area. We live in eastern upstate New York, and Montgomery County, which is west of us, has the largest Amish population in the USA. We have some connections to the Amish community, and we haven an opportunity to check out many Amish farms that are for sale. Typically, in this area, Amish farms sell for about 1/3 of "English" farms, because you can't get a mortgage on an Amish farm, since it has no heating system, no electricity and limited plumbing. We figure we can put in solar panels for electricity, and we currently heat with only wood, so that's fine for us. But we do want to have indoor plumbing. Some Amish farms have gravity fed plumbing, so we may not have to do too much plumbing work.

I'd really be interested to hear about anyone else buying an Amish farm, and what they did to update it.

Thanks for any replies.

 

[Ed of all trades]

I heard of one Amish house that was built a few years ago that was wired and the boxes left behind the drywall. They sold the farm and just cut out the boxes and fixed them up with rings, switches, ect and ti was ready to go. Hope all goes well for you.

 

[murphy1244]

Are you paying land prices?

 

[bucktaker]

my sister bought a amish place with a house and barn, 12 acres . Part of the purchase was installation of electric an hvac. House was set up for electric as mentioned before so not that big an issue.

 

[QRTRHRS]

Around me, the Amish must rough wire to get a building permit. I have seen some with the exposed boxes and some with solid plates over the boxes. I happened to have had a conversation with my vet one day about Amish properties as there are always some on the market. He said that the clans sometimes move for new opportunities. He said the houses are built well but not necessarily insulated that well since they are heated with wood.

I have looked at a few. The outbuildings are not necessarily placed where they would work with trucks and tractors or even with moving animals in and out to pasture. I have also seen both crop and pasture land that needed some TLC for lack of fertilizer and mowing, etc. I saw one with a horse grazing that was near solid yellow with buttercups (not good for equines).

I do like the plain woodwork, the lack of wall paper or wall paper boarders, the lack of textured ceilings and the vinyle or real wood floors. Easy to paint and care for especially with our dogs in the house.

 

[RichZ]

It would be great if they were already wired. We've only seen them from the outside, but we're going to start looking at the houses we're looking at this week. I'll let you know if that's the case with any of these places.

Murph, we're paying for the whole farm. I have no idea what land prices are, but I'm sure this is more than land prices. All of these farms have Amsih built houses and barns, and the quality of the buildings are excellent.

 

[RichZ]

We found the farm that we want to buy yesterday. It's exactly what we wanted. 103 acres, one large 2 story barn, with an upper, walk in hay storage area, with 3 chutes to drop the hay down to the livestock area, a smaller livestock barn, an equipment barn, a workshop and a sap house. The house is 4 bedrooms on the top floor, and a first floor with a huge kitchen, living room, master bedroom and summer kitchen and a two sided covered porch. Attached to the first floor is a huge woodshed that has the outhouse inside of it. It has a very large walk out basement with a root cellar with a brick wood furnace with a steel liner and cover to heat water. The property has several hay fields and several pastures, 20 acres of corn fields, 2 acres of pumpkin fields and the rest is wooded. The sap house is in the middle of the woods. It has a permanent stream going through the property. The house has a gravity fed plumbing system, that runs into the livestock barns. Surprisingly, the barns have automatic livestock waterers.

We intend to put in a solar electric system, septic system and indoor plumbing with a 3/4 bathroom upstairs and a half bath downstairs. Unfortunately in New York, the Amish are not required to put in wiring, so we'll have to wire the whole house, but we intend to use surface conduits.


The whole place is perfect for our various livestock, goats sheep, horses, mini horses, alpacas, llamas, chickens, ducks, geese and rabbits. The only change to the property is that we'll plow under the corn fields to make more hay fields.

Now comes the hard part...preparing our current farm for sale and getting it on the market.

I'll keep you posted...

 

[tcreeley]

We found the farm that we want to buy yesterday. It's exactly what we wanted. 103 acres, one large 2 story barn, with an upper, walk in hay storage area, with 3 chutes to drop the hay down to the livestock area, a smaller livestock barn, an equipment barn, a workshop and a sap house. The house is 4 bedrooms on the top floor, and a first floor with a huge kitchen, living room, master bedroom and summer kitchen and a two sided covered porch. Attached to the first floor is a huge woodshed that has the outhouse inside of it. It has a very large walk out basement with a root cellar with a brick wood furnace with a steel liner and cover to heat water. The property has several hay fields and several pastures, 20 acres of corn fields, 2 acres of pumpkin fields and the rest is wooded. The sap house is in the middle of the woods. It has a permanent stream going through the property. The house has a gravity fed plumbing system, that runs into the livestock barns. Surprisingly, the barns have automatic livestock waterers.

We intend to put in a solar electric system, septic system and indoor plumbing with a 3/4 bathroom upstairs and a half bath downstairs. Unfortunately in New York, the Amish are not required to put in wiring, so we'll have to wire the whole house, but we intend to use surface conduits.


The whole place is perfect for our various livestock, goats sheep, horses, mini horses, alpacas, llamas, chickens, ducks, geese and rabbits. The only change to the property is that we'll plow under the corn fields to make more hay fields.

Now comes the hard part...preparing our current farm for sale and getting it on the market.

I'll keep you posted...

-What a lovelyplace!

 

[Piston]

Rich,
That sounds amazing!
For the power, you might want to look into the way they sometimes wire timber frame homes with SIPS. A lot of times, rather than making wire chases in the SIP panels for electric, they'll create a chase along the bottom of the walls, and run the wireing and boxes behind it. At the end of all the work, it just looks like a relatively thick piece of baseboard.

 

[buickanddeere]

Only time I've ever seen Amish or Mennonite sell around here. Is either to each other or if a developer will pay enough for 100 acres to purchase 1000 acres somewhere else. Once the land is in their hands, it's gone from the English.