Products bring in extra income

Amish furniture makers don't advertise, but business is steady.
By LAURE CIOFFI
VINDICATOR NEW CASTLE BUREAU
NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. -- John D. Mast decided to start crafting furniture out of a small building near his home when his two sons took over farming his Pulaski Township property.
"We had more help than work," explains the 63-year-old Amish man.
He averages about a piece of furniture each week. Bedroom sets, kitchen tables, porch swings -- everything except chairs -- come out of his tiny workshop.
While many Amish communities in Ohio and eastern Pennsylvania have seen a sharp decrease in the number of Amish farmers, Lawrence and Mercer counties still count a large number of farmers.
However, Mast, like many Old Order Amish in western Pennsylvania, has taken on another business or occupation to supplement the work being done on the farm.
Some Amish work in cheese factories or Amish-owned saw mills and other businesses, but most have looked for home occupations.
Signs for roadside vegetable stands, quilt shops, greenhouses, harness shops and furniture dot the sides of old country and dirt roads throughout rural Lawrence and Mercer counties.
Often, it takes a trip down a long driveway to an unmarked building to find these Amish business people.
Slow process: Mast painstakingly works on each piece of furniture himself.
Customers must wait eight months to a year for their orders. But they don't seem to mind, knowing they are getting custom-made furniture, he said.
While Mast produces fewer than 100 pieces of furniture a year, his neighbor along state Route 208, Gideon Kurtz, has found his niche selling larger amounts of furniture to wholesale buyers.
"We get a lot of local people for retail, but 75 percent of my business is wholesale," said Kurtz, 44.
Kurtz admits he didn't know much about the furniture business when he started making small crafts to supplement his farming income about 15 years ago.
"I just didn't know how to make furniture. All I was trying to do is make a living," he said.
But gradually he taught himself and started producing furniture that commercial brokers wanted to buy.
"In the last 10 or 12 years the stores started coming here. We don't use particle board like many mass furniture producers. We found that people just like the worn look of solid wood ... the feel of it," he said.
The shop: In a converted chicken coop, seven young Amish men -- two are Kurtz's sons -- produce furniture from about 5,000 feet of lumber each week, he said.
Oak breakfast nooks, children's rockers and highchairs, end tables, hutches and other furniture are on display in a front room as the workers cut, glue and stain new furniture in a back room.
Doing business without electricity or a telephone hasn't seemed to hinder Kurtz's growing operation.
Many hand tools are still used along with custom-made machinery that is powered by gasoline engines, he said.
He makes one trip each day to use a neighbor's telephone to call customers.
The lack of instant communication doesn't bother Kurtz or really affect his business, he said. A ringing telephone would probably slow them down, he added.
Mast and Kurtz both noted that their furniture can be found in homes as far away as Colorado, Michigan and Texas.
And they don't advertise. No need to, because there is plenty of room to grow, they said.
"We're just scratching the surface," Mast said. "We know only a small percentage of people come here and buy furniture -- most of mine come from Pittsburgh and a lot of local people. Once people find out about it they start spreading the word."
cioffi@vindy.com