Tag: Amish wares

Amish Made Products

Old-fashioned online General Store offers Amish-made products, handcrafted goods, and wares from over 100 Amish shops and factories across the USA.

Many know of the Amish for their beautiful handcrafted furniture, quilts, and wooden crafts.  What most don’t realize is that the Amish are still making the old vintage non-electric products and goods that were being used at the turn of the Century.

These old-time products are still available online at Cottage Craft Works .com an online general store filled with hard to find vintage products being made and used by the Amish.

From solid wood, Amish, handcrafted furniture, retro vintage kitchen wares, to Amish organically grown grains and flour you will find it in this refreshing trip back in time when quality USA made products were made to last a lifetime and beyond.

While many marvels over and collect these vintage antiques, the Amish are still hard at work in their small shops and factories continuing to make these old-time products to support their continued horse and buggy lifestyle.

As the country rebuilt from the Great Depression and electricity became readily available a great shift in the types of products in demand also began to occur.

The country moved forward but the Amish way of life stood fast.  The old-fashioned off-grid products the Amish so depended on to support them soon began to be no longer available.

The Amish are very industrious and great business minded people so many began to either make those products again from the patterns and molds being discarded or they contracted with companies to continue making them for just the Amish people.

Even the Janome sewing machine company makes a treadle sewing machine for the Amish communities.  It has crossed over to become popular with non-Amish women who claim that it is easier to control the speed than their electric sewing machines.

People living around or within driving distance to the main Amish communities in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, have purchased Amish made products for years because of the quality and durability they offer.

It was not really until the Y2K that the buy Amish products phenomenon really began to materialize.  Before then it was simply buying American made to protest the massive loss of American jobs and the lacking quality of imported products.

The Y2K fear of losing grid power was a real concern of many who sought out the Amish off-gird products to prepare for possibly the worse.

Even though the clock struck midnight on the year 2000 and the world woke up just like another day, the discovery of just how well the Amish products worked brought on a new wave of people looking for the Amish American made products.

The reality of losing grid power for extended periods has materialized on smaller scales from more frequent catastrophic storms.  The threat of terrorism or an attack on our grid is still very real.

Adding into the blend to be less dependent on the grid and modern day products is a strong desire to escape the fast pace lifestyle and return to a simpler time.

Others looking to find safer food supplies are unearthing back yard lawns and turning them into vegetable gardens. They are finding the cheaply made imported garden tools are just not worthy of serious gardening to support a large family so they too are in search of American Amish made tools.

The proliferation of fast and prepared foods is taking a toll on our overall health. Cooking from scratch using all natural chemical free ingredients as the Amish still do is becoming very desirable making Amish made kitchen wares, products, and Amish organically grown foods also desirable.  Especially, when cooking for large families as the Amish do.

While most people won’t go back to the horse and buggy for transportation, do away with air conditioning, or even do away with television, the other aspects of living the simple life are gaining traction.

Most just want to once again have the opportunity to purchase an American made product that they can depend on for a lifetime as early generations were able to do.

The Stevens family founders of Cottage Craft Works searched long and hard for over 30 years to find quality Amish made products for their own use and now offer these hard to find oddities via their online general store at www.cottagecraftworks.com

Many of these Amish products are not available on the mainstream Internet or anywhere else. Cottage Craft Works has developed exclusive relationships with several Amish shop owners to supply unique products for them.

Products such as the folding Singer Featherweight reproduction card tables and J & P Coats thread spool cabinet were developed by Paul Stevens and then contracted with an Amish shop to build for just for Cottage Craft Works customers.

Categories: Amish made products, Hand Crank Kitchen Appliances, Kitchen Wares, Made in America Home and Garden Products, Off-Grid Self-Sufficient Living, Old-Fashioned Vintage Kitchen Gadgets Tags: Tags: , , , ,

Vintage kitchen gadgets, old-fashioned kitchenware

Old-fashioned vintage kitchenware gadgets from the Amish. Old time vintage products, goods, wares used by Amish self-sufficient off-grid lifestyle.

At the turn of the Century most, every household used some these durable kitchen gadgets and cooking utensils to prepare meals at home.

As electricity began to develop most people opted to become wired creating a monumental shift to electric-powered appliances and kitchen gadgets.

Interesting today families with the most modern gadget equipped kitchens typically eat more meals outside of the home than did their parents and grandparents who grew up in the early 1900s.

The Amish with their large families has held steady to the traditions of old-fashioned cook from scratch home cooked meals. They still prepare and cook all that food without grid power.

Because of the concerns of how large companies have manipulated our countries food chain creating less healthy choices many people are trying to turn back time to cook more family meals at home from scratch.

Many are also trying to become less dependent on the grid power concerned with its vulnerability from storms, terrorist and computer system overload and glitches.

They can become frustrated quickly because most of the hand operated kitchen gadgets of today are cheaply made copies of the originals used at the turn of the century.

The cutting edges dull very quickly, the gears don’t mesh well, the plastic parts often break or the product just doesn’t work at all.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Amish began to see their mainstream suppliers of these vintage products disappear as the new more modern electrified items were in higher demand.

The Amish began to transform into making their own old time gadgets to supply the next generations of Amish families.

The scale began to tip back to the Amish American made goods when the large discount stores began driving down the prices with cheaper made imported products.  At some point along the journey companies also figured out the concept of making things to wear out quicker so that they would have the opportunity to resell the item again in a person’s lifetime.

The loss of American industrial jobs has created a strong movement to buy American made products.  Many of those products are made in and around various Amish communities across the nation using Amish factory workers.

The year 1999 really placed a spotlight on the Amish quality products as Y-2K buzz had a lot of people worried if they would have grid power when the clock struck midnight into the year 2000.

Even though the Y2K computer shut down never materialized the threat still remains a real potential of losing grid power for extended periods of time due to some type of attack on or a malfunction in the computer networks that control our nationwide electrical power.

Those who have experienced major storm damage can already attest to the fact of living without grid power for weeks and months has become a common reality.

Finding some these old time kitchen gadgets and cooking utensils is not easy as Amish off-grid also means off the internet.

Sure you can find all kinds of Amish handcrafted furniture and quilts online but finding the really good stuff comes to finding sites specializing in Amish self-sufficient old-fashioned products like Cottage Craft Works.com

Cottage Craft Works is a small family owned business who still answer their phone and provide old-fashioned one on one customer service.  The Stevens family have spent several decades exploring the Amish back roads finding vintage products for their own home and have been offering those products online now for over a decade to others who want to buy American made quality products.

Cottage Craft Works is one of the largest sources of Amish made products, goods and wares anywhere on the internet allowing for one stop shopping from the comfort of your easy chair.

You can explore this one of a kind emporium at www.cottagecraftworks.com

It’s like waking up in an earlier transformation back into time exploring an old country general store chalked full of vintage merchandise and wares.

 

Categories: Hand Crank Kitchen Appliances, Kitchen Wares, Off-Grid Self-Sufficient Living, Old-Fashioned Vintage Kitchen Gadgets Tags: Tags: , , , , , ,