Tag: kitchenware

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.