Entrepreneurial Amish Women
Hard work and self-sufficiency are very important aspects of living in an Amish community. In order to be successful and able to take care of themselves with no outside help whatsoever, every member of the family works in some capacity to help the Amish family and the Amish community itself survive and thrive. Every member of an Amish family helps to provide some sort of income for the Amish community at large the best they can. Even the Amish children, from a very early age, learn the value of hard work and the importance of productivity. Amish men usually provide income for the family through farming, building, furniture making, woodworking, and selling other handmade wares to the other locals and tourists. Sometimes Amish men even take jobs outside the Amish community to provide for the family.
Amish women play a very important part in the success of the Amish community and provide much needed income through a variety of different business ventures. In an Amish community, the women are solely responsible for tending to the home, working in the yard, keeping the garden, cooking, sewing and washing the clothes, and raising the children. Many Amish women have found their particular household skills quite useful in providing a significant income to the family and Amish community at large. Many Amish families own shops and stores to sell their handmade goods and wares to tourists. While the men sell Amish made beds, hope chests, wooden toys, picnic baskets, tools, and the fresh produce they grow from their crops, the Amish women have found success selling handmade Amish quilts, canned goods, floral arrangements, toys, and baked goods. Some Amish women even work as midwives, in non-Amish birthing centers, or as teachers in Amish schools.
Probably the most lucrative business for Amish women is the Amish quilting business. People travel from around the world to visit these tiny Amish communities to buy one of their beautifully handcrafted Amish quilts. Known for their simplicity, the Amish quilt is one of the few ways that Amish women can truly express themselves artistically. While the Amish pride themselves on shunning society and using their time to focus on what is necessary, the Amish quilt is somewhat of an exception. Most Amish communities wear only dark colored clothes and do not decorate their homes in any sort of ostentatious way because to do otherwise would be useless since it doesn't serve God in any sort of meaningful way. However, because the quilt itself serves the purpose of warmth, the Amish women gradually used more designs and more colors to create the Amish quilt patterns of today. As a result, many Amish quilts fetch prices in excess of $1,000 for a single quilt. This is due to the fact that in today’s manufactured world, finding something of beauty that is truly made by hand is difficult at best. The Amish quilt has become famous for its simplistic, yet colorful designs that consist of a wide range of patterns, including stars, flowers, baskets, and geometric designs.
Amish women use their sewing talents in other ways to make money for their families as well. Most Amish women are responsible for making the clothing that their children, husbands, and even they wear throughout the year. So, Amish women are usually quite talented when it comes to sewing everything from pants to dresses to the signature bonnets that every Amish girl wears. While most people outside the Amish community are not in the market for Amish clothing, they are interested in buying some of their handmade Amish dolls. Faceless dolls are given to Amish children to play with because the Amish believe in rejecting the graven image out of modesty. These faceless Amish dolls and clothes are hand sewn for the children of the Amish community, but have also become quite popular with tourists alike.
In addition to the Amish quilt, many Amish women make their money by canning fruits and vegetables or making jams and jellies from their own gardens. After setting aside enough of their crops for their own personal use, Amish women often can their homegrown fruits and vegetables in order to sell them to the public. These canned treats are often highly sought after due to the fact that the Amish use no chemicals in the growing of their produce. Again, this type of natural product is difficult to come by in the modern world and provides a nice bit of income for the Amish woman.
Since Amish women are taught to cook from a very early age, many of their skills and talents lie in what they can produce in the kitchen. Baking homemade breads, pies, cakes, cookies, candies, donuts, and even noodles are a wonderful way for Amish women to make money while still adhering to the old fashioned values of the Amish community. Using their own homegrown fruits and grains, the Amish women cook using gas ovens and stoves in order to produce fresh baked goods that are big sellers within the local communities. Many of these goods are sold to local restaurants and other bakeries because of their high quality and uniquely fresh taste.
Other entrepreneurial ventures that Amish women often pursue include growing fresh flowers, arranging flowers, or drying flowers for wreaths or other crafts and adornments. Again, these flowers are usually grown by the Amish woman herself and then turned into something a consumer would want to purchase. Many of these businesses that Amish women have started are run in conjunction with their Amish husband’s business. It’s not unusual to find an Amish man making handmade picnic tables, while his Amish wife sells quilts, and the children work as little salesmen calling in customers or helping them in the shops. It’s this Amish belief in hard work, entrepreneurial endeavors, and the desire for self-sufficiency that makes the Amish community so interesting and unique to the outside observer. While they remain separated from the world at large, the Amish have managed to learn to work with the surrounding communities in order to form a balance between the growing modern world and their simple and plain traditional world. Fortunately, Amish women are allowed to express themselves and use their talents in a variety of ways in order to help support their families while providing the non-Amish world a hint of the older, simpler pleasures of life.
