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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, September 3, 2007

PR agency peddles Amish store

By Howard Wilkinson
Cincinnati Enquirer

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

The Miller family uses batteries to operate a cash register and scale at Miller's Bulk Food store in West Union, Ohio. Their Amish beliefs do not allow them to use electricity generated by power companies; instead, they rely on solar panels, wind turbines and air compressors.

CARA OWLSLEY | Cincinnati Enquirer

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ADAMS COUNTY, Ohio — There are many things Daniel Miller and his Amish family, living along the rolling ridges of Adams County, Ohio, will never do.

They will never drive a car, turn on a radio or television, or go off to a multiplex theater to watch a movie. No electric power lines will run into their homes to power up appliances, air conditioners and personal computers.

But, as much as the Amish of Adams County distance themselves from the technology the rest of the world takes for granted, they will embrace some of it — if only indirectly — to build their businesses and reach the people of the outside world who spend money on their handmade and homemade goods.

This is why at Miller's Furniture, Bakery and Bulk Food stores cash register and credit-card machines hum along on electric power that the Millers produce for themselves with solar panels, wind turbines and air compressors.

And it is why the thousands of city folk and suburbanites who flock to Miller's first learn about the Amish business through a most unlikely medium: the Internet, a storehouse of electronic information the Millers themselves will never see.

"We just can't go there," said Daniel Miller, who runs the furniture store. "But, yes, it is a tool that can be used to tell people we're here."

Several years ago, with some prodding from the Adams County Visitors Bureau, the Millers' business became a client of Frank Satullo of ZoneFree Ohio Marketing and Public Relations.

Satullo peddles the Millers' businesses with travel writers and magazines and in his own online magazine, Ohio Living and Travel. At his Web site, www.ohiotraveler.com, there is a page that describes Miller's various products and services in detail.

At the bottom is a disclaimer: "Miller's is an authentic Amish merchant run by an Amish family selling Amish-made goods. This Web page is a complimentary service we provide all our clients and is not to be considered a Web site by Miller's."

The Amish, a German sect that has been in this country for about 250 years, is a religious community, governed by a set of rules for living. The women in their long, plain dresses and bonnets wash clothes by hand, hanging them out in the breeze to dry. Those who still farm the land plow the earth with horse-drawn plows.

When "the world" presents them with a new technology, they make a judgment about it, based on the Ordnung, a set of written and unwritten rules for Amish life that are interpreted differently from one Amish community to another.

The criteria are many, but boil down to this: Does the new technology weaken the family structure? Does it make family members less reliant on each other? If so, it is forbidden.

Electricity generated in the outside world and brought into the Amish community via power lines is generally forbidden because it would be too direct a connection to the outside world for a people who believe in the biblical injunction in II Corinthians 6:17: "Come out from among them and be separate, sayeth the Lord."

The 85 Amish families that settled in Adams County three decades ago run a plethora of businesses, all without electricity. They build fences, make wooden pallets and cobble shoes and boots.

But generating power for themselves — especially in a family business, where the family members come together for a common purpose — is more than acceptable.

Daniel Miller's brother, Larry, runs the bakery and another brother, Harry Jr., runs the bulk food store.

At the Millers' complex, solar panels behind the buildings and a windmill atop the furniture store create energy that is stored in truck-sized batteries, in the same way an automobile generator charges a car battery.

In the furniture store, a cash register, a credit-card machine and a copier all run off the energy produced by the solar panels. In the bakery, the ovens run on gas. The cheese slicer in the bulk store is powered by compressed air.

"The world may run out of oil and gas," Miller said. "But we will always have the sun and wind."