Going into business with the Amish.

The plot twist of my life occurred after I filmed one Amish man installing my gravel driveway last November.

PART 2

(continued)

As the sun set over my brand new, gorgeous gravel driveway that an Amish company installed on my property towards the end of 2023, I sat down to take it all in while the outline of the Taconic Mountains blended into nightfall in the distance.

Being in Upstate New York, it was only 5PM. The darkness around that time of year causes a lot of people to get up and move out of this region. I found myself doing the opposite - I fled Florida to return back home, where I was born and raised, to plant my roots and make something of my life. I realized that darkness is where my most creative thoughts are born.

The darkness crept in quickly, giving me an idea that seemed crazy to my conscious mind.

“What if I ask this Amish company to build me something?” I said out loud in the stillness.

“Yeah… but what? You don’t know the business you want to run, how to farm, or quite frankly, what the hell you’re doing,” my subconscious mind quickly interjected.

It didn’t matter to me at that moment, though. I was basking in the genius I had just witnessed earlier that day, watching one man with very little help install a gravel driveway all by himself. I may not have known a damn thing about excavation, but I knew enough about life to know I had witnessed the best of the best in action.

“What if I don’t need to know? What if all I need is pure and unequivocal trust?”

I knew I could trust these men. I didn’t need to know any more than that. I’ve been through more crap than the average 31-one-year-old, which may make me rougher around the edges, but it also makes me astute when it comes to a person’s true intentions. I can size a person up before they utter a word to me. I can also see colors floating above or around people, which I have been told, is their aura.

The aura floating around the Amish men who had just departed from my land was something I hadn’t seen before. Ever. The purity of their intentions was otherworldly. I chuckled as I thought to myself, “I feel like I just worked with North American fairy people. The same fairy people I had just learned about on my trip to the Isle of Man.”

The irony of me calling them fairy people… Amish men are incredibly tall! Being of German and Dutch descent, they are formidable in their appearances. Pair their natural penchant for labor-intense jobs with their sharp minds, as individuals NOT cracked out on dopamine or blue light stimulation in the evening, and you have yourself the perfect excavator, builder, architect, and interior designer, all rolled into one.

I would soon find out they were all those things and more.

I knew it was time for me to jump.

I had emailed with them briefly before the gravel driveway project. I waited about one-week to see if my subconscious spit out another curveball at me. All I could think about was having something built with this company on my land. So I did it. I sent the email.

I did my best to put together a professional email with actual numbers in it. Looking back on it now, I am reminded how little I knew. And yet, they were so patient with me - they never once mocked me or let me know my lack of experience made this too difficult for them.

I felt incredibly nervous to dive headfirst into an intimidating industry I knew so little about. I will never forget their initial email response that put my worries to rest.

If only every teacher approached their students in this way! We have been made to feel asking ‘stupid questions’ breaks some kind of rule. Our schooling undoubtedly grooms us to be employees and not employers, keeping our heads down and minimizing questions that waste time. Wasted time equals wasted revenue, which is why the average American is afraid to do something they know little about.

But I wasn’t dealing with the average American here. I was dealing with a community of people that felt frozen in a time capsule. They weren’t American at all. Yet, they lived here, on the continent my relatives have lived on for 100-years. It was like experiencing the history of the UK that I so desperately wanted to move to, while staying in my home country. I realized I had manifested something beyond me on those Manx hikes, and the story was just getting started (if you haven’t read Part 1 of this series, check it out here).

We set a date in December for me to visit their conjoined property in Canajoharie, New York.

It was about a 1 hour and 15 minute drive from my apartment. I pulled out early on a snowy winter day to head due West for exploring an Amish home and property.

I had to pause and reflect on that during my drive. I certainly never imagined I would be invited to an Amish home in 2023, let’s just put it that way.

Not knowing what the expect, I pulled onto a long driveway in a gorgeous landscape to meet with John. He quickly called me to tell me I had pulled onto Sam’s driveway, and that his was the one closer to the road. I shifted my Jeep into reverse down to his property and got out to greet him.

Shyly, after we exchanged hello’s, he asked if it was OK if he jumped in my Jeep to drive up to Sam’s property, where we would be going over barn dimensions. I told him it would be no problem.

And there I found myself, driving my bright yellow Jeep through Amish country, heading to review barns for my property. It felt surreal.

We spent some time walking in and out of their various structures, of which there were many.

They were throwing out terms and material names I had never heard in my life. I embarrassingly had to ask them to repeat the words so I could write them down (and Google them later lol). Again, they never once giggled or rolled their eyes at me. If they had, I wouldn’t have blamed them.

By the end of the tour, I started to have a general understanding of what would work with my property. I knew I still had a lot of learning to do. I went home and looked up pins on Pinterest that articulated what was floating around my imagination. This was what I sent them in an email.

The next time I met with them, I almost lost my footing when they showed up with every single one of these images PRINTED OUT and stapled in a packet. They cared THAT MUCH to match up with my vision for the barn. I had never had a professional go to such lengths, ever, in my life. And mind you, this was my 5th real estate transaction!

“The Amish… print things?” I couldn’t avoid thinking it. I would later learn that these guys are more technologically proficient than people who live with electricity.

At the same time, my video of the Amish putting in my driveway was going massively viral on social media.

I had no idea the video I posted to my TikTok would go so viral. I was shocked at the international interest in these humble, quiet, and hard-working people. Having grown up in Upstate New York, I was accustomed to the Amish living nearby, but not close enough for me to know any concrete details about their way of life. I realized in the comment section of this video that the majority of the world has never seen an Amish person in the flesh.

I knew that the Amish had an aversion to electricity, which is why I didn’t film them up close. I just couldn’t help it as a videographer by trade. I felt like I would regret not capturing this little moment in time, perhaps the foundation for a documentary in the future.

Turns out capturing these guys when they visited my land was the best thing I ever did for their business.

When I met with the Amish after surveying their barns, (you know, that time they showed up with a Pinterest packet…) they left me speechless yet again. They were aware I had posted something to the internet about their business because people were CALLING about their services.

“I… I post videos and writing online. It’s part of a business model I’ve curated working for myself since 2015,” I said (probably not as eloquently. There was stuttering from my shock).

Before I share with you their response, I need you to understand the Amish are a people of few words. They’re also a people of little emotion. They believe it’s important to stay calm, cool, and collected. And boy do I have stories for you of their stoic disposition in action.

“That’s ok. You can keep filming us,” they said.

I realized in that moment that something very special was occurring. I was receiving an Amish blessing from the inside. At this point, I had done some research on their culture. Their driver (they don’t drive cars but allow us regular or ‘English’ folk to drive them so they don’t break their Amish community rules), who became my good friend, had tipped me off to how Amish-ness worked. He told me as follows:

• They are part of a greater community that is run by a bishop.

• The bishop functions as their ‘governor.’

• Whatever the bishop says… goes. Some bishops are strict. Others are lenient.

• In this particular community, the bishop was OK with the use of technology in growing businesses/earning money.

• The Amish I was working with carried track phones. They could make calls but did not connect to the internet.

• In their community, there was a communal laptop and other communal tech items kept in a space outside of their homes for business use.

• That way, they could access the tech for entrepreneurial needs without bringing it into their sacred homes/in front of their children.

How fascinating! The goal is to leverage technology only in a business sense, while removing themselves from its addicting grips. It’s safe to say just about every person in the English world suffers from some kind of smartphone or social media addiction. I will admit it firsthand! The Amish may be onto something here…

(Note: The Amish refer to every single culture/ethnicity that is not their own as English. I am not referring to English people in the UK.)

Ironically, my Amish videos on social media at this point were going massively viral due to the self-proclaimed ‘Amish culture experts’ in the comment section fighting with each other.

“Those aren’t Amish, they are Mennonite,” commented thousands of people.

“No, they are Amish, they just aren’t strict Amish,” said others.

“This has got to be fake. An Amish man next to a truck? No way,” continued the commenters.

And on and on they fought, causing my video to drop right smack in the middle of the social media algorithms.

Was I going into business with the Amish?

I knew it was a big deal that they gave me the OK to keep filming. I knew it meant their bishop was OK with the exposure. That meant I was allowed to capture every single element of the barn build and excavation… wow. My mind was racing. This blessing from them, I knew, would grow my accounts hundreds of thousands of followers. It did.

This blessing also brought them in business that booked them out to 2025, at least. As I write this, I am sure they are receiving inquiries from my videos that are, to this day, still in the TikTok and Instagram algorithms. There is nothing more divine in business than an arrangement that benefits both parties perfectly. It’s truly special. (And it’s not over - I still travel occasionally to their worksites to film them in action)

Finalizing the barn budget

The social media craze was nice and all… but I knew I needed to finalize a budget with these guys to make the dream a reality. I had no concept of what anything would cost when it came to new construction. I knew at this point I wanted as much wood as possible, and that I loved the 45-degree tongue-and-groove wood in the Amish barns I toured. That was about it!

I made a decision the day I met them to start budget negotiations that I was going to go all-in on trusting these guys. Every little decision I left up to them. They would always give me options to pick in the end, but I allowed them to define the options every single step of the way. It’s one of the best things I have ever done. I never once micromanaged them and the result truly speaks for itself.

It should come as no surprise that we decided to start our budget negotiations inside of a Stewart’s. It was a bitterly dark and cold winter day. The heat inside of the Stewart’s was not enough to ward off the single digit temps that flooded the building every time someone opened the door.

We spent around two-and-a-half hours going over everything from materials, to labor, to expectations. The figure they hit me with this first day was way out of my budget, which sent my nervous system into a spiral while I tried to appear relaxed and easy-going (lol). The Amish have an exquisite interior and exterior design taste that hikes a price up very quickly.

I felt sad having to squash their vision, but they seemed to expect back-tracking from the figure they laid on the table.

“That is just nowhere near what I can pay out of pocket on this iteration,” I said. “But I understand why the figure is that price - you guys have picked out amazing materials and accessories for this barn. I never want to be someone who undercuts someone else’s artistic vision.”

They smiled.

“That’s ok. We wanted to come out of the gates with a larger figure that we can chip away at,” they said.

Phew. So they expected my inability to pay for this first estimate… I thought to myself.

I am not going to lie - I had a few out-of-body experiences during this Stewart’s negotiation. I didn’t realize their driver had captured the photo above, but I am glad he did. You can see in my body language I am tense, stressed, and most importantly, confused. Here I was… me… little ole me with zero understanding of construction materials or which choice was the right one. I panicked a lot that day. I am sure they saw my flushed cheeks a few times. They’d jump in when they saw I was unable to articulate an answer with suggestions.

God bless these men… I thought to myself over and over again.

After a few hours and many, many black Stewart’s coffees (these guys drink, I am not kidding, anywhere from 5 to 10 cups of black coffee per day), we had reached a rough figure. Well, sort of. We had reached an understanding that they would go back to the drawing board on different elements to try and get the price down. I did not walk away from this meeting knowing completely that this barn project was going to happen.

I wanted it to happen so, so badly. There was nothing I could do but wait and hope that this was meant to be. I knew in my bones it was meant to be… so although my conscious mind continued to worry when I hadn’t heard from them for a few weeks after, my subconscious tried to remind me that somewhere in a future timeline a barn exists on my 6.74 acres of farmland. I just knew it.

Towards the end of February, I received an email from the duo. They invited me back to their farms to finalize a budget. At this point, we had chatted on-and-off on the phone and through email to identify where the biggest cost cuts might occur. This invitation to their homes confirmed to me that they were going to make this project work with me… hopefully.

At the same time, I had no idea my social media was securing them business, or even more incredulously, that they, along with their driver, had read my book Freelance Your Way to Freedom. They had done their research on ME and were ready to fully trust my vision and commit, just as I felt with them.

It was time for me to head West.

It was one of those warmer February days that hints March is just around the corner, with more sun peeking out from behind the clouds than anyone in Upstate New York had seen since the end of October. It felt hopeful. The kind of day where even though it’s only 38 degrees outside, you pass the classic Upstate New York man walking down the snowy sidewalk in a T-shirt and shorts to grab his morning coffee in town. It’s still cold, sure, but there is a pent-up energy that’s curated from months and months of cabin fever.

I pulled onto their driveway to see them both beaming with smiles, outside with their kids working on various projects.

I parked my Jeep and jumped out. “Hello miss Alex! How are we feeling today?” said John.

I smiled and said, “I think we are feeling very good. Is… is it a go gentlemen?” I couldn’t help but get right to the point. I think they appreciate that about me.

“We got the numbers to where you want them. Let’s dive in,” said John. I glanced over at a table with papers, maps, and a BluRail Excavating contract for new projects. I knew it was all but confirmed.

“Wow, I really am going into business with the Amish,” I thought to myself. And yet again, I had no idea what loomed on the horizon teaming up with these amazing individuals. I’d soon learn the world is beyond prejudice to this group of successful, cheerful, and charismatic individuals who keep entirely to themselves. In just a few short months, I’d find myself defending the Amish to millions of people online.

Part 3 coming next week! If you’ve been enjoying these articles, drop a comment, say hello, or consider a paid subscription! I am hoping to support my farm entirely from Substack so I can give seeds, produce, etc. away for free.

To read part 1, click here.