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Top Reasons for Buying Amish-crafted Furniture

Buying green is the right thing to do for those who understand the significance of global warming. Whether it is through National Geographic’s ongoing coverage of the issue, Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth or simple personal observations connecting the observable data about population growth and dwindling resources, it makes sense to be more protective of our environment when we buy furniture. Although the use of fast-growing renewables, such as bamboo, is increasing, such furniture is usually manufactured in Southeast Asia and requires a long shipping trip to the states.

Amish-crafted furniture is now America’s premier source of solid wood furniture although most furniture of all types is now manufactured overseas. The reason for this dramatic geographic shift is that the American corporate model encourages manufacturers to move production overseas to take advantage of developing economies where labor costs might be as low as three dollars a day. Furniture manufacture is labor intensive and therefore now is made primarily outside of the states. However, due to a number of cost-saving factors the Amish continue to remain competitive in this arena with lower wages and bare minimum retirement costs. The Amish are actually exempt from paying social security since they guarantee to take care of all their aging and disabled in their own homes and using their church insurance system to cover medical costs.

In addition, Amish-crafted furniture coming primarily from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Homes County, Ohio and Northern Indiana, carries a strong green label. Whereas some of the best furniture coming from Southeast Asia is actually made from lumber originating in the United States, the Amish are using trees harvested in their own backyard. The extended Ohio River valley provides outstanding timber and the freight costs to get it to the drying kilns and the builder are minimal.

Most Amish workshops are small—usually begun with family workers, and then adding neighbors. Since all shop workers are drawn from the Amish community, and automobile use is forbidden by faith practice, workers live within walking or bicycling distance. A few might arrive to work in a horse-drawn buggy but even that is avoided if possible due to the unnecessary work of harnessing, feeding and grooming the horse.

Packaging and delivery adds extensive energy resource use to most furniture. Goods manufactured overseas are triple wrapped in a layer of soft foam next to the furniture, followed by a 2-3 inch Styrofoam block layer to insulate corners and fragile parts of the furniture from bumps and bruises in the shipping cycle, and finally a heavy layer of cardboard to hold all the above together. Most amish shops provide no packaging and our trucks pick up the furniture and blanket wrap the pieces in reusable cotton blankets to transport the furniture to our store. When House of Oak & Sofas delivers furniture to your home, we also use blanket wrapping: if a customer picks up their purchase we encourage them to bring reusable blankets to pad their purchase.

Small shop efficiency saves energy by including a small floor plan in the shop design. Large manufacturing complexes rely on tow motors, conveyor belts, drying ovens and overhead transport systems to add efficiency to the manufacturing process. All these systems rely on fossil fuels and add energy cost to the product. Amish-crafted furniture eliminates most, if not all, of the above energy uses in their manufacturing process.

It is easy to see why Amish-crafted furniture has an incredibly small carbon footprint which simply means less pollution is produced. In addition to the energy savings listed above, the Amish do not draw power from the national electric grid due to their belief system which forbids buying electricity. Therefore, energy use is small with kerosene or propane lamps dimly lighting the shops, when the sun is not shining brightly. The Amish use machinery with air-powered motors which draw their energy from the single diesel engine shop compressor. In Ohio, where House of Oak & Sofas buys most of their Amish-crafted furniture, the Amish community of Holmes County has become one of the leaders in converting to solar powered devices as solar energy is considered a gift from the heavens.

Every piece of wood is used in an Amish shop. Often small toys or knick-knacks are designed to use abundant wood scraps that might be produced from a certain design. For years we sold hundreds of end and coffee tables where the leg was produced from left-over wood when round table tops were cut from a square blank. Scraps are often sent to a recycling facility where they are ground to be used in further manufacturing or in some cases are burned to heat the shop.

House of Oak & Sofas has sold Amish-crafted furniture for years based solely on its quality and long life expectancy. Now, for the consumer who cares about the environment and efficient use of natural resources, there is more reason than ever to buy American-made Amish-crafted furniture.

View some of the House of Oak and Sofas Amish-crafted furniture collections or better yet, stop by our store at 2265 South Main Street in the Duke's Plaza Shopping Center

Keep sending me questions about your decorating problems — direct them to merle@houseofoak.com.

Merle Wenger