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[D]erby realtor Dan McClure first started receiving letters from Amish farmers about ten years ago. The authors asked for details on available farmland in the Northeast Kingdom — McClure’s specialty.
On a December day five years ago, a group of them hired a non-Amish van driver and called McClure from St. Johnsbury. He invited them out of the cold to stay in his house that night, then showed them properties the next day. Since then, he’s sold a half-dozen pieces of land around Brownington to Amish farmers, and at least four more families have settled nearby. He says another community may be heading to the North Troy area soon.
McClure has become something of an expert on the local Amish community, and often acts as a liaison between the farmers and the world beyond Brownington. When a relative in Pennsylvania or Ohio passes away, McClure may be the first person to find out and relay the information. “I’m getting to be the bearer of bad news every time I pull in here,” he said as he approached one farm recently.
“We have internet. We can do so many things differently than they do,” he says. But McClure, who grew up on farms in West Glover and Irasburg, appreciates the Amish families’ work ethic and respect for the land. “They do things the way that I wish they still were.”
On this week’s podcast, McClure talks about why helping the Amish community is the proudest work of his real estate career. Molly Veysey, director of the Orleans County Historical Society, describes the relationship between area Amish families and their neighbors. And VTDigger’s Anne Wallace Allen discusses reporting on a welcoming but famously private community.
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Dan McClure [driving]: We’re going to be coming right by one of them right here.
I’m riding through Brownington with our reporter Anne Wallace Allen and a realtor named Dan McClure. We’re on sort of an unusual farm tour.
Dan McClure: There was nothing here two years ago.
Anne Wallace Allen: They built that barn?
Dan McClure: That barn was put up in a day.
This barn looks practically brand new. It’s what you imagine some of the weathered old barns around Vermont looked like when they were first built. And across the driveway there’s a boxy new two-story house with aluminum siding, which belongs to a farmer named Andy Shetler.
Dan McClure: Typically I just pull up and somebody comes out.
Dan asks us to wait in his truck, because Andy doesn’t know we’re coming. We couldn’t let him know, because he doesn’t use a phone. Or email. Or electricity.
He’s part of a wave of Amish farmers who are leaving their homes in Pennsylvania and Ohio. And they’re coming here – to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
What were your first impressions when you heard there’s this wave of Amish people coming here?
Anne Wallace Allen: I just was so interested and curious. Like everybody else, I’ve seen the Amish. They’re so picturesque and they’re so distinctive, and I was very surprised to hear that there were Amish people in the Northeast Kingdom and that I hadn’t heard about it before.
When you talk about them being distinctive, what makes this group different from your average, everyday modern Vermonters?
Anne Wallace Allen: Well, the Amish I’ve seen in Pennsylvania – they’re driving the carts. That’s what they’re known for, their horse-drawn carts. They don’t use electricity, and they wear black, and the men wear these broad brimmed hats with a flat brim, and the women wear these long dresses with an apron. They look completely out of – you know, they’re from a different era. They look like they’re from the 19th century. And most of what they do seems to be from the 19th century. I knew that they didn’t have electricity, they didn’t use electricity or phones or the internet.
The interesting thing about Brownington is that it’s home to this museum that includes several 19th century buildings. So the Amish kind of fit in well with that setting.
Molly Veysey: We see them all the time.
Anne Wallace Allen: How do you know it’s them?
Molly Veysey: They clip clop by on their horse and carriages. It adds the ambience quite nicely at the Old Stone House Museum.
Anne Wallace Allen: Molly Veysey is the director of the Old Stone House Museum. She’s hired the Amish to work on her buildings, because they know these old building techniques. They’ve done roofing, and they’ve even built structures for them.
Molly Veysey: For instance, the Lawrence Barn needed reroofing earlier this year. They assisted us in reroofing it. They got it done in a day.
There’s a whole crew of men who are really knowledgeable in those building techniques.
Anne Wallace Allen: The first thing they did when they got to Vermont was they looked for farms or land. They look for inexpensive farms that they could fix up, or houses that were in really bad shape that they could afford and fix up. And then they built these big gorgeous barns together.
Farming, from the few conversations I had with them, farming seems to be just absolutely central to their way of life. They also do woodworking, they make quilts, they make baked goods and sell them at farm stands. They are sort of diverse. You know, they they plow with horses and they do their farm work manually. They cut down trees manually, they do it all.
When you started researching this story, did you have any concerns going in about treating with sensitivity a population that is known for being pretty private? And also probably is not going to read what we write about them – they don’t really interact with the media, they don’t go online – how did you go about approaching that?
Anne Wallace Allen: I did feel really reticent about approaching them at first. And I was really grateful that Dan McClure could serve as a go-between for us, because he could make it much less awkward for us to suddenly arrive out of the blue.
Dan has a good understanding of them because he first showed them the farms. He invited them to stay in his house one night when they had asked for a place to sleep in his barn. And that kind of forged a little bit of an alliance.
Dan McClure: They had written letters – probably over the last 10 years, we’d get letters asking for different information on farms and stuff.
Five years ago is when they first started coming up. Andy was one of the first ones that I met.
Do you remember the first time that you started showing properties to Andy?
Dan McClure: Yeah. They called me up from St. Johnsbury telling me they were on their way up. And this was in December, it’s like three o’clock in the afternoon, four o’clock in the afternoon. And they wanted to look at farms.
I said, by the time you get up here it’s going to be dark. I asked them where they were staying. And they said that they wanted to camp out somewhere outside, and did I have a farm where they could set up tents? And I said, well, it’s supposed to be like 10 degrees tonight – because it’s December. They asked if I had a barn. I said, yeah, I have a barn as well. “We’d be happy to stay in the barn.”
So I’m driving up. And as I get to the barn, I just drove straight through, brought them up to the house and told him that they could stay here.
Anne Wallace Allen: And so when we would get to a farm, Dan would get out and talk to the Amish people first and see if it was okay for us to come in and meet with them. And in each case, we met in the barn with somebody who was working in there and had our conversations in the barn.
The Amish farmers we visited asked not to be recorded or photographed. And some didn’t want to talk to us at all.
Can I ask how that conversation went?
Dan McClure: I said that you’re doing a story on what attracted them to Vermont. He said, I’d rather not talk about it…I don’t want people to use it one way or the other. Didn’t want to be interviewed.
What were your impressions of the people we actually talked to?
Anne Wallace Allen: They were so polite. They put down their tools and talked to us when we arrived without any prior notice. Levi Kaufman was shoeing a horse in the barn when we showed up, and he put down his tools to talk to us, and I just felt a lot of respect and gratitude to them for for sharing their story with us.
I was surprised at how calm and unassuming and polite and friendly they were. They were very good at at deflecting perhaps intrusive questions about why they had moved or how many children they had or things like that, but they were very skilled at doing that in a polite and genial way. They answered our questions as well as they could, given that they didn’t really want to go into a lot of detail about their decision making.
Where do you think that tendency towards privateness comes into play?
Anne Wallace Allen: Well, the first person we talked to, Andy Shetler, he’s a little bit older. He said he didn’t want to explain why they had chosen the Northeast Kingdom because he didn’t want to have other people going up there to get great deals on land too, and drive up land prices. He felt that he discovered a really perfect place for them and he didn’t want to advertise it.
Did Dan talk to you about why these families are migrating to Vermont?
Anne Wallace Allen: He did, although that was one of the hardest questions to answer when I was up there. He said that he thinks that with 10 or 12 children, they just need room to spread out. Because they do very much want all of their kids to farm too. So with each generation, they need a lot more land. He said he felt that they were running out of land in Pennsylvania and Ohio where they had been.
I asked Dan how working with the Amish was different from working with his usual clients.
Dan McClure: They don’t talk a lot. So it’s hard to get anything out of them. They just want to see property and you show it to them. And when you feel you’ve found a property for them, you can kind of see it from the interaction and the questions they’re asking. If they’re not asking a lot of questions, there’s not a lot of interest. But once you get to a property that they seem to have some interest in, can see that it could work for them, then you’re bombarded with questions.
What kinds of questions? What sorts of things are they asking?
Dan McClure: Well, first of all, the types of soils. How much is open, how much is wooded. And then, is there any other available properties nearby? And then they also want to know where the banks are and hardware stores. You know, places for supplies. They want to know how how far things are because everything’s done with a horse and buggy, and you know, distance is an issue.
Anne Wallace Allen: I know that in most cases when I would ask directly, so why here and why did you decide to leave Pennsylvania? The answers were things like, Well, my uncle had some land here. Or we have family who was looking at this area. It sounds like they all moved together, so they didn’t give very clear reasons for why they were doing what they were doing.
How big of a group are we talking about here? Did you get a sense of the overall scope of this migration and the impact it’s had on the area?
Anne Wallace Allen: Andy Shetler said that that 10 families have now moved up. Those are very large families, because they do have 10 to 12 kids. I can’t remember who said this, but they were estimating 50 or 60 people.
I was talking to Molly Veysey about — they have an annual fish fry at the Brownington Elementary School. The Amish put it on as a fundraiser for their medical costs because they don’t have health insurance. And Molly said 400 people came to it. So they’ve obviously gotten to know the community, the families that are here.
Dan McClure [driving]: This property here, you can see the white house, was the first farm purchased. It was really rundown. Needed a lot of work. I would’ve torn the house down. They fixed it up, built a new barn, cleaned it up.
And did you get a sense from Dan about how big of an impact it’s had on the real estate market out there? If they’re buying these huge properties and coming in all as one group, is that having an effect on the overall makeup of the town?
Anne Wallace Allen: I did ask Dan that, and he was pretty low key about the impact it’s had over the last five years. I mean, he has sold a bunch of farms that he wouldn’t have otherwise. And in some cases, they would approach the owners. Like in one case, it was a couple who was living at the farm who were elderly. And when that the Amish approached them and talked to them, they said, Oh, we would like to sell our farm. And they moved. So they hadn’t been planning to until they were approached about selling it.
So it’s made an impact, and it’s all of it in Brownington. It’s a little a little real estate boomlet.
What what’s the relationship like between these families coming in and their neighbors, who might be Brownington natives, people who have been there for generations and generations?
Anne Wallace Allen: By all accounts, it’s friendly. Molly says that she has been interacting on the phone with one of the Amish women who organizes the fish fry, and the lady uses her neighbor’s phone to call when she needs to. And I asked the Amish themselves how they were getting along with the neighbors and they said that they work with them and they get help from them. Andy Shetler has a neighbor who serves as his broker when he sells his watermelons and his other melons down in Boston. She interacts with the market, and she also drives them down there. They sound like they have a cooperative relationship with their neighbors.
There are times when Dan plays this role too. At one of the farms we visited, a woman brought out a letter she’d received from a state agency that she didn’t understand. Dan told her he’d helped her get the right forms submitted.
Dan McClure [to woman]: You have to fill out a current use application. I’ll see if I can get one online.
Anne Wallace Allen: You could see the trust between them. That they were — it’s almost like he was an emissary from the outside world, and he was translating that letter, which was from the tax department or something, about some complicated property tax thing.
Later on I asked him how he felt about playing this role.
Dan McClure: You know, we have internet. We can do so many things differently than they do. They do things the way that I wish they still were. Because I grew up on a farm and, you know, it’s all hands on. Technology today has kind of taken a lot of that away.
And so yeah, I still have to — if there’s something going on in Pennsylvania, Ohio, family issues — I get a phone call. I’m kind of the guy in between. So I have to drive up and give them the bad news or tell them what’s going on.
So yeah, like today, they’re just not sure what they’re supposed to be doing with that document that they got in the mail. And I know what to do with it.
I’m curious, when you talk about things the way they were versus how they are now, what do you feel like is lost when we work more with technology and less with hands on technique?
Dan McClure: Work ethics. You know, I think the new generation coming up is too busy to do their work because they’re on the phone all the time. They’re checking the internet. I grew up on a farm and we had our duties, we had our chores, and that’s what you did every day. And I just don’t think that the work ethic is there anymore.
I see it from other people in the construction field. They say they can can’t find good employees anymore because they get there when they want, then half the time they’re on their phones. And I know a few businesses — builders that decided to not be contractors anymore — because they can’t find help.
Based on what you found out up there, what seems to be next for the Amish community in Vermont?
Anne Wallace Allen: Well, Dan told me that there is another group of Amish people looking near Jay, I think in North Troy. Dan said that he thinks that they want to separate themselves a little from the existing Amish community because they don’t want to infringe on their land. Because, you know, both communities will be expanding. So it sounds as though more people could be coming. Nobody has bought farms, but they have been approaching realtors up there about buying farms.
We’ve seen a lot of examples in recent years of Vermont towns not necessarily being friendly to groups of outsiders, and in some cases, specifically religious minorities. There was the Mormon project down in Southern Vermont. There’s been debate about refugee resettlement in Rutland. What do you think it is that is different about this group, that makes the people in the area a little bit more friendly and more willing to cooperate?
Anne Wallace Allen: I don’t know if the if the Amish knew this about Vermont before they came, but I do think that people in Vermont respect hard work. They certainly respect agriculture, especially in that area. And the Amish fit in very, very well in many ways in a community that hasn’t visibly changed since, you know, the 19th century in many ways. The Amish love the dirt roads because it’s easier on their horses. They farm, and they build barns, and they work with the forest and the woods. So these are all things that — you know they actually fit in really, really well to the community that’s already there.
They have like these kind of very Vermont-y ideals to begin with.
Anne Wallace Allen: They do. They’re even — they don’t specifically want at all organic certification, but they farm with organic principles. They’re also tough and hardy, which I think, those are qualities respected in Vermont. You know, they work outside, and they cut their own wood. We saw a lot of Amish people when we were up there barefoot, who — even though it was in the 40s probably, it was cold. I mean, I had a down jacket on — they walk around barefoot. And they hang their laundry outside, and they tough it out. They do have a gas generator, probably for heating their water in the house. But you know, they’re not coming up and building the type of structures that would stick out in a rural Vermont town.
If you didn’t see the carriages in there, and the black garments hanging on their lines, you wouldn’t necessarily know a farm was Amish. Except that there’s no cars in the driveway.
Dan McClure: I really like working with the Amish because what they do with the land and their culture, I guess, reminds me a lot of my upbringing. I think that’s one of my — 34 years of experience in real estate — one of my greatest “sale,” I guess, is getting them up here and working with them.
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