Now when Falder looks across the parking lot, he sees horse manure.
“That’s new within the last few years,” he said.
But eight states with at least 1,000 Amish residents had higher rates of growth, led by Kentucky, which saw its population jump 200 percent, from 2,835 to 8,505, the study found.
The number of Amish “districts” — congregations that usually consist of two or three dozen families — has increased by 84 percent in the past 16 years, from 929 to 1,711.
The arrival of the Amish can raise land prices, and their self-reliance translates into a relatively low burden on public services.
Dennis Hubbard, a government official in Sheldon Township, Wisconsin, said the newcomers seldom appear in the court system, require long-term care or attend public schools.
“As they live their lives, they really do not become very involved with government,” said Hubbard, whose state has seen its Amish population climb 117 percent since 1992.
At least 350 Amish families migrated into Missouri, New York or Wisconsin between 2002 and last year. Over the same period, about 520 families moved out of Ohio and some 470 left Pennsylvania.
“One family doesn’t go — there is a group of them that goes, like two or three or four,” said Fannie Erb-Miller, national editor of the Budget, a weekly newspaper serving the Amish that is based in Sugarcreek, Ohio.
Once a settlement has six families and at least one minister, they qualify to send the Budget dispatches about their activities, often with an invitation for others to join them.
RSS