Advice On Buying Amish Farm

You might be able to set it up as say an 1920 homestead. Perhaps put a small outbuilding near the road and that would be your office/computer center with electricity. Keep the house as is. Water has been piped into structures for a long time, typically gravity from an uphill source.

Perhaps offer 1-2 week stays with parties arriving/departing on Mondays/Wednesday/Fridays. That way there would be someone experienced to help the newbies other than yourself. Up at dawn, chores through the day, oil lamps for a couple of hours in the evening. Offer stays from say early spring until early winter.

During winter, if it will just be you there, perhaps arrange to temporarily alter the house to essentially an apartment using only the room with the wood stove and kitchen with the wood range.

Any suggestions for economical advertising?

personally, I'd be worried about pesticide/herbicide use

in our area, the Amish are the worst users of these
even if they do it legally, they over-use

depends on your area, and what they were growing where on the farm

Most places in Missouri, there are no building inspectors, etc, etc. Health inspectors are only interested in commercial operations.

In N. Missouri if you own over six or seven (forget the exact #) acres then you don't need septic (not true in S. Missouri due to porous rock and more easily contaminated ground water).

I wouldn't be to concerned with the property tax raising with improvements. I suspect your property taxes will not be over $300-400 A YEAR anyway.

Great Thread!

All good advice from what I can tell. Eagerly looking to hear more about it. Pics would be great too!

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We will meet in the golden city, called the New Jerusalem,
All our pain and all our tears will be no more.....

Hi !
We currently live completely off the grid about an hour outside Las Vegas. Our house has all the regular amenities, even though we have no public utilities. Our electrical needs are provided by a diesel generator hooked up to a bank of 32 batteries and inverter; it runs once a day. (We have friends that have their place running almost exclusively off solar with the same set-up.) Our well pump is solar, and the water heater, stove are propane. We use direct TV as I'm sure many here do, and our internet service is a satellite connection through Wild Blue - we tried using a wireless modem, but our cell service is terribly unreliable up here and it was a real joke to try and get any kind of decent connection.
We were leery of what living off the grid would mean, but after a year up here, we love it!
The place you are looking at sounds great - we would actually love to have our same type situation someplace with real trees! We have found that we are much more responsible with our power now that we generate our own, nothing is allowed to seep energy! All electronics are on power strips so that when they are not in use they are completely turned off (you'd be surprised at how much power you save yearly by not letting appliances slowly suck away electricity.)
I think your idea of having people stay there is plausible as well. My best friend Brynne, paid for a 6 week herbal apprenticeship at a Maine farm, which she really enjoyed, and it's apparently very popular.
At any rate, good luck with things - I sure hope it all works out for you!

Oh, here's a pic of our "off the grid" house....

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Donna and Lakota
Smiling Wolf Ranch
Cold Creek, NV

"If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."
- Unknown