DUNKINSVILLE, Ohio (AP) ? Despite a tradition of shunning modern technology, the Amish in southern Ohio are finding ways to use solar energy, windmill power and the Internet to produce and market their homemade goods.
Electricity generated in the outside world and brought into Amish communities through power lines is usually forbidden, but generating their own power is considered acceptable.
That's especially true for businesses like the one run by Daniel Miller and his brothers, where family members come together for a common purpose.
"What we might do in our business, we would not do in our homes," said Miller, who runs the family's furniture store in Adams County, about 70 miles east of Cincinnati. "That is more by tradition than anything else."
Solar panels have also become prevalent among Amish in northeast Ohio, where hundreds see getting energy from the sun as a safe alternative to natural gas and kerosene as a source of light.
At Miller's Furniture, Bakery and Bulk Food, freezers, cash registers and other equipment are operated by energy generated by a windmill and solar panels at the family's country complex. The family, which also makes and sells pies, cheeses and bread, stores the electricity in truck-sized batteries.
In 30 years, they haven't had to pay a single electric bill."The world may run out of oil and gas," Miller said. "But we will always have the sun and wind."
The family also is using Internet advertising to attract non-Amish customers from Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton. The Millers hired ZoneFree Ohio Marketing and Public Relations, a public relations company that highlights the family's various products on a website that caters to tourists.
"Some people see them as simple and backward," said Frank Satullo, ZoneFree Ohio founder. "And yet they went 'green' years ago. These plain-living people in horses and buggies are way ahead of the world."
At the bottom of the ZoneFree website featuring the Millers' store, Satullo runs a disclaimer that his company, not the Miller family, created and maintain the site.
"I have to say that, because, of course, the Millers can't have their own website," Satullo said. "But I can use the Internet for them."
Miller also buys ads in newspapers, which usually run in a paper's Internet site as well. But it's an advertisement he'll never see.
"We just can't go there," he said. "But, yes, it is a tool that can be used to tell people we're here."
Miller's Furniture, Bakery and Bulk Foodhttp://www.ohiotraveler.com/ohio_amish_stores.htm
