High on a hill north of the center of Ohio’s Amish country sits a typical Amish home. White, clapboard siding, manicured yard, flower and vegetable gardens, and neatly organized outbuildings, black buggies parked all in a row. A brown mare munches in the lush pasture.
As lulling and peaceful as this scene is, something almost magical happens, quietly, unassumingly, regularly in this picturesque setting. A family makes wall mops for Lehman’s, one of their most popular items.
It’s easy to see why these handy, dandy items sell so quickly. They are put together well, and serve an important purpose for domestic engineers everywhere. The wall mop head does an excellent job of gathering dust and cobwebs from unhandy places. It’s soft and pliable and cleans easily.
All this is thanks to the dedicated work of an Amish husband and wife, their teenage daughter, her grandmother and a cooperative neighbor lady. It’s definitely a team effort in producing the green microfiber mop heads.
Atlee and Mary head up the operation at Troycraft. They’ve done so now for 12 years in their neatly kept homestead.
Mary coordinates the production efforts. Her mother-in-law does the binding, and a widow friend makes the color trim on top. The teenager, Erma, helps out when she can. During the school year, she teaches at a nearby Amish school.
Mary had a straightforward answer as to how the business began.
“I didn’t like the commercial ones I bought at the store,” she said. So she began making her own.
Word got around, and the business was born. Friends, neighbors and strangers were the customers. Soon, Lehman’s came calling, and the jobs of the production crew of family and friends got much busier.
“We used to make hundreds of wall mops,” Mary said. “Now we make thousands in a year.”
“We are very glad Lehman’s contacted us,” Mary continued. “We hope their customers are pleased with our product.”
Mary works in a room with a view. She sits at her sewing machine by a window that overlooks pastures and farm fields in the valley below. Tree covered hillsides serve as a lovely backdrop.
Lehman’s Amish-made wall mops are truly homemade. Mary and her team can assure you of that.
Photos and story by Bruce Stambaugh. Last names and location withheld to protect privacy.
