Plain Folk as Snowbirds

With winter snows covering the fields and your neighbors covering the necessary chores, increasing numbers of Amish are flying south to Florida for a winter break in the sun.

In other Florida resort towns, the Amish family might seem out of place. But not in Pinecraft, a small enclave on the eastern, inland edge of bustling, tourist-friendly Sarasota. The little town is an Amish tourism resort attracting thousands from the cold North and Midwest desperate for a bit of warm winter sunshine.

No one knows exactly how many Amish arrive each year. But 3,000 is a number people in Pinecraft bandy about, though that does not count those staying on nearby Siesta Key. The Pinecraft Neighborhood Association says there are perhaps 500 habitable dwellings in and around the village. Most Pinecraft Amish visitors go for just a few weeks at a time before heading back, and most stagger their trips between Christmas and Easter. There are a few — perhaps several dozen Amish — who spend the whole year in Pinecraft.

“It’s like a ghost town during the summer here, but around the end of August, beginning of September, people start coming down and checking on their houses. Then they go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and then come down to stay for the winter. They leave right before Easter,” said Kathryn Graber, owner of the the Village Cupboard, a “bent and dent” used-goods store on the edge of the village. Graber counted 11 buses, each hauling about 50 people, arriving the Saturday after Christmas. The largest company into Pinecraft is Pioneer Trails.

The buses are usually greeted by family members, friends or just curious tourists watching the squinting, plainly dressed Amish disembark, some of them stepping into the Florida sun for the first time. Bus arrivals brings a buzz to the village. Many of the passengers are tired from the journey — almost 24 hours from Ohio’s Amish country — but the mood is still ebullient. One Pinecraft resident recalls an Amish woman getting off the bus with enough ground cherries, corn and cheese (all Northern specialties) to last the winter. The arriving Amish step into a world very different from the one they left.

Gone are the hills and horse-drawn buggies back home. Instead there are trees drooping with colorful grapefruit, towering palms, tropical flowers and that Florida sun.

Everybody goes to Florida for the winter.