I’ve Been Quietly Working With Amos Miller. Today, We Can Finally Talk About What We’ve Been Building.
Some of you know pieces of this story already.
Most of you don't.
For the past several months, I have been working directly with Amos Miller, alongside @RobertBarnes, on something that started as an attempt to solve a very specific problem for one Amish farmer and has grown into something considerably larger.
And today, we're finally at the point where I can start talking publicly about it.
Many people in this community know Amos.
Some of you have bought food from his farm for years.
Others know his name because of the legal battles surrounding his farm, his private association, raw milk, traditional food, and the rather extraordinary amount of government attention one Amish farmer in Pennsylvania has managed to attract over the years.
My involvement started much more simply.
Robert Barnes contacted me because Amos needed help.
So I started talking to Amos.
Then I kept talking to Amos.
A lot.
And the more I learned about how his operation actually worked behind the scenes, the more obvious it became that simply building him another website wasn't going to fix the underlying problem.
Amos is Amish.
He isn't sitting at a computer checking dashboards.
He isn't logging into ten different software platforms.
He isn't managing DNS records, payment processors, databases, customer-service software, analytics, automated fulfillment systems, or any of the other technological nonsense that those of us living in the modern world have somehow decided is necessary to sell a gallon of milk.
That creates a problem.
Because somebody has to operate those systems.
And when the person who owns the farm cannot realistically operate or audit the technology himself, an enormous amount of trust gets placed in whoever stands between the farmer and the technology.
So we decided to build something different.
Not merely another online store.
Not another technology company owning the relationship between a farmer and his customers.
And not a system where an Amish producer has to become a computer operator just to participate in modern commerce.
We built the Amish Products Association.
The original purpose was to create a much stronger membership and operational structure around Amos and his farm.
But while sitting with Amos at the farm, the question became obvious:
What happens when another Amish farmer down the road has milk, meat, cheese, produce, furniture, or something else people want to buy?
Does that farmer need to hire his own technology company?
Build his own website?
Learn e-commerce?
Hire customer service?
Manage payment systems?
Figure out shipping software?
Probably not.
What if the infrastructure could exist once, and Amish farmers and producers could simply do what they actually know how to do?
Produce things.
That is where this became bigger than a website for Amos.
The Association is being built as a bridge between two worlds that generally have very little idea how to communicate with each other.
On one side are Amish farmers, producers, craftsmen, and families who often intentionally live without the technology most modern businesses depend upon.
On the other side are people all over the country actively looking for exactly what those families produce.
Our job is to build the bridge between them without requiring the Amish side to abandon what makes it Amish in the first place.
Amos is the Founding Producer of that effort.
And after months of legal work, technical work, rebuilding systems, recovering information, designing operations that can function through things like paper and fax machines, and figuring out how this entire thing can work without simply creating another middleman who controls everything...
we are finally bringing it to market.
Before I share Amos's letter, there is one important thing to understand about how this works.
There Are Two Sites — And They Serve Two Different Purposes
This is important because what we have built is not a public retail store with a membership fee acting as a paywall.
It is a Private Membership Association.
The Association itself is at:
https://amishproductsassociation.org
That is the organization and membership side of the system.
That is where someone applies to become a member of the Association.
The products are located separately at:
https://amishproductsassociation.com
But the .com site is not intended to operate as an ordinary public retail storefront.
Access to the private member product platform is provided after membership in the Association has been approved.
So the process is deliberately straightforward:
1. Apply for membership at AmishProductsAssociation.org
2. The membership application is reviewed
3. Once approved as a member, access is granted to the private member product platform at AmishProductsAssociation.com
4. Approved members can then access the products made available through the Association
And there is an important distinction here:
Membership approval is not necessarily instantaneous.
Submitting the membership application does not mean a computer immediately unlocks a store because somebody crossed a payment screen.
You are applying to become a member of a private association.
There is therefore an actual membership process.
Applications may require a short period of time to be reviewed and approved before access to the member product platform is granted.
That distinction is intentional.
The .org is the Association.
The .com is the private member product platform.
You first become a member of the Association.
Once your membership is approved, you can access what is available to members.
That structure is central to what we have been building.
There is a lot more to explain about why we built it this way, how the Association works, and where this goes from here.
I will be writing about all of that.
But I don't think I should be the person to make today's announcement.
Amos should.
So below is the letter Amos wrote to his members explaining what is happening.
I have deliberately left his letter exactly as he wrote it.
From The Desk of Amos Miller: ATTENTION - Important Announcement
Dear Members,
We have great news from Miller’s Organic Farm.
Our goal here at the farm is to make nutrient-dense, whole foods from grass-fed animals available to our members now and also for many future generations to come.
As you may already know, we have had an extensive amount of legal challenges over the past 15 years. But in the past few years, with the help of Robert Barnes and the support of you, our members, things have started to change in a better direction.
This letter is to announce the change that is taking place, and also to announce the new website and membership platform that Matthew Ennis has been building for our farm, with help from Robert Barnes and his team.
For many years, we have used the term “Private Membership Association” to help us through the legal situation. But the structure that was used in the past was not properly built according to the law, and it did not stand the way it needed to stand. Because of that, it did not give the farm and the members the protection that was intended, and it also caused additional legal problems.
A proper membership association needs more than just a name. It needs proper bylaws, proper governance, member voting rights, member affirmation and re-affirmation, clear membership structure, and a model where the funds are used to benefit the members and support the mission of the association.
Robert Barnes and his team have helped guide this legal structure, and Matthew Ennis has come on board to build and manage the new PMA and ecommerce platform so that our members can have a better, clearer, and more secure way to continue supporting the farm and receiving products.
Miller’s Organic Farm is excited to have this new structure and new website in place. We want to welcome you aboard to this new PMA website and membership platform, which has been built to better support the farm, the members, and the mission for years to come.
As you may know, the elders in our community discourage using modern technology, and that is why we had a third party running the Miller’s Organic Farm website, the Amos Miller Organic Farm website, and FarmMatch orders in the past.
Those will no longer be accessible in the near future, so welcome aboard to our new PMA website. This new structure should help the farm and the members be in a much better position if any future legal situation should arise.
The local government, known as the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, still has a lawsuit against the farm, so the sooner we get aboard on the new site, it should be a win-win for all.
From Amos at Miller’s Organic Farm
Wishing you happy shopping and healthy eating for years to come.
Our community loves to farm and likes to work with God’s nature, and we are grateful to have Matthew Ennis come on board to build and manage this new PMA and ecommerce platform, and also with Robert Barnes and his staff close by to assist.
And most of all, we thank God for His great mercy and protection for allowing us to continue our mission in serving our members with life-giving, full-of-flavor, nutrient-dense foods.
That is Amos.
And that is essentially why I became involved.
I did not get into this because the world desperately needed another e-commerce website.
It doesn't.
I became interested because there is a fascinating problem sitting underneath all of this.
We have communities producing things people actively want, while those same communities are among the least equipped — sometimes intentionally — to operate inside the technological infrastructure required to reach those people.
The normal solution is for somebody else to step into the middle.
And once that happens, the person controlling the website, database, payment system, customer list, marketing, and communications can quickly have more practical control over the business than the farmer actually producing the product.
I don't think that is a particularly good model.
So we've tried to invert it.
The technology is supposed to serve the farmer.
The farmer is not supposed to serve the technology.
Amos should be able to walk onto his farm, talk to his family, look at his animals, make decisions about what they produce, and receive understandable information about what is happening in the business without needing to know what an API is.
Another Amish producer should be able to participate without hiring a programmer.
Members should have a clear relationship with the Association.
Producers should know what they sold.
Operations should be transparent.
Records should belong to the organization they were created for.
And nobody operating the technology — including me — should be able to turn themselves into an irreplaceable gatekeeper.
That last part matters to me.
I am building this system specifically so that Amos and the Association do not have to depend on me forever.
The systems, documentation, data, processes, and infrastructure are being built so another competent operator can take over if that ever becomes necessary.
That's how technology should work.
And Amos's farm is only the beginning.
The broader goal is to give more Amish farmers, families, producers, and craftsmen access to people outside their local communities without requiring them to become modern technology companies themselves.
The Association handles the infrastructure.
The producers continue doing what they do.
And the members become part of the private association through which that relationship operates.
That is a very different model from simply launching another online store.
And that distinction matters.
For Those Who Want To Join
Start here:
Amish Products Association — Membership & Association https://amishproductsassociation.org
Submit your membership application there.
Once your membership has been reviewed and approved, you will be able to access the private member product platform:
Member Products
https://amishproductsassociation.com
Again, please don't be surprised if access is not instantaneous.
This is an application for membership in a Private Membership Association, not a checkout screen unlocking a retail website.
Once approved, you are a member of the Association and can access the products available to its members.
Amos is our Founding Producer.
Other producers are coming.
And there is considerably more to this story.
This is just the beginning.
— Incryptus
