ON COMMON GROUND DRAWN BY CHEAP LAND AND FERTILE SOIL, SETTLERS HAVE BROUGHT A NEW COMMUNITY TO MOHAWK VALLEY, AND A NEW VITALITY TO STRUGGLING AREA.(MAIN)

Byline: MIKE GOODWIN Staff writer

SPRINGFIELD -- On a sunny late-summer afternoon, John Miller stopped his draft horses along the road that bisects his farm and prepared to hitch the team to a rake before heading into a field of new-mown hay. Though his farming methods seem ancient, he is a newcomer to the fields of upstate New York.

Just three years ago, Miller joined a new Amish settlement in the rolling green hills of the Mohawk Valley, moving north from Dover, Del., where he and other Amish farmers were pushed out by suburban expansion. Here, they have found the rich land and solitude needed to sustain a growing Amish community in a string of economically depressed small towns along Route 20.

``There was land available here with farms,'' said the 38-year-old father of eight. ``If a farm was being bought in Delaware, it was being bought by a developer. We couldn't compete with the price they would pay.''

Over the past 2 years, the Millers and 25 other Amish families have found affordable acres and rural isolation in a cluster of dairy farms in Otsego and Herkimer counties. At $1,000 an acre, the best land in this region 55 miles west of Albany costs 90 percent less than in Delaware.

``It's real good soil, good farming country,'' said Eli Byler, who has settled his family in Springfield.

For local farmers who have struggled for …