A dozen Amish and Old Order Mennonites, mostly girls, squeeze into a shoulder-to-shoulder circle inside a barn near Farmersville, their bare feet and sneakers buried in ankle-high onion skins as they hand-sort the produce.

Behind them, two young boys, their faces grimy with sweat and dust, assemble cardboard box after box for the bounty.

It would seem a slice of farm life not drastically unlike any other that has played out on Lancaster County Plain Sect farms for close to 300 years.

But this simple, tedious rite of another season's harvest is part of a savvy, blossoming business strategy here that finds Plain Sect farmers banding together to create two cooperatives that flex their dollar power, even as the economy and milk prices hit rock bottom.

VIDEO: Lancaster County Vegetable Farmers cooperative

These onions, marketed as homegrown Pennsylvania Simply Sweet Onions, are part of 120,000 pounds of onions that fill the shelves in such regional grocery stores as Giant, Weis, Redners, Stauffers of Kissel Hill, Shady Maple, Family Owned Markets and Local Shur Fine stores.

The Lancaster County Vegetable Farmers cooperative started as an experiment with three farmers in 2003. Now, in the second year as a formal co-op, there are 50 growers — all but three Amish or Mennonite from eastern and southern parts of the county.

The yield of wholesale onions has nearly tripled from last year.

Limited quantities of cauliflower and squash were added to the grocery store mix this season as well.

That certainly helps struggling dairy farmers.

"Certainly, at a time like this, it's paying a lot of the feed bills this year," says Jeff Stoltzfus, who helped the farmers form the co-op.

With demand still growing, "The question becomes, how much can we handle? I'm not sure we can take all the growers that want to grow next year," says Stoltzfus.

An even more dramatic success story is found with the other Plain Sect co-op, Lancaster County Farm Fresh.

Some 56 Plain Sect farmers from around the county are growing organic mainstream and esoteric produce, dairy and meat products and delivering them to everyone from families to trendy bistros in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore and neighborhoods in between.

Among their 400 commercial customers: five Philadelphia hospitals and healthy snacks provided to 31 Philly kindergarten programs.

The Community-Supported Agriculture branch of the co-op, in which people pay for a share of the harvest, has 1,000 subscribers and looks to double for next year's growing season.

Freshly harvested vegetables are dropped off to groups of families as far away as New Jersey.

Among the far-ranging offerings: goat milk, maple syrup, flour, buffalo meat, orange honeydew, French Charentais melon, edamame and dragon tongue beans.

The meteoric rise of the co-op has seen the number of participating Plain Sect growers arc from a mere seven in 2006 to an anticipated 90 farms from all over Lancaster County next year.

The co-op now has 15 full-time and part-time employees and leases a cavernous two-story packaging facility with loading docks in a business park near Leola.

"It's just so incredible," says Peggy Fogarty-Harnish, who runs the organic Scarecrow Hill Community Farm near Ephrata.

Fogarty-Harnish and her husband, David, a co-op board member, with help from the nonprofit Keystone Development Center and others, helped get the nonprofit co-op up and running in 2006.

"This is based on the idea that the farmers own this business, manage this business and share in the costs and risks of this operation," says Fogarty-Harnish.

"There's just such a justice in the way the farmer gets paid, the managers get the best dollar, and the consumers get the best product."

Lancaster County's landmark roadside stands and produce auctions are hardly in danger of disappearing as locally grown produce is snatched up.

But more and more Amish and Mennonite farmers are willing to organize and tap into the public's growing appetite for locally grown products.

"The good thing about both these co-ops is they're local farmers trying to take control of their destiny," says Stoltzfus, adult farmer advisor in the Elanco school district.

Besides getting a monetary shot in the arm, an important draw seems to be the opportunity to keep Plain Sect families working together side by side, rather than have them splintered into such off-the-farm jobs as welding, carpentry and cottage industries.

"It fits in well with our family life," says an elderly Mennonite farmer sorting onions with his entire family the other day at the Lancaster County Vegetable Farmers co-op sorting and storage facilities.

"It's easy work for our children, even though they don't often seem to care for it."

Raising produce is more safe for young children than tobacco and stacking hay bales, co-op members say.

Casey Spacht, general manager of Lancaster County Farm Fresh, agrees.

"The main thing is they want to stay with their families," he says.

Spacht's co-op has turned to the Internet and advertising to boost sales. The co-op has a slick Web site, www.lancasterfarmfresh.com, and ads have appeared in the newsletter of the hip Philadelphia Fork bistro, which buys co-op produce.

Plain Sect members abide mainstream advertising and other English marketing techniques, but sometimes draw the line.

For example, they didn't want the co-op to own its own fleet of refrigerated delivery trucks, so they instead lease them.

Spacht said many Plain Sect growers had to be weaned from traditional growing techniques to qualify for organic certification.

"They've been taught, like everyone else, that chemicals are the way to go," says Spacht, 34, a Terre Hill native who returned home from a retail co-op in Tennessee to oversee Lancaster County Farm Fresh.

A month ago, the co-op opened a stand in Central Market selling unusual produce. The main goal was not to make money but to educate the public about the co-op's efforts, says Spacht.

Most of its non-farming employees are English, most passionate about organic and sustainable farming.

In contrast, the onion co-op has remained more low-key. There is no Web site and the farmers chose not to put "Amish made" on onion boxes.

"The Amish being the modest folks that they are, they aren't sure how much they want to go over the top on that angle," says adviser Stoltzfus.

"They don't mind saying it is locally grown and from a small family farm but they're not yet ready to make a TV commercial on it."

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