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Teaching It, Learning It, Doing It!

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Running Don Lewis Designs and schooling at their homestead.

Homeschooling Entrepreneurs

                          . . . that are doing it!

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Making the decision early in their marriage that they wanted to homestead and the freedom that comes from working at home, Patrice Lewis tells her own story of how they did it. Determination, perserverance, and hard work have paid off for this homeschool family, for they are now living their dream. Read how they did it what they’ve learned along the way.         Written by Patrice Lewis

My husband Don and I have been married 18 years.  We homeschool our two daughters,  ages 10 and (almost) 13.

 

When we got married in 1990, we knew the one thing we wanted was to live in the country.  We were renting a house in Sacramento and couldn’t wait to get out of there.  In 1992 on the excuse of sending me to graduate school, we bit the bullet, quit our corporate jobs, bought a fixer-upper (shack) on four acres in southwest Oregon, and moved.  No jobs, no income.  Crazy?  Yes.  But maybe not quite as crazy as you think.  We’d been married only two years, we didn’t have kids yet, and we knew that if we were going to do something unorthodox, the time to do it was before we had children.

 

Well, the job market wasn't quite what we anticipated in that semi-rural corner of Oregon.  I was in graduate school full time and working part-time in the campus library.  My husband, unable to find a job in his field (he was a projects geologist), decided to take his woodworking hobby and turn it into a business.

 

What we make in our home woodcraft business are six-sided hardwood drinking tankards.  Like beer steins, made of wood.  Great idea, eh?  We found our niche by tapping into the living history markets such as Renaissance Faires, Medieval re-creation events (SCA), and similar organizations.  Some consider this wacky and eccentric, but we knew the demographic of these types of events because we had attended them for years.

 

Still, by almost everyone’s assessment, it was a foolish decision.  Our families thought we were nuts for giving up secure jobs and plunging into something as unsteady as a home woodcraft business.  Neither Don nor I had any experience running a business.  We’d worked professional jobs, but being a corporate drone is a far cry from running things on your own.  We learned the ropes as we went.  No one helped us get started.  We had no assistance from any online services because the internet didn’t exist when we started our business.  Or if it did exist, we didn’t yet own a computer so it was a moot point.

 

Because we wanted so desperately to stay rural, we knew a home business was the ticket to severing our umbilical cord to the city.  If we could earn our income at home, we could move as far away from urban centers as we wished.

 

It took us five months of tinkering with our design before we were ready for our first show.  That’s five months with no income (except from my part-time minimum-wage job on campus).  For living expenses, we used up the modest savings account we had built up in our last days in the city.  We learned to be extraordinarily frugal.  We started our business solely with our own money – no loans, no credit, nothing.  When possible, I worked outside the home so Don could concentrate on the business.

 

In May 1993 we went to our first show to try selling our product.  We sold well, and knew that we had found a niche.  However, it took us a long, long, long time to figure out (through trial and error) how to successfully run a business – what shows to do, how to bill customers, how to streamline our production techniques, etc.  For the first two or three years we sold retail, meaning we did nearly every event within a ten-hour radius of driving.  It was an insane schedule that made us put off the decision to have children, get livestock, or even grow a garden.

 

Then we received advice from some experienced friends who suggested we go wholesale (less money but higher-volume sales, plus we get to stay at home).  The transition from retail to wholesale took about two or three years.  It was during this time that our two daughters were born.
 

It was a very, very precarious existence financially, but we pulled through.  There were many times we were close to going under, and Don wanted to give up and get a regular job.  I begged him not to because I knew a home business was the ticket to our dream of staying rural.  If we had to drive to work, it means we would always be tied to a city.

 

After I graduated with my master's degree, I worked nights as a field biologist (surveying owls, for anyone who wonders what a field biologist does at night) while my husband worked days in the shop.  This way we avoided daycare for our babies.  Seasonally we would hire someone to help my husband in the shop.  Gradually we realized that all of my outside salary (plus some extra) was going to pay the temporary worker.  It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure that if I quit my job and shared the work in the shop, we would come out ahead.  I did so, and our home business truly became a family affair.
 

Our business has been virtually our sole source of income for fifteen years.  I won’t lie, there have been times when we’ve barely squeaked through.  Yet we’ve always gotten by, and this business has provided us with our dearest wish, namely to raise our children in the country.  We now have a forty-acre homestead (soon to be twenty acres, as we’re selling an unneeded parcel – if anyone’s interested, email me for details).  We’re not rich, but we’re together and we’re home with the kids.  That’s our primary goal.

 

We’ve homeschooled the girls from birth, I guess you could say.  Fortunately Idaho has very few homeschooling restrictions (one of the reasons we chose to move here), so we use what I call the “wing it” method of schooling.  Pre-packaged curricula are far too expensive for us.  On the other hand, we have a personal library of nearly 4000 books, so we have no shortage of reading and reference material in our home.  Our core subjects include English (which might include spelling, grammar, or writing), math, science, history (ancient, world, and American), Bible, geography, required reading, and occasionally peripheral subjects such as typing and (new last month) on-line foreign language studies for my oldest.  Because of the number of subjects, we don’t cover every subject every day.

 

Our schedule depends on the time of year.  Winters and early spring are slow.  Summers and fall are busy-to-insane.

 

During the slow season, we concentrate on household chores.  Since we have a small farm, we often do tasks associated with livestock (fencing, barn upkeep, etc.).  We need to lay in six or seven cords of firewood every fall because we heat exclusively with wood.

 

During our busy season, we work literally every day.  The heavy work involving power tools (cutting, slicing, sanding, spraying) is done in the shop.  Lighter work (gluing, coating, etc.) is done in the house.

 

Because my husband and I work together 24/7, we've found it's essential for us to have our "alone" time.  Since my husband is a night owl and I'm an early bird, I go to bed about the time the kids do.  My husband stays up late and gets his quiet time.  I wake up very early (usually around 4 am) and that's my quiet time.  Works beautifully.

First thing in the morning, I milk the cows and release the chickens from their coop, and water all the animals.  After breakfast, my husband starts his work in the shop and the girls and I settle to our schoolbooks.  Schooling usually takes no more than a couple of hours.  With one-on-one tutoring and no distractions from other classmates, we get a lot done in a concentrated amount of time. 

After lunch, we're free to do whatever needs to be done.  I might join my husband in working on the tankards or I might do household chores such as dishes, laundry, or vacuuming.  Depending on the time of year, there might be garden work (summer), canning (fall), or feeding the livestock (winter).  The kids usually play with friends in the afternoon.  If it's our busy season (July-October), we often work late into the evening.      Continued>>

 

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