Farm families pay tens of thousands of dollars for farm machinery. That’s an accepted part of modern farming.
But Tonnie Bos felt both guilty and scared when she paid $5,900 for a sewing machine.
“When I got my machine home, I was just sweating,” said Bos, who embroiders shirts and sweaters and makes fleece jackets.
“I thought: What have I done?”
She wanted to start a small, on-farm embroidery business, knew she needed the machine, but didn’t know whether she could believe in her ability to create a successful small business in her home.
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She paid off the machine in one year.
Now she has two machines and an assistant: her husband.
“Now I’m not scared anymore,” said Bos, who was selling her wares in the Mini Market at the recent Manitoba Farm Women’s Conference in Winnipeg.
“I know I can do it.”
The Mini Market was a chance for rural women to sell their goods and promote their businesses and also allowed conference organizers to show rural women the range of opportunities others are exploring.
Aynslee Hurdal, from the hamlet of Prairie Grove near Lorette, Man., was promoting a line of knives and gleaming steel cooking utensils that she sells.
Her business is based out of other people’s homes – wherever she can set up an appointment with a homemaker to demonstrate her goods.
Hurdal does direct sales for Cutco, a kitchenware distributor. It supplies the products and she does everything else. She doesn’t work for them.
“I’m my own boss,” she said with a smile.
For a woman living in a tiny prairie community, direct sales can be a better option than commuting to a far-off job, she thinks.
“If you do this you don’t have to drive into (Winnipeg) every day,” said Hurdal.
It’s the kind of business that rewards an independent-minded woman who doesn’t mind working.
“You do it on your own schedule and you get out of it what you put into it,” said Hurdal.
Value-added venture
At another booth Elaine Edel was selling and promoting her farm’s value-added products: soybean flours, mixes and cookbooks.
“This is all ours,” she said proudly.
Bos said setting up her embroidery business required financial, lifestyle and facility commitments.
Apart from the expensive sewing machine, she also had to buy the computerized catalogue of embroidery patterns used in her two machines. That cost another $6,000.
She has become so busy with her embroidery business that she has given up her off-farm job as a teacher’s assistant, a job “I loved, but I couldn’t do both.”She had to convert two bedrooms in her house into production rooms, and uses part of the basement to store raw materials.
Fortunately, she has support from her husband, John, who is used to driving the big machinery and is getting used to driving a Pfaff as well.
“He’s a real farmer. He likes tractors. But he says he likes this too, because he gets to listen to the radio as he works,” said Bos.
John also helps do the work when they travel to attend craft fairs.
“I need him very much because of all the setting up and taking down and carrying stuff to the truck,” she said.
“If I had to do it all myself, it would be too much.”
She admits she gets a kick out of seeing him work with the delicate machinery.
“You should see him trying to use his big fingers.”
Bos said her business isn’t a huge money maker, but it makes her feel free to spend money on the house that she would otherwise feel was robbing the farming operation.
“I can pay for things myself now without having to take them away from the farm,” she said, mentioning kitchen renovations and new carpeting as two projects her business has allowed her to undertake.
“I earn my own money.”
