Jesse and Laurie Busenitz, owners of Busenitz Custom Woodworks in Butler County personify a new generation of farm and ranch families who seek to stay on the farm but create entrepreneurial revenue streams either in addition to, or apart from, traditional farming. For someone like Jesse who comes from a family with five brothers, it’s difficult for all family members to make a living on the farm, so they seek alternative means.

Jesse’s love of woodworking began when he decided to build his first mandolin. An enthusiast of bluegrass music, the detailed work of building a mandolin hooked him on the joy of working with wood. Shortly after graduating from high school, Jesse began apprenticing for a trim carpenter in Wichita.

“My boss was so patient,” Jesse laughs. “My role was to build shelving and finish out closets and I was terrible at it, but he slowly taught me the finer points. Soon, family and friends wanted me to build pieces of furniture and do other woodworking, so it became a business.”

“Jesse was already building cabinets in his dad’s shop when we got married,” Laurie says. “But he really wanted a sawmill. So, a few months later, we purchased our first sawmill. I am a very frugal person and believe in saving, saving, saving, so the idea of spending that kind of money required a lot of conversation between the two of us. That was really good for us early in our marriage to learn how to discuss the pros and cons of a subject. We both decided that it was a good business decision. It was a risk, but if you don’t take some risks, there are no rewards.”

A sawmill provides an exquisite delight for wood lovers when a log is rolled on a carriage and the horizontal blade as it courses down a rail of parallel tracks, slowly cutting each layer. Peeling that first slab of bark off the log reveals a beauty of grain and texture hidden behind the bark for decades; it’s like finding buried treasure. It is love at first sight.

“Many don’t think of Kansas as a forested state,” Jesse says. “But we have quite a variety of diverse types of wood. For example, burr oak is actually rot resistant so it can be used for outside structures with ground contact rather than using chemically treated green lumber. There has also been a lot of work done with forestry on sustainability and conservation.

“As a cabinet and furniture builder, I love the different colors of our native woods from the flaming reds and yellows of box elder to the dark browns of walnut. For years, people would stain wood to their preferred color, but I work with customers to find the right natural color then finish it with a clear topcoat. The integrity of the grain is so much more brilliant that way.”

Like many young farm families, Jesse and Laurie understand the value of bringing up their two young children on a farm and the values they learn.

“Jake is only 4 years old, but he fires up his toy chainsaw and cuts away on his own little wood pile just like his daddy,” Laurie jokes. “Here, we can teach Jake and 2-year-old Audrey how to respect tools, how to take care of our farm animals, or they can ride along with Jesse or their grandpa on the tractor at harvest and all the while learning the values of faith and hard work.”

There is no question Jesse and Laurie, like all entrepreneurs, are hard workers.

“My favorite part is to run the sawmill,” Laurie says. “But I’m happy to sand or stain or whatever it takes to get the job done.”

With the advent of the sawmill came a shift in the business model. Whereas much of their work had been custom cabinets and woodworking, they discovered custom sawing timber, along with a kiln built to speed up the drying process, have become significant parts of their business. Former barn and equipment sheds are now stacked with lumber sawn on his mill. He also custom mills lumber for customers who bring in trees with sentimental value from their homes or harvested for specific projects.

Like all entrepreneurs, they have learned to pivot to changing markets and consumer demands.

“Another unique thing that has changed the business of woodworking is the use of epoxy,” Jesse says. “It used to be that irregularly shaped or rotten pieces of wood would head to the woodstove but now people are making some fantastic tables and other designs with the combination of epoxy and wood. We offer classes and support for people who might not have the equipment and space but want to create their own project.”

Jesse and Laurie have also excelled at creating a community of woodworkers who share knowledge, buy and sell tools and now have meetups at their farm in the country. The first one in September of 2023 had more than 300 people attend.

“I started the Wichita Woodworkers Facebook group because I wanted to get information out to people about my new sawmill,” Jesse says. “While I had kind of a selfish motive at first, I soon began to see how it was connecting people to each other and I love the idea of community.”

Jesse reached out to the group in early 2023 to test the waters to see if people were interested in having meetups. Initially, he envisioned people doing little demonstrations in their own workshops, but it quickly grew beyond that.

“Chris Matthews is a woodworker from Anthony who joined the group and asked if he could help and he took it to levels I never even dreamed of,” Jesse laughs. “He got a hold of companies to donate prizes, experts to lead workshops, a food truck to show up and T-shirts. We had our first one at the farm in the fall of 2023 and it was amazing.”

I attended that event and was surprised as I turned down the gravel road to reach their farm and ended up parking a half-mile away. There were competitions for the best woodworking mallet, giveaways by tool companies, demonstrations on wood turning, epoxy builds and hand-cut dovetail joinery. As I jostled my way through the crowd, I was reminded that people in agriculture have a unique way of creating community no matter where they are. Perhaps it is because they are more connected to the natural world than most of us. After all, they make their living in harmony with nature, which translates into creating harmony with people.

I often make the trip to Jesse and Laurie’s farm with a variety of excuses to peruse their exotic wood collection, drool over the tools and listen to the sawmill sing as it glides down the rails.

On one hand, my wife discourages these trips because I often spend more than what our budget allows, but on the other hand, she knows I will come back reenergized with hope for the future as another young farm family creates a living in the way of life they love.

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