One way to help ensure the continued availability of a product you like—albeit an unusual one—is to buy the company that makes it.

That's exactly what Lorrie Bos did 10 years ago, when she acquired the assets of Country Harvest Inc., a home-based business founded by Betty and Bert Wolfrum in Spangle, Wash., south of Spokane, that sold dry soup mixes using locally sourced ingredients.

Bos' main underlying goal, though, after two decades of office work, was to find a business she enjoyed that she could operate from her east South Hill home.

That entrepreneurial leap of faith has served her well, she says, by reducing her work-related stress and enabling her to be her own boss and set her own hours, while also generating a decent revenue stream that helps augment household income.

"My health is better," Bos says, and she adds, "I've met a lot of nice people, a lot of nice vendors."

Country Harvest now makes, packages, and sells nearly a dozen dry soup mixes, four dry dip mixes, a dill corn bread mix, and a lentil flour. It sells its products at arts and craft shows and similar community festivals and bazaars, through a number of wholesale customers such as Rosauers Stores Inc., through its website, and by phone.

Bos is the company's only employee and she processes and packages all of the mixes by hand in a main-floor portion of her home where her husband, Marty, combined two rooms into one large room to accommodate the operation.

"I make them one soup at a time," she says.

She declines to talk in detail about Country Harvest's revenues, but says the company "does fine, so long as you don't live too high on the hog."

The company's soup products include a Lentil Barley Soup Mix, Lentil Country Soup Mix, Red Chief Lentil Soup Mix, Lentil Chili Mix, Lentil Chili with a Kick, Split Pea Soup Mix, Wild Rice and Black Bean Soup Mix, Black Thunder Bean Soup Mix, Vegetarian Lentil Barley Soup Mix, and a Vegetarian Lentil Country Soup Mix.

They range in retail price from $6 to $11 and make five to 16 cups of soup, depending on the package size purchased. Depending on the mix, they take from 15 minutes to two hours to prepare. People who've posted comments in the guestbook area on the company's website, at www.countryharvest.soup.com, rave about the quality of the soups.

Some of the mixes, such as the Red Chief Lentil, require adding only water, while others, such as the Lentil Barley, Lentil Country, Lentil Chili, and Vegetarian Lentil, require adding tomato sauce, the website says.

Bos says she buys the lentils in 50- and 100-pound bags, washes and sorts them, then puts them on screens to dehydrate them. She buys the vegetables that she uses in her recipes in dehydrated form and keeps them in separate containers until she's ready to mix them for packaging, and stores seasonings that she uses in cupboards.

The four dry dip mixes that the company sells include a Vegetable Garden Dip Mix, Sweet Pepper Dip Mix, Bacon Dip Mix, and a Dilly Dip. They're available in small and large packages, priced at $3 and $5, respectively, and make one or two cups of dip.

Country Harvest's dill cornbread mix sells for $6 for an 11.5-ounce package. It comes in an "old-fashioned" linen bag with a drawstring that Bos says is well-suited for gift giving. The package contains all of the needed dry ingredients, to which the purchaser then adds milk, vegetable oil, and egg to complete the recipe. Each package will make an eight-inch pan or cornbread or nine cornbread muffins, the website says.

The company's lentil flour is a gluten-free product that Bos says customers can use as a substitute for all or a portion of the regular flour called for in a particular recipe. It comes in a 12-ounce package that sells for $6.

Bos estimates that about 70 percent of the company's revenue come from the shows—held mostly in the spring and fall—at which she sets up booths. She says she participates in about 15 shows a year. Upcoming examples include a Custer's Fall Arts and Crafts Show in Wenatchee, an Autumn Arts and Crafts Festival at Beasley Coliseum in Pullman, a Central Valley High School Arts and Crafts Show in Spokane Valley, and a Custer's Christmas Arts and Crafts Show at the Spokane County Fair & Expo Center.

Of the other 30 percent of the company's revenue, about 20 percent comes from sales to wholesale customers and the remaining 10 percent comes from online and phone sales, she says.

On the wholesale side, she says, Country Harvest products are sold at all Rosauers supermarkets, Super 1 Foods, Egger Meats, and Rocket Market stores on the South Hill.

Stores in a number of other communities—from Colfax, Pullman, and Clarkston, to Kennewick and Snohomish—carry the company's goods. They're also sold at places such as the offices of the Pullman Chamber of Commerce and the USA Dry Pea & Lentil Council, in nearby Moscow, Idaho.

When interviewed, she was preparing to head off to the Chehalis Garlic Festival. "I have garlic in all of my soups, so I fit in there," she says.

Bos worked as an office manager for Spokane Public Schools, including 18 years at Hamblen Elementary School and two years at Woodridge Elementary School, and retired from that work soon after taking over the Country Harvest operation.

The Wolfrums had started the business in their Spangle home in the early 1980s, she says, and she and her husband—who worked for a time with the Wolfrums' son—learned in about 2001 that they were looking to sell the business so they could retire.

Bos says she and her husband checked out the Wolfrums' operation in April 2002, and they bought it a year later.

In the years since then, she says, she's kept some of the soup unchanged from the original ingredient mix, but has changed others with a focus on making them healthier, and also has added a few new soups.

She also added all of the dips, the dill cornbread mix, and the lentil flour. She says she added the cornbread mix after obtaining the cornbread recipe from Mary Meacham, of Meacham Mills, of Lewiston, Idaho, who retired fairly recently and shut down that once-popular business. Bos says she strives to add one or two new items a year, and sees a lot of return customers, particularly at the shows where she displays her products.

One of her main focuses right now from a product standpoint, she says, is "to find an all-natural, low-sodium dry soup base. Liquid is the only way to get all natural. I've gotten close, I've gotten to lower sodium."

As for the business overall, Bos says her goal as she gets older is to do fewer shows, which are time-consuming and require a lot of travel, and to focus more on building up the wholesale portion of the business. She adds, though, "I'm not to that point yet."