Behind a clear face shield, 15-year-old Carson Stroup steadies a piece of high-carbon steel against a moving belt grinder, carefully easing it forward with practiced hands.
Just a few feet away, Josiah Santos leans over a precision measuring gauge, carefully checking the thickness of a knife blank before it moves to the next stage of production.
Across the shop, sparks burst from an angle grinder as another craftsman shapes a blade. Nearby, employee Stacy Harper lowers freshly finished knives into a dark finishing solution before wiping each one clean and setting it aside for inspection.
Carson’s father, Chris Stroup, moves from workstation to workstation, checking measurements, answering questions, and helping troubleshoot problems as employees work through another day’s production inside Stroup Knives.
The steady whir of grinders mixes with the hiss of steel meeting abrasive belts, while the smell of hot metal and freshly sanded Micarta hangs in the air.
For Carson, however, this isn’t a summer job—it’s just another school day.
The Family Business
For the Stroups, the workshop is more than a place to earn a living. It’s the headquarters of Stroup Knives, a veteran-owned company in Hope Mills that handcrafts fixed-blade knives for military personnel, first responders, hunters, and outdoor enthusiasts.
It’s also a family affair. Chris and Meagan Stroup run the business alongside their children—Carson, Logan, Wyatt, and Camrynn—who all work in the shop as part of the family’s homeschool routine. Like Carson, employee Santos is also homeschooled, making the workshop both a workplace and an unconventional classroom.
Inside the shop, sheets of high-carbon steel are transformed into survival, bushcraft, and everyday-carry knives. Employees grind, heat treat, and sharpen each blade before fitting them with durable Micarta or G-10 handles and pairing them with custom-molded Kydex sheaths.
Founded by Army veteran Chris Stroup in 2017, the company began in a one-car garage after he was medically retired from the Army.
“When I was in the Army, I started making knives with my oldest son in the garage in a one-car garage,” Chris said. “Then I had to get med-boarded because I got hurt a couple times and then we decided to start making knives full time.”
Today, the company employs veterans, ships handcrafted knives to customers across the country, and creates commemorative knives for graduating Green Berets and other specialized military units.
But the business wasn’t always part of the family’s educational journey—just two years ago, the Stroups’ weekdays looked much different.
A Different Path
Their four children attended Cumberland County Schools, including Gray’s Creek Middle School and Gallberry Farm Elementary School.
Meagan Stroup said the family never planned to homeschool. Instead, concerns about bullying and their children’s experience at the middle school prompted them to begin exploring other educational options.
“Our first instinct was not to homeschool them,” she said.
The couple initially searched for a secular private school, but tuition remained out of reach even after financial aid. They later considered another private school before deciding it wasn’t the right fit for their family.
That search eventually led them to homeschooling. The children are among an estimated 4,331 homeschool students in Cumberland County during the 2025-26 school year, according to the N.C. Department of Administration. Nearly 153,000 children across the state are homeschooled.
The family recently finished its second full year of homeschooling. What began as an alternative to traditional schooling has since evolved into a routine centered on flexibility, family, and the business they’ve built together.
The children complete their coursework through MiAcademy, an online homeschool curriculum that allows students to work at their own pace while giving the family the flexibility to travel for knife shows around the country. If travel interrupts a school day, assignments are simply redistributed rather than missed altogether.
Most weekdays begin around 6 a.m. or 6:30 a.m. After breakfast, the children settle onto the living room couch by 8 a.m., where they spend about an hour to an 90 minutes working through math, reading, science, and other core subjects before closing their laptops.
Because the family frequently travels for knife shows, Meagan said homeschooling allows them to build school around their schedule rather than the other way around.
“We can school when we want to,” she said. “They don’t have to school if we don’t want them to.”
For the Stroups, however, the school day doesn’t end when the morning’s lessons are complete.
‘They Pretty Much Unschool’
Although each morning begins with online lessons, Chris and Meagan said some of their children’s most valuable education happens after they close their laptops.
“They school for about an hour, hour and a half every day,” Meagan said. “And when they’re done, we have them do at least 30 minutes of a musical instrument.”
For Carson, that often means heading downstairs to practice drums before moving on to the rest of the day’s activities.
After music comes a workout, helping prepare dinner and jiu-jitsu. In between, the children spend time inside Stroup Knives, where they help prepare orders, assist customers, and work alongside employees throughout the shop.
“For the rest of the day,” Chris said, “they pretty much unschool.”
The older children also travel with their parents to knife shows around the country, where they help set up booths and interact with customers.
“They can pretty much set up our booth space and run our booth space for a weekend without us even really being there,” Meagan said.
Chris said those experiences have broadened the children’s world.
At home, the Stroups also keep technology to a minimum. None of the children have cellphones, tablets, or televisions in their bedrooms, Meagan said. That encourages them to spend more time outdoors, with one another, and with the people they meet through jiu-jitsu and the family’s travels.
“A lot of their friends are adults all over the country that they stay in contact with,” Chris said. “They’re business professionals doing things.”
Meagan said customers often notice the difference.
“People come back to us and tell us just how respectful and how awesome our kids are,” she said. “I don’t know any other kids that could walk around in these thousands and thousands of people and make friends with the grownups.”
Chris said one of the biggest misconceptions about homeschooling is that children lack social skills.
“If you met our kids,” he said, “they’re far more mature and social and able to talk to people.”
‘Be a Good Human’
When asked what lesson he hoped his children carry with them into adulthood, Chris doesn’t mention grades.
“Be a good human,” Chris said. “It’s kind of our guiding principle. It’s like our motto here.”
That philosophy shapes how the couple approaches parenting, work and education.
“When there’s work to do, let’s do it and let’s do it together and work as hard as we need to,” Chris said. “And then let’s go do fun things.”
The children don’t simply observe the family business—they help run it. Those who choose to work at Stroup Knives earn a paycheck, which Chris and Meagan deposit into high-yield savings accounts to help prepare them for life after graduation.
“They’re on our payroll for our business if they want to work,” Meagan said.
Chris said the savings accounts are intended to give each child options after graduation, whether that means attending college, purchasing a home, or pursuing another path. The family also plans for each child to participate in dual enrollment during high school so they can graduate with an associate degree already completed.
Chris said giving his children meaningful responsibility at a young age has changed the way he views what they’re capable of.
“They’re capable of so much more than what people think based on their age,” he said. “We’ve always treated the kids like they’re capable of anything. They’ve kind of taken that and ran with it.”
Looking ahead, Chris said he could see Carson one day stepping into a leadership role within Stroup Knives.
“He’ll probably have a pretty big role in our business if I had to guess because he’s really interested in our business,” Chris said. “Hopefully he’ll raise his family the same way and teach them to be good humans.”
For now, though, Carson said he’s exactly where he wants to be. His parents occasionally ask whether he’d ever like to return to a traditional classroom and he doesn’t hesitate.
