Meeting Our Needs — Part 2: Cookies

“Meeting Our Needs” is a series that acknowledges the organizations and individuals who work to make our communities better, stronger, healthier and more inclusive. We know we face challenges and divisions among us, but we miss and underestimate the essential goodness of rural Wisconsinites when we fail to celebrate those who are lifting us up in so many ways. Let us hear your stories, contact bpestel@msn.com to be included in this series.

There are a lot of ways for citizens to work to meet the needs of our communities. Here is one that may tend to escape our notice.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The origin of this quote is uncertain, but Abraham Lincoln expressed a similar sentiment when he said, “You cannot help a man permanently by doing for him what he can do for himself.”

Anyone?

were described in a 2017 CBS special as Kriss’s partners in crime. Designated as such because if anyone in Wisconsin sold their home-baked cookies they could be accused of breaking the law and face up to six months in prison. So, these ladies began lobbying for a bill in the Wisconsin Legislature to lift the ban on the sale of home-baked goods.

When it became obvious that “The Cookie Bill” was never going to pass because Assembly Speaker Robin Vos refused to schedule a vote on the bill, they decided to sue the State of Wisconsin. In 2017, a Wisconsin court declared the ban on homebaked goods sold from a home without a commercial kitchen to be unconstitutional.

As of Dec. 2022, as a result of a ruling in a second suit, enterprising entrepreneurs can now add things like candy, fried donuts, dried herbs, and roasted coffee beans to the items they can sell. Justin Pearson of the Institute for Justice, the organization that represented the plaintiffs, stated, “People shouldn’t need to buy or rent a commercial kitchen in order to sell fudge or candies… we see that the ability for people to sell these foods out of their home kitchen can often be the difference between whether or not they can pay their mortgages.” our rural areas is an investment in meeting our needs.

Substitute woman for man in these statements and you’ll find a powerful example of using this philosophy to meet needs in our communities – and it’s right here in southwest Wisconsin. It might go something like this: “Give a person a cookie and they can eat for a day, let them sell their homemade cookies and they can help provide for their families for a lifetime.”

I got to know “The Cookie Lady” while walking in parades in 2018. Kriss Marion would be the first to say, “Not Cookie Lady, Cookie Ladies.” Lisa Kivirist and Dela Ends