Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will see rain followed by evening snow, with a daytime high of 44. Sunrise is 7:06 and sunset is 7:01 for 11 hours 55 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 13.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 44 BC, a group of senators assassinate Julius Caesar, the dictator of the Roman Republic, on the Ides of March.
It shouldn’t be so hard to sell cottage foods:
Wisconsin lawmakers created an exemption for selling home-canned foods without a license under a 2010 law that’s known as the “pickle bill.” But it limits annual sales to $5,000 per person, and [small businessman Scott] Weber said that dollar amount has never been adjusted to reflect the much higher costs that he and other home producers are facing nearly 16 years later.
[…]This legislative session, there was a new push to update the pickle bill and expand the licensing exemption to home bakers.
The GOP-authored legislation would have expanded the annual sales limit for cottage food producers to $40,000 per person. It also would have created new requirements for training and inspecting home kitchens.
The bill, which failed to gain traction among lawmakers, received pushback from advocates of cottage foods, who felt the new inspection requirements were too vague and not supported with funding to implement them.
Wisconsin home bakers were also opposed to limiting their sales to $40,000. They currently face no revenue limit because they’re operating under an exemption created by a 2017 court ruling against the state.
Weber said he feels the two different operating rules for home bakers and home canners has left them at odds on getting behind a legislative fix.
But both sides seem to agree that Wisconsin should follow neighboring states in creating a more comprehensive law around cottage food.
In Iowa, cottage food producers can sell a wide range of shelf-stable foods directly to consumers and don’t have an annual sales cap. Minnesota’s law allows residents to sell up to $78,000 in shelf-stable foods, but does require producers to register and complete a food safety course.
See Hope Kirwan, Homemade pickle sellers say $5K sales limit holds back rural small businesses (‘A 2010 law set the limit and lawmakers haven’t updated it despite rising costs, business concerns’), Wisconsin Public Radio, March 12, 2026.
One hears so much from the WISGOP about support for businesses, and yet WISGOP legislators are still unable to use their majorities to effect comprehensive small business legislation. If these WISGOP men were half so effective as they claim to be, they’d be able to craft and pass comprehensive legislation for these small businesses.
While small cottage businesses offer consumers delicious products, they’ve one disadvantage at the Capitol.
They’re not in the position to offer legislators big donations.
What is powering this supernova?: