Bree Spurgeon started her cottage industry of specialty cookies in 2017.

A cottage industry is a small business in which people work in their own homes, according to Cambridge Dictionary.

The first business was named The Cookie MOMster, from a suggestion by her daughter.

“I started The Cookie MOMster in 2017 after taking Financial Peace University at the Nazarene church,” Spurgeon said.

She said she is domestic and crafty and thought she’d make some cookies for Valentine’s Day and advertise on Facebook.

“Next thing I know, I’m taking orders, making sheet cakes, cupcakes, and cookies,” she said.

Spurgeon is disabled with Cystic Fibrosis,  which was diagnosed at three months of age.

“I wasn’t able to hold down a full-time job, with my lungs, at that time, because of the previous infections that have damaged my lungs,” she said. “Medication came out in 2019 that changed my health for the better. Now I have a second chance at life without a lung transplant.  I can pretty much live a normal life, without gasping for air. I got my life back.”

But carpal tunnel syndrome began in her hands.

Symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome usually start gradually and include tingling, numbness and weakness in her hands.

“It was excruciating enough to make me think of quitting, and I was experiencing burnout,” Spurgeon said.

She shifted gears and began to work at Bids and Dibs consignment store in the downtown area of Fort Scott.

“So I went to work at Bids and Dibs and eventually got over my burnout,” she said.

She began massage therapy for the carpal tunnel and started to get excited about making cookies again.

She started thinking about getting licensure for her cookie-making business.

“My daughter originally named me The Cookie MOMster, but since someone in Kansas has that name already, I’m not able to have it,” she said.

A month of agonizing over a name began.

Then one of her best friends sent the name B-Licious Cookies, for her to consider.

It combines the word delicious, which helped describe her cookies.

“My name starts with a B, I thought, that’s it, that’s my business name!” she said.

Spurgeon self-taught herself cookie baking.

“As I watched countless videos on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, I discovered royal icing and I fell in love,” she said. Royal icing is a type of icing composed of sugar, egg whites, and sometimes flavoring or coloring that dries to a hard glaze and is used for decorating baked goods, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

She began to focus on royal icing,

“I stopped doing buttercream, cakes, and cupcakes and focused on royal icing,” she said. “I look back on those days when I first started royal icing and they were so terrible, but everyone was so encouraging and you have to start somewhere. Plus, it was so much easier with carpal tunnel.”

“Fast forward to 2024, I fully own my own business and Healthy Bourbon County Action Team helped me gain my LLC wings,” she said. “The process was super easy and fast and they gave me all the information I needed to continue moving forward at the beginning of April.”

“I do not need a license because I do not use cream cheese and my final product doesn’t need refrigerated. I operate under the cottage law. I do everything at home and only make sugar cookies with royal icing.”

She has been honing her cookie decorating skills and now uses a cookie projector to download clipart about a particular theme onto a flash drive, put it into the projector and the image projects onto the cookie, then she traces it with icing.

“I also use an airbrush and sometimes and I use cookie stencils as a background before I put the image on the cookie,” she said.

She advertises through Facebook only.

Cookies are priced $25 – $35 per dozen “depending on the difficulty of the theme.”

Spurgeon can be contacted at 620-215-6141.

After several years of planning and execution, the Fort Scott Farmers Market will be under the new pavilion on North National Avenue on May 4.

Tonight is the first vendor’s meeting of the season. This meeting is for returning vendors and anyone interested in becoming a vendor in 2024, Teri Hamilton, president of Fort Scott Farmers Market said.

The meeting is at the Healthy Bourbon County Action Team office at 104 N. National Avenue,  across the street from the pavilion, from 6-8 p.m.

At tonight’s meeting, there will be introductions,  information about market guidelines, applications, and fees “and a time to get to know each other a little better,” she said.

Vendors are not just farmers, “but we give preference to farmers and agriculture businesses,” Hamilton said.

“There are also baked goods and craft vendors,” she said. “We have 15 returning vendors.”

“We have space for up to 24 under the pavilion,” Hamilton said.

“The vendors will park in the parking spaces under the pavilion and the customers will go around to each vendor in the parking stall,” she said.

If more than that number of vendors want to be a part of the market, the vendor spaces will have to be reconfigured, and will be thoroughly discussed, she said.

The Farmers Market Committee comprises Hamilton, owner of Hamilton’s Artisan Bakery, as president; Ethan Holly, treasurer,  of Still Waters Farm; and Leanna Cain, secretary, of Sweet County Farms.

Vendors pay $5 a week for a vendor space, and if payment is given for the whole year, it is $4 a week, she said.

The market is open on Tuesdays from 4-6 p.m. and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon, starting on May 4 and continuing until the end of October.

There is a Healthy Bourbon County Action Team workshop on April 15 that will focus on how to get a license to sell at a farmers market, food laws and food safety.

“We want our vendors to have access to that resource,” she said.

Hamilton said the group is so thankful for the new space.

“The pavilion is so wonderful,” she said. “We are so thankful for the project and all the fundraising that took place and they didn’t have to give us the priority,” she said.

On opening day, May 4, there will be a ribbon cutting, live music and speakers for the pavilion’s first farmers market, Hamilton said. The Bourbon County Garden Club always has a live plant sale on the first day of the market season as well.

For more information, call Hamilton at 816-491-7884.

To see the latest on the Fort Scott Farmers Market:

https://www.facebook.com/fsfma