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On July 11, the first Porch & Farm Crawl will connect residents to 30 bakeries, farm stands and other residential businesses across Lane County via a self-guided food tour. Lookout Eugene-Springfield spoke with three participants about how and why they started a baking business right out of their kitchens.
On West Oregon Avenue in Creswell, you might drive past a small pink fridge packed with chocolate cake slices. Further north in Springfield, along Game Farm Road, you can snag warm sourdough focaccia and cinnamon rolls. Head west toward Trevon Street in Eugene for cloud-like soft pretzels at a handcrafted mint-green stand.
The bakeries dotting those roads are among 30 stops on the Porch & Farm Crawl, a self-guided shopping tour of bakeries, farm stands and other home-based businesses across Lane County.
Similar to pub crawls and music porch festivals, the event — happening Saturday, July 11 — is designed to boost visibility for community makers and growers.
Alexandra Goodgion, a baker who owns Rylea’s Sweet Bites in west Eugene, got the idea for the crawl after one of her customers mentioned spending an afternoon bouncing around farm and bake stands. She organized the tour across three routes: Eugene/Springfield, Creswell and Junction City/Harrisburg.
As a mom of two, Goodgion said home-based businesses afford people, especially parents and caregivers, the flexibility to turn baking and other hobbies into income.
“It can also be an empowering first step for someone who has always dreamed of owning a business but didn’t know where to start,” Goodgion wrote in an email to Lookout Eugene-Springfield. “Starting small from home allows people to test ideas, grow at their own pace, and gain confidence while balancing family life.”
Most of the participating bakeries are owned by women, and more than a third have children. They’re a mix of moms with jobs outside the home and stay-at-home parents. Some treat their bakery as a side hustle, while others scaled their business to earn a decent salary.
Goodgion opened Rylea’s Sweet Bites (named after her daughter) while on maternity leave, selling sourdough baked goods and custom desserts. After returning to work as a woodshop assistant, she kept up with Rylea’s and spent the next year and a half juggling motherhood, a full-time job and “what felt like a full-time home bakery,” she said.
In 2024, she “took a leap of faith” and quit her job to pursue Rylea’s full-time, running her bakery every week and occasionally selling at markets. Her husband, Nathan Goodgion, also left his job around the same time and became a log truck driver. Both career shifts boosted family time, Goodgion said.
She didn’t leave woodworking or bench carpentry entirely: Goodgion crafted the mint-green stand for Rylea’s Sweet Bites herself.
What can home bakers sell?
The Porch & Farm Crawl reflects the rise of home-based bakeries since 2023, when Oregon passed a cottage food exemption law allowing residents to make and sell baked goods from their kitchens without a license or inspection. Both homeowners and renters can open a cottage bakery — provided the latter has their landlord’s permission.
Under the exemption, bakers must hold a valid food handler’s card, keep their space sanitary and sell only shelf-stable products directly to consumers. That means no high-risk foods or retail wholesale. Annual sales are also capped at $52,700.
The cottage food exemption helped Ashley Wright launch her home-based bakery, called Made it Myself, last March. She specializes in custom cakes, as well as mini cakes and cake slices.
Within a few months, however, Wright applied for a domestic kitchen license, another option for home-based bakeries. Unlike cottage bakeries, it requires annual fees and kitchen inspections but allows for a broader range of foods and sales channels.
As a licensed domestic baker, Wright can now make cheesecake, tiramisu and other refrigerated items. She can sell products to cafes and grocery stores. Her income can exceed the cottage sales cap, too.
“I kind of graduated from being a home cottage baker,” Wright said.
As a 34-year-old mom of two, Wright said flexibility is the “number one benefit” of running a home-based bakery, especially since her husband is the primary earner outside the home. She can adjust her baking schedule around sick kids and home maintenance issues.
Wright runs Made it Myself as a full-time operation: She works 30 to 40 hours per week in a designated area of her kitchen, per food safety requirements. It’s equipped with a separate fridge, a large stand mixer, steel countertop, flour and sugar bags, a piping tip organizer and sprinkle wallpaper.
Wright started baking as a teenager. After graduating from Lane Community College’s culinary program, she worked as a cake decorator at bakeries and Market of Choice locations in Portland and Eugene. In between baking jobs, she became a stay-at-home mom.
A few months after moving to Creswell in 2024, Wright baked a cake for a friend’s baby shower, which sparked the idea for Made it Myself.
“I had so much fun,” she said. “I thought, ‘I forgot I could do this.’”
Wright posts weekly menus and hours on her bakery’s Facebook page.
“It’s the only way I communicate about my product,” she said of social media.
At first, Wright’s slice sales totaled 12 a week, equivalent to one or two full-sized round cakes. Now she typically sells 75 to 100 slices. She also averages about three or four custom cake orders. She plans to scale her business once her kids are older.
“I was not expecting it even a little bit,” Wright said of her bakery’s growth. “It snowballed and turned into this crazy thing.”
Early to rise
Similar to Wright, Shaylene Swanson opened her Springfield roadside bakery, Flour & Rise, under Oregon’s cottage food exemption. It’s typically open every second and fourth Sunday of the month, allowing Swanson to balance her baking passion with family responsibilities and a career in dermatology. She uses the extra income to pay off student loans.
On top of being a full-time medical assistant, Swanson puts in another 30 hours on the weeks she sells baked goods. That includes finalizing the menu, shopping for ingredients, printing labels and making and freezing cookie and scone doughs. She bakes everything in one oven: focaccia, bagels, cinnamon rolls, cookies, brownies and the 20 to 30 loaves she sells on a given Sunday. The oven can hold four loaves at a time.
Home-based bakeries are no cakewalk: On bakery weekends, Swanson wakes up at 3 a.m. to mix and bake her bread and sweet doughs. Some of the items are so fresh out of the oven when she opens her stand, the steam is still visible on the packaging.
“I absolutely love being able to work out of my home,” said Swanson, who is 34. “3 a.m. is rough, but it’s not 3 a.m. to drive to another location and work for someone else. You can still be present with your family. I can pop the sourdough in the oven and then say to my son, ‘OK, buddy, I’ve got 40 minutes.”
Transitioning to a full-time baking business can feel risky: Swanson’s current job provides a stable salary and benefits. Still, she eventually wants to obtain a domestic kitchen bakery license, buy a bread oven and go part-time with her medical job to grow the bakery.
“I’m in the mindframe now of treating it like a legitimate business, not a side hustle,” she said of Flour & Rise. “I just felt that deep down calling to do it.”
The bakers share tips
Understand home-based food laws
There are two main avenues for selling home-baked goods: Oregon’s cottage food exemption and a domestic kitchen license. The Oregon Department of Agriculture’s website has several food safety resources, and food safety inspectors operate throughout the state based on ZIP code.
“If you want to get licensed, the best way to do it — to do it the right way — is to find the inspector for your area, then call or email them to let them know what you want to do in your home,” said Jeff Green, a food safety specialist for the Oregon Department of Agriculture.
Gauge interest
Samples can help you test the waters and gain loyal customers: Swanson gave out her first sourdough loaves for free her first bake day. It went over so well she moved into porch-pickup orders soon after.
Start small
Don’t get overwhelmed by aesthetics at first. A good product — not a picture-perfect bake stand — is what drives a successful business. You can always build your dream stand or buy a retro mini fridge down the road.
Can’t open a bake stand at home?
“There are also many amazing markets and pop up events across Lane County that also provide a way to step out and share your passion with others,” Goodgion said.
Stay organized, stay in touch
Home bakers use a variety of apps, dashboards and social media channels to manage their businesses. Swanson accepts cash or Venmo for her baked goods. She also started a mass text group to send reminders the morning of bake days.
Wright tracks custom orders through the Meta Business Suite, and she often receives order requests through Facebook Messenger. She uses Square for invoices and custom cake deposits. Her stand runs on the honor system: Customers can pay via QR codes for Venmo or CashApp, then grab a cake slice from her fridge.
Get online
From Nextdoor to Facebook foodie groups, social media can help you find customers, sell your products and advertise your business. Wright started Made it Myself after announcing in a Creswell Facebook group that she was selling cakes.
The post “blew up,” Wright said, prompting her to make a business page on the app. Reviews help, too.
“Someone posted in Eugene Foodies about my cakes, and my business blew up again,” Wright said.
If you go
The Porch & Farm Crawl is a celebration of home-based bakers, growers and makers across Lane County. The self-guided shopping tour takes place Saturday, July 11, and will have vendor maps for three areas: Eugene/Springfield, Creswell and Junction City/Harrisburg.
Grab a passport from one of the vendors for the chance to win a basket with participating makers’ goods. Access maps at the stands or on the event’s Facebook and Instagram pages, where you can also learn about each vendor. Vendors are selling sourdough loaves, focaccia, s’more cinnamon rolls, fire cider, cake slices, cookies, produce, flowers, crafts and other goodies during the crawl.
