When the zombie apocalypse comes, there will be a list of places to go. Let’s be honest, the top two places will be Costco and gun stores. Costco because they have big sliding steel doors, and all the food you will ever need and gun stores because, well it’s obvious.
But number three will be Orchard Feed and that is, well because it has all the great stuff! All the great stuff that it’s going to take to rebuild the world. Because we’re going to have to rebuild the world, aren’t we?
Seriously, though this establishment has an amazing kind of nostalgia that takes me back to walking beside my father as a child when the world was a different kind of place. It’s a nostalgia so powerful that even people who never experienced that kind of world can feel it. Where you grow things and make things and ride animals and go out to feed them and them on cold mornings with frost on the ground and ice on the puddles.
This kind of store is rare. It’s a kind of sacred Mecca for the gardener, farmer, builder, handyman, animal lover, or adventurer. It has texture, it’s laid out beautifully, it’s fun, colorful and the staff are engaging and helpful.
It is, in short an endangered species. Like an independent bookstore for people who like to get their hands dirty (they might read too, but they also get their hands dirty). It’s a different world in there but it feels familiar and welcoming, it makes you ache to grow something and then build something and feed something and wipe your hands on your jeans and then have breakfast.
