THE EAST END OF MAIN STREET, WESTLER — More barn than shop, if we’re honest about it. The feed store is a great tall warehouse of a building with a loft door up top and a ramp worn smooth at the bottom, and it smells of dry grain and sacking in a way that sticks to your coat. Every farm in this valley comes through here, which means every piece of news in this valley comes through here too.
Behind the Counter
Mr. Ellis Grit — a burly, broad-shouldered man who has been lifting grain sacks since he was knee high. Now at the age of thirty he has a young family with a fourth baby on the way. More often than not you’ll find one of his little ones napping on the corn sacks while another “helps” with the sweeping. He weighs fair on his feed, and is friendly enough to sneak an occasional treat into a customer’s sack for their livestock. You certainly won’t find him lingering at the Red Fox Inn after dark. And his is the first shop open on Main Street in the morning, just in case someone needs to entice their animals with a little something special.
In the Sacks
- Cattle grain — the plain heavy stuff, sold by the sack and hauled out on the ramp
- Corn — whole for the pigs, cracked for the birds, and ground fine if you ask nicely
- Sheep feed — lighter, mixed with a little of everything, and the one the lambs will knock you over for
- Horse feed — oats and barley, sweetened with a run of treacle so it holds together in the scoop
- Specialty treats by the handful — sugar beet for the horses, a pressed grain cake for the cows, and something for the pigs that we will not describe
- Seed by the paper packet, come spring
Current Special
End-of-harvest sacks at the bottom of the loft, marked down because the corner split in the hauling. Mr. Grit will point them out to you himself, which is more than most shopkeepers would do.