drought conditions 20 miles from us, but we've had 4-5 inches over the past few weeks, just lucky in that regard..
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Saw this and it made me sad. I've never been there, but, still sad.
And then I thought of budworm, so I decided to share.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/...country-store/
A sign of the times. A few decades ago, every small town here seemed to have several decent, independently owned markets with owners who knew all the customers. Great places.
The vast majority have been replaced by soulless mini mart gas station chains, with dopey help, no character, and a paucity of fresh food.
Yes, sad.
I'm wondering though, if the pandemic will change some things. I imagine a lot of the old guard places will go out of business, but maybe they will be replaced with something new. I'm hoping so.
I think it is slowly transforming into a brick.
This year's mission trip is something different - didn't want to plan on a trip to another location and some of the youth were just getting to go back to work. So we opted for We Care Wednesdays. We are working locally on 4 successive Wednesdays. The first one, where we were to glean corn, was cancelled due to heavy rains that morning. Yesterday, we had hoped to paint a house - we got about half of it done. Hot and humid made it hard work and it is a very tall house so difficulty in getting all the way to the top.
To be sure! We've lived in the same small town now for 30 years, and basically our township within the town has about 1,500 residents. There are (were) two wee corner stores. The only way one has survived (and the other one survived for 20 years) is through enormous work, and the owners living in apartments above the store. Both stores did that, even with kids in the household.
The owners do 95% of the work themselves, working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. There's just not enough profit to enable hiring people. That's a gargantuan workload, and few are willing to put in that effort. One is still up and running, but the owners are around 60 years old, and they can't do this forever.
The same holds for other markets throughout the state. Some are fortunate and are located in towns with a fair amount of money or tourists (or both), and they can carry fancier stuff at higher margins, as long as there aren't any huge supermarkets nearby. Definitely a vanishing breed.
I've never gleaned corn.
Cheating with the tablet yet again.
Maybe it is time for a PBR?
Some continue to be obsessed...
Sigh, two hour meeting done. Next...
98F right now. And they keep on raising the temps for the weekend. Another degree since this morning. Sigh...
Giving Hamilton another shot.