When 20% off really isn't a bargain......

Empty isles at our local Marsh store. This week they are selling out everything in the store for 20% off. It will never be a bargain. 48 people are losing their job, another huge "big-box" now stands empty in Winchester, we have no place besides Walmart to buy fresh produce (I'm not sure what they sell is really "fresh"). The preprinted signs throughout the entire store that say "we value you" feel like a mockery to customers.

Grocery stores have always been an important part of my life. My grandparents owned and operated Kampus Korner grocery for many years right next to Northwest Nazarene College in Nampa, Idaho. My childhood jobs included spending time with them marking individual prices on groceries, learning how to ring up items on the ancient cash register and learning how to make change. It was a sad day when they finally closed the grocery. I now understand the loss to our nation and our culture by the closure of family owned small grocery stores and the dangers of depending on big-box stores.

As I walked through the store today talking to the employees and expressing my sadness over the loss of their jobs, I ran into other customers who were doing the same. I spent more time talking to people today than I did shopping. That is one thing I will miss the most, the opportunity to connect to our community through our local grocery store. I'm sure it will happen at Walmart, but there are many of us in this community who will not shop there. In addition to losing Marsh, I will be losing a connection to our community that brought me joy.

No matter how much I saved today on brussel sprouts, black-eyed peas, parsnips and dried mushrooms.....it will never be a bargain.

kansas

We just returned to Indiana after a vacation in Kansas. 1560 miles of highway with time to listen to the Omnivore’s Dilemma and contemplate the endless acres of newly sprouted wheat fields, rust colored fields of milo, yet to be harvested corn fields and open fields of grassland and cattle. It was nice to reconnect with family, and sad not to have enough time to reconnect with friends. Vacations are always too long and always too short. In those hours of listening and seeing Kansas through Indiana eyes, I was reminded of things I forget about Kansas: wind, seeing forever, rows of grain elevators and oil derricks. I noticed more fields of soy beans and for the first time ever, cotton fields.

Listening to the Omnivore’s Dilemma made me think about our national food supply once again. I tried to notice in Kansas what is unique and what is considered “local”. Bread should be better in Kansas than anywhere else in our nation. The local Betts Baking Company closed its factory in Hutchinson in recent years and the smell of bread no longer waifs through Hutchinson. What’s worse is that I found no artisan bakeries or bakers. Instead I found wheat popped into wheat snacks and Kansas sunflower seeds candy coated, rendering both into snack foods and not the staff of life.

We returned home to the news that our local Marsh store will close its doors in a month. The super Walmart opened 18 months ago and has successfully closed our other grocery stores. First ALDI’s and now Marsh. In a few months, Walmart will be the only place to buy groceries in our small city of 8,000. Although many of us predicted this would happen one day, I am sad to see it come true.

This news was difficult to come home to. When our new Walmart was built, I decided to stop shopping there and have not spent a $1 there since its opening. My first thought was what am I to do now that I have no other options to buy fresh produce, milk and meat? Since then I’ve thought more about the elderly people in Winchester who find our Walmart too big, overwhelming and difficult to shop in. I’ve been thinking about the many in our county who live with food insecurity. They do not have the ability to stock a pantry like I do and will be forced to pay whatever Walmart demands for food. Our already over utilized food pantry will be hit harder than ever before.

The closing of Marsh should change my life. But how I change matters greatly to our community. It is time to think about not depending on places like Walmart for my daily bread. It is time to be much more serious about buying locally. It is time to buy a cow from my friend Tony who treats his animals humanely and who lives 4 miles from me. (Okay....there was the incident with the 2x4 board.....but I think Tony learned his lesson.) It is time to bake bread on a regular basis and make it truly our daily bread. It is time to look into creating a co-op for our community, to involve people in gaining control over the food they eat and the marketplace where our food comes from. It is time to make our food supply socially just and environmentally sustainable. It is time to think about slow-food and to find alternative farming systems and to find a way to develop or join a CSA. The list is endless and it does not include shopping at Walmart. But it will take much time, energy, thought and community action. But it is time………