Monthly Feed Store Run

Going to the feed store is sort of a love/hate thing for me. The feed store closest to me, Fred C. Gilbert's, is generally not on the way too or from the barn. They're also not open on Sundays, and they don't open until 9:00 a.m. on Saturday. All of which means that if I do go on Saturday morning, I get to the ranch later than usual which shoves my whole day back a bit. Hate.

Fred C Gilbert's offers a 5% discount when you buy five bags or more.

That's really the full extent of the hate part of the love/hate thing. Outside of not being directly on the way to the ranch, I love everything about my local feed store. Their customer service is excellent, and they generally carry what I need, or at least something close to it. When I walked in on Saturday, they had a new bin of dog toys that I could not resist. Yellow Dog thinks her new starfish is super fun.

She has a huge box of toys.

The thing I most love about going to the feed store is the feeling of satisfaction I get once everything is unloaded and put away. I have some OCD tendencies, some of which are actually healthy. Like I can't put fresh, new feed bags onto an unswept floor. Buying new feed gives me a legitimate reason to drag stuff out and give the floor a good sweeping.

It's hard to believe how many bags of feed and bins I store in this small spot.

Once the floor is swept clean of dead bugs, spilled feed, and plain old dirt, I carefully line up each new feed bag. And again, my OCD tendencies force me to do some irrational things. Like the bags cannot be upside down, and they must all face the same direction. That's not weird, right?

All the bags must face the same direction.

Once the bins are nearly empty, I pour the old feed into a smaller bucket, and then dump the new feed into the empty bin. I can pour two bags of rice bran into my bin on the left, but the other only holds one bag of beet pulp at a time. Whatever old feed I've poured into the small bucket gets poured back into the bin on top of the new feed so that it gets used first. Everyone does it that way, don't they?

Everything back in its rightful place.

Once the floor is swept and all of the feed bags and buckets are back where they go, I get an immense feeling of satisfaction. Filling a barn with hay gives an even bigger sense of completion, but this is a good feeling too. I hate making the detour to get to the feed store, but I love having a month or two worth of feed lined up, ready to go.

So yes, while I hate the drive, getting feed is mostly a love relationship.