Day 309

While shopping for a large tractor is seething I can't say I really ever thought about before owning a farm, there is a store I don't think I ever entered that is now almost a weekly trip for my entire family. Fleet Farm is sometimes referred to as a man’s mall. After my seemingly hundreds of visits, I now understand why. (I could go into the differences between Fleet Farm and Farm & fleet, but I’ll save that for another day).

When we first started farm and house projects, we knew visits to local home improvement stores would be a regular occurrence. At our first home, I remember occasionally going to a store, just to go back once or twice again that same day because I either didn't get enough, got the wrong thing, or didn’t get everything needed. Luckily, the store was only a few minutes away.

I've gotten better and now needing to return to a store more than once in the day is a rare occurrence, though it does happen sometimes. But, now that kids are involved, sometimes the return trip is more than accidental.

The kids love Fleet Farm. Maybe it’s because they get to visit the horse statue and laugh at the “horsey butt.” Maybe they know we use the four cents off every gallon of gas and end up leaving with a full tank of fuel and a small bag of popcorn. In the holiday season, they especially like perusing the aisles for decorations and inflatables. There are many reasons to love Fleet Farm.

While the kids enjoy their routines, I enjoy that a trip to Fleet Farm can help us with so many of the things we are working on.

We are always getting our usual everyday items. We get our pet food and kitty litter. We get our birdseed. We get our water softener salt. We get our chicken feed.

We also get items we don't necessarily use every day. We get work boots. We get overalls. We get fencing. We get mouse traps. We get whatever we need.

So whenever anything is added to our list, you know where we’ll be. We’ll even save you some popcorn.