Country Store Lore

The other week Sheri and I found ourselves at one of our favorite places, the Vermont Country Store located in Southern Vermont. It’s an immense, yet quaint store with an amazing assortment of goods. Known as the “Purveyors of the Practical & Hard-to-Find,” the VCS regularly attracts crowds from as far away Boston and New York. (I’m talking about chartered coaches full with tourists!) For us, the appeal of the “hard-to-find” outweighed that of the “practical” and we were like kids in a candy store. It even has a candy store, which was of great interest to Sheri. But that’s a whole other story. The universal appeal is that it evokes a simpler time, as is evidenced by an amazing assortment of great, classic packaging. We were pleased to find that they included one of our own, designed for Wigwam… True to the VCS’s “hard-to-find” credo, the two Wigwam sock styles carried, “132” and “Master,” are made on special order. Both use Wigwam’s unique concept of color-coded stitching based on sock sizes. This way, mothers could match-up socks for kids of differing ages within large families. The green packages are our new designs, with the older, black packages… Sheri outside… Inside, there is much to see… Here’s a great assortment of men’s shaving tonics, salves & elixers… Many of the products are made under the VCS private label. Surprisingly, the packaging is quite nice, as shown here with this great collection of soups. However, paying $7.00 for a can of condensed soup is not everyone’s cup of tea… Lookin’ My*T*Fine… I can attest that these are physically addictive. If my house is going to be littered with spent cracker tine, please lord, let them look like this… This is the point where I lost Sheri… An interesting concept here: Used tires cut and formed into horsie-shaped swings for sale, made by a local Vermont artist… Too much shopping takes its toll…