An old fashioned home decor and gift store that is thoughtfully curated, spotless and well laid out inside an old, remodeled barn-red-color building with products from clothing to home goods to even some food. It is the kind of store where the young manager, who was on duty solo on the day we visited, calls out a welcome greeting as you enter and current country western music is on the sound system.
The inventory was a good selection of seasonal leaning to nostalgia and farm country feel. There was a day when I lived on the East coast in my early working days youth that I'd shop at places just like this in the countryside. Although not quite my thing anymore, I had heard the store's name as both home store and country market and hoping to find a Cinderella pumpkin (the French heirloom variety) to put on my dining room table when spying this on the sign on the fly downhill on Hway 16 heading into Emmett but going too fast to make a safe pull off into the deep gravel lot (we'll come back to that). I negotiated with my husband to stop as we headed uphill on our way home. He still missed it given his speed and the traffic behind us and had to double back for the sake of marital harmony.
So there's the first tip...look for the red building and slow down to turn in.
This is what my best friend, who loves shopping at stores like this, calls a 'go slow store', because they have so much to see tucked in everywhere. Things that caught my eye included several wooden bowls that looked handcrafted, hobnail design coffee mugs and we noticed they also sold the Pike Place Market orange - cinnamon tea I used to love when I was a student at UW in the long-ago. There was a good selection of pints (including huckleberry) local dairy Reed ice cream in a freezer in a back room but even though we were traveling with a cooler on a warm afternoon since our primary reason to be in Emmett that day was to buy late season peaches from local orchards we knew the ice cream would not make it home in frozen state. We did end up with a Halloween kitchen towel to tuck in a gift bag, a couple of chocolate covered caramels from a local candy maker, and an uber-fragrant woodland scented bar of soap to park in a linen cabinet for aroma.
No produce here although it says Farm Market on the uphill side of the sign and Grit & Grace on the downhill. I understand they have produce stand across the road but it was closed for the season. Our quest for pumpkins continues.
ACCESSIBILITY: I have had multiple sclerosis since my college years and so I pay attention to whether businesses are following the basic, mere minimum equal access design standards as laid out in the ADA which became Federal Civil Rights law 33 years ago. It applies to anything designed to be built from 1991 forward but also to old space buildings like this too when they are remodeled since. Like this one. And they've done a good job with the layout on the interior to provide clear floor spaces that work well for all customers and are nicely ADA compliant too. (That is always true...what complies with ADA access for aisle space works well for all retail shoppers.) The problem is they make it impossible to get from parking to the door because they have used big scale, deep, loose gravel. Lots don't have to be paved but they do need to provide what the ADA calls "firm, stable and slip resistant" surfacing. Hard pack dirt can work. So can hard pack gravel if it is 1/4" or less in size. As well as any other number of hard compacted small scale materials. But this large scale loose mix is not compliant. If they are running a store open to the public, as this one is, they are required to provide accessible parking lot, doesn't have to even be marked for parking spots but the surfacing must make it possible for people using crutches or canes or walkers or wheelchairs to get in the door to shop too. This does not. It is a mystery why this business would want to turn away shoppers, like me, because they make it too difficult to get in the door. Easy fix...replace and pack the gravel. read more