GARNETT ? Every day brings a surprise to Yoder?s Country Store. Staffers never know what they?ll find when they open a box of items to put on the shelf.
It might be cans of pickled pig?s feet. Or imitation duck (whatever that is). Maybe canned cactus.
It also could be a box of blood pressure cuffs or dog treats.
Or maybe coffee-flavored chocolate.
Snow falls on the Yoder?s Country Store Wednesday afternoon.
Yoder?s Country Store, about a mile west of Garnett on 1700 Road (about 30 miles north of Iola), offers a unique shopping experience. The inventory is always changing and always surprising, with staples of specialty baking supplies like exotic spices, sugars and flours, as well as ?bent and dent? or out-of-date items shipped from grocery stores across the country.
You can also buy state-certified eggs straight from a local Amish farm, or beef and pork that was locally raised, grazed and butchered up the road at Mont Ida.
Cathy Yoder builds sandwiches to order at the store?s deli. The store will make up to 100 sandwiches a day.
There?s also a deli that prepares up to 100 sandwiches each day or homemade soups at lunchtime for local farmers, students and others. On Saturdays, they swap each week between offering slabs of smoked ribs or burgers and fries fresh off the grill.
On Tuesdays, the staff operates a cafe at the Garnett sale barn and will offer the same meals ? lasagna, chicken and noodles with mashed potatoes, beef and noodles ? at the country store. They cater, too, and this year started providing meals to the Anderson County High School football team before games.
They serve breakfast, too. Every morning, nine elderly gentlemen gather at 7 a.m. to drink coffee. They?re followed by a group of seven who gather at 9 a.m.
As store owner Cathy Yoder says, ?Where else can they sit for hours and solve the world?s problems? We tell them some of them come in and cause the problems, and then the others come in and solves them.?
