Equestrians, hobby farmers glad to see feed store open
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That is why, even as the office parks and strip malls of Redmond push onto its more rural outskirts, even as new roads bearing more cars scribble the landscape, even as forests of half-million-dollar houses sprout up where horse ranches once stood, McCrea has opened a feed store.
He envisioned a feed store — with all the requisite hay, worming supplies, pitchforks and pig feed — that hearkened back to the way Redmond used to be, back when it was a patchwork of large acreage plots, when kids rode their backyard horses into town on a Saturday night.
The store, Farm Depot, opened a little more than a week ago with little fanfare, but with more than a helping of memories of a Redmond feed store that closed abruptly in 1999 after 80 years in business and later was torn down.
When he was little, McCrea's grandparents would take him to that establishment — T&D feed store, once a farmer's cooperative grange and the mainstay of Redmond's farm and horse communities.
Standing in the shadow of Redmond Town Center, T&D had become surrounded by suburban development, marking how the city's agrarian character had declined to the point it was invisible in its downtown area. Except that the horse people and the hobby farmers aren't gone from Redmond, not yet. So McCrea decided to fill the void left by T&D and open his own feed store.
In truth, he also wanted to bring a bit of the old Redmond back, along with a few of T&D's employees.
A successful feed store, he said, isn't so big it doesn't know all its customers' names, their livestock and their pets.
"T&D was like the Nordstrom's of feed stores," McCrea said. "I hope to really re-create that same feel."
Farm Depot, southeast of Union Hill Road past the Redmond Community Cemetery, was greeted with enthusiasm from area hobby farmers and the large equestrian community. It is housed in a former auto-mechanic's shop, near Redmond's only trailer park, and is adjacent to Alpine Construction Supply, a business McCrea also owns.
"It's a dumpy old building, and it's probably not the fanciest part of town," he said. "But the animal-supply people, they're all just drooling. I had people calling me at night, dropping by, totally excited about it."
Susan Cole, manager of Novelty Hill Stables, has 17 horses to feed, board, train and rehabilitate. After T&D closed, she had to drive to DeYoung's in Woodinville or the Issaquah Grange for fencing supplies, specialty feed and the like.
"It was a big hassle," Cole said. "It'll be great having this place nearby."
McCrea grew up on a Redmond farm, and he eventually got a lucrative job as marketing manager with an agricultural co-op. He traveled the world but soon realized that he was missing his young daughter's childhood and that he had to change his lifestyle.
"I thought, 'I'm going to get myself a minimum-wage job hauling bales of hay,' " he laughed.
McCrea surveys his new store, the piles of salt blocks and horse halters, the stacks of feed. His competition dwarfs his operation, but he tries to remain competitive in pricing. Petco, Home Depot and Wal-Mart may have low prices, but their selection is smaller and their employees much less knowledgeable, said store manager Cherie Cristan.
"A feed store is kind of like a McLendon's Hardware," Tom Bauer, who worked at T&D for 32 years, said of the chain of hardware stores in the Puget Sound area. "When you go there you can actually talk to somebody who knows something. They might have a part that Home Depot would never even think of carrying, and they go around the corner and pull it out of a little box. You've got a built-in clientele and that's repeat business. That's like money in the bank if you treat 'em right."
Bauer, now a repairman with the city of Redmond's water department, said he volunteered to help out Saturdays at Farm Depot. "I miss all my good customers," he said.
Even as Redmond has become more suburban, T&D's very existence actually helped to foster the horse and hobby farm culture in Redmond, Bauer said.
McCrea wonders if Farm Depot can do the same.
"Redmond's changing, for sure," McCrea said. "It's difficult for parents to say, 'Let's go get a bunny,' if they don't know where to find one, or how to care for one."
McCrea envisions someday hatching chicks under warming lights and selling them to children, to give them some responsibility as well as an introduction to farming.
"There are little pockets of rural life still existing in King County, and I hope they're preserved," said Linda Kurtenbach of Enumclaw, who distributes Royal Canin pet food to Farm Depot. "It's this type of business that helps to service and encourage this way of life."
Caitlin Cleary can be reached at 206-464-8214 or ccleary@seattletimes.com.