I think that Walmart is going to be the next one to go bankrupt considering where all of their stock comes from.

Also, speaking of Walmart, I just read an article the other day about their pork products. The article said that it tested pork from several major grocery stores and only WM's pork tested positive for Several strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. yuck

That would be fine by me.

We have a local grocery store that is very popular for low prices and great variety of stock. A couple years ago family members pushed out a brother.....well that didnt sit well with the employees...they went on strike, allbut closing the stores.

I brought my kids to see , see that these employees loved their boss so much, they walked off the job. Just a couple peoplle running the registers, shelves mostly empty, we were the only customers.

Those family members eventually caved, selling it to the brother they tried to push out.

These days that store is packed with shoppers every day of the week, and every register is hopping.

yuck!

I had stopped going to Wal-Mart as the hour long commute became less practical and appealing. I would get there and still find nothing I wanted. Plus their quality went downhill. A cheap shirt which can't handle three wash cycles is not a cheap shirt.

THEN I found out Wal-Mart was ruining brand names by forcing them to meet their "price point" and so anyone who participated was slashing their quality just for Wal-Mart. It looked like a bargain, but anyone who bought a cheap thing there was getting a cheap thing.

So I already wasn't shopping there when they expanded into grocery, but I still found out their meat was often watered down! And they should know better, since they sold contaminated dog food as their store brand!

So very much not a fan.

related: I purchased an item online from one of their dealers or whatever they're called.
the product worked once and then never again. I tried to get a refund.
the people that sold me the item through Walmart wouldn't give me a refund, they actually told me to change out the batteries.
I tried to leave a review of the product.
Walmart would not let me leave a negative review of the item I purchased.
Lord knows how many other products are crap, that have no negative reviews.

What Calianna had to say about regular grocery chains is certainly true for my local Publix. They do have quite a decent variety of organic and pretty decent stuff. Their whole “greenwise” section offers pretty decent stuff. I love their Florida grass-fed ground beef which not only has the better nutrition profile of grass-fed beef, but the reduced carbon footprint of locally raised.

Selection not nearly as extensive as what Earth Fare offered since they have to cater to everyone and you can still buy your Twinkies and sugary cereals there. 🤪 I liked that pretty much everything at Earth Fare was pretty decent. They did have to cater to a wind range also (vegans for example) so many things I wouldn’t buy, but still good choices.

Still Publix is less than 10 minutes from home and Earth Fare more like 30 minutes so I would not have gone there regularly. Same thing about the only Whole Foods in a large geographic area here, about 20-30 minutes away. I only go there a few times a year, but liked the Earth Fare as just a different option.

There is a small health food store near me also called Grassroots Natural Market. They are tiny compared to Publix but still offer lots of choices. Not cheap but I do like going there to try to keep them in business too!

That's so true, even our small town. My favorite store has organic produce & dairy, tho I usually only buy the lettuce. I don't buy produce or meat from WM - prices might be good but quality is low.

The closest organic store is one town over - totally independent, not a chain. It's small but they've got good stuff, tho it is pricey. I love summer because that's when the farmers market starts up - I shop there weekly & get fantastic produce. I've learned to freeze the Swiss chard because I've become very fond of it.

The funny thing about swiss chard is that unlike lettuce and kale, which are cool weather crops, swiss chard will grow all summer long, and yet I seldom ever see swiss chard for sale. I know there's not as much demand in general for swiss chard as there is for lettuce and kale, but it's a very nice vegetable. It cooks up quickly, and even the stems are tender and tasty. Yum... Some swiss chard right out of my back yard sounds wonderful. Since I'm not dealing with constantly aching legs, knees, ankles, and hips since retiring a few months ago, I'm hoping I'll feel recovered enough to doing some gardening this year.

That is one of its pluses! I don't have to go crazy freezing a lot at once - I buy an extra couple of bunches each week. The only time my favorite grower runs out is when the earwigs attack. I've told her I don't mind perforated chard, but she won't sell substandard produce.

My grocery sells Swiss chard in the organic section, but it never looks very fresh and it's expensive. Sometimes the lettuce doesn't look any better so I go salad-free for a week or 2.

Yep, that's definitely one of it's pluses - not to mention that chard can be planted as soon as the threat of frost passes, and continue to produce (for a while) on into the winter.

I love rainbow swiss chard - can't wait to see it in my grocery store this Spring.

I can get swiss chard all year around. I shop at my local food coop, a kind of moderate sized health food type store that traces its roots back to the food coop movement of the late 60's and 70's. The selection of organic produce is always great and always includes chard.

That's the type of health food store that's completely disappearing around here. There's still the Amish stores, but when it comes to fresh veggies, they tend toward selling only what's in season locally. This time of year that means mostly root veggies, maybe some kale, broccoli or cauli, if it was sufficiently protected during the hard freezes we've had.



So it'll be a couple of months before the amish stores have chard for sale again - if they carry it at all. I looked up food co-ops in the area, and there's only one that offers chard - and only then as an add-on to their regular CSA box plans, which are not even available yet this year, because it's winter.



Spring is coming though - I hope to grow some of my own.

Here's the website for the Co-op where I shop:

https://www.brattleborofoodcoop.coop

It is a thriving grocery store in a town with deep roots in the counterculture movement of the 60's and 70's. Although the communes have left the counterculture vibe has not entirely gone away.

Chard is very easy to grow!!

Start early and put in a window. If you have the time to put on a cover a night or when temps drop to 34, worth getting it outside asap. Just remember to acclimate it to the outside for 7-10 days: out during day, and back in at night. A tray is easy to move.

Cotonpal, that looks like the type of store that's pretty much disappeared around here, although none of the ones around here were co-ops - at least not since I moved to this area. They might still be doing well if they had been co-ops.

The closest we'd have to that now would be the fairly large Amish natural food store, and even they're very limited on meats of any kind, and especially limited on fresh veggies this time of year. They don't have fresh meat at all, and what little meat they have is sold by little individual pieces (I've never seen such tiny rib eyes and sirloins), vacuum packed, frozen, and extremely lean - even the rib eye barely had any discernible fat on it at all. Not much at all in the way of dairy either. They usually have eggs, although I don't remember even seeing eggs the last time I was there, a couple weeks ago, but then it's a lower-supply time of year for eggs.