For the month of February, we’ll visit places of classic commerce, old-school businesses that do a healthy trade, despite a changing world around them. This is our first edition for the month. Check back every Wednesday for a new installment.
When you come upon a massive development like Gravois Bluffs, you can’t help but remember that Fenton’s still a growing municipality, with thousands of residents added to the tax rolls over the last two census cycles. What’s particularly striking about the community, though, is that there are still remnants of the former small town, including the wisp of an old downtown, reminding you that the city dates back to an agrarian past in the 19th century. So, to heck with the big boxes. This is the part of Fenton worth exploring in detail.
Located in a small complex of buildings along Water Street, just a stone’s throw from the Meramec River, the Fenton Feed Mill (412 Water, 636-343-7272) is clearly one of the oldest businesses in Fenton; heck, one of the oldest in the county. Largely made up of frame construction, it’s suffered and survived a few fires over the years, including one in 1893, which burned the place to the ground. Another struck in the ‘50s and there’s still a bit of charring evidence from that one, apparent in the old mill, itself. It’s been long since converted into both an expansive storage area and the home to the Fenton Feed Mill’s ever-rotating flock of pullets, young, not-yet-laying chickens that are increasingly bought up by urban farmers, as well as rural ones.
In fact, chickens are the first item listed on the Feed Mill’s business card, which also advertises hay, straw, grass seed, bird seed, and pet food. Sure enough, all of those items and many more are for sale there, on a property that doesn’t feel as if it’s minutes away from nearby I-44 or the teeming Gravois Road. Instead, when you pull off of Water Street into a driveway and right up to the front door door of the Feed Mill, there’s a quiet, comforting sense of stepping back into time, more than a decade or two. Even if that’s an illusion, it’s a pleasant one. So savor it.
On Saturday afternoon, for example, a fanciful rooster strode across the driveway separating the Feed Mill’s buildings, with a barred rock hen following close behind. As they approached one of their roosting areas, a big, fat, black cat lazily walked into view, idly passing the parading birds into a place in the sun. That mix of an active business with the animal world isn’t lost on owner Daniel Diehl, who’s owned the Feed Mill for about two decades.
He lives on the property and remembers that just a few weeks back, “a hawk caught one of the chickens and was eating it right outside my front door.” He’s a realist and notes that “these are things that happen in animal husbandry.” To some of his clientele, that’s not really an issue. He says that he just had three of his own hogs butchered a couple weeks back, animals that "were raised nearby, along the river bottom.” Other customers need a bit of extra attention, and Diehl easily enough dispenses wisdom to neophyte chicken raisers on topics as basic as the difference between hay and straw.
His customers “come from all over. From Illinois, from mid-Missouri. You’d be surprised how far some of the people will travel to come here.”
They come for the service and the products. “It’s a word-of-mouth clientele,” he suggests. The Feed Mill stocks animal feeds of all sorts from the pricier, fully organic stuff to the affordable and mass-produced. There was a time, Diehl says, that the business was seriously different, like in “the 1950s, when the business was all about grinding animal feed. Hog and cattle feed. We did some steer feed just in the past week, but that’s maybe a once-a-month thing. When I bought the place, it was every day.”
Adapting to a changing marketplace is something that Diehl’s become adept at over the years. Even those who might not think about heading to a feed shop will be charmed by the space. And there’s a good chance that they’ll find something usable, whether it’s an S-clamp, a bag of birdseed, or a rawhide bone for your dog. On Saturday, our pickup included some chicken supplies, yes, but also a dozen packets of vegetable seeds; a carton of a dozen, gloriously large and multi-colored eggs from Tri-Pointe Farm in Hillsboro; and a three-pound bottle of honey, from Bob Finck Honey Farm located in, yes, Fenton.
Buying local, buying independent, buying at a place with history and color and charm... you’ve got it pretty much covered at the Fenton Feed Mill. And, in a couple weeks, when the trees fill out and the Meramec’s flowing by, you’ll have an even sharper view to savor, too, minutes from the buzzing traffic of nearby roads. Just be careful when you pull into that driveway. There’s a fat cat and a preening rooster that call this little stretch of Fenton’s pavement home.
The Fenton Feed Mill is open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays. For more info, call 636-343-7272.
