village shop

Posted on January 11, 2011 by kathrin

The village shop went in 1974. It didn’t have a name as such. It was simply called the shop and remembered as a true “Tante Emma Laden” (Ant Emma’s Shop). My grandparents ran it from the ground floor corner room in their house. It was one of those amazing shops with dark wooden shelves up to the ceiling, where most goods were kept in drawers, and you could get everything from pickled herrings to a zipper. They had to close it because their weekly orders were below the minimum set by the distributor. And without a car it was simply not possible to get the goods in. By then the shop was mainly used by the villagers outside of “opening hours”, to quickly get those things they had forgotten to buy at the supermarket.

There are still plenty of things to buy in the village – or to swap for other things – depending on whom you know. You can buy apples, eggs, beer, soft drinks and honey. Timber, game, pork sausages and meet, milk,
seasonal fruit, craft, liquor and conserve of course. You can borrow most tools from a sauerkraut grater to pig tab, … and you can get cloths fixed, curtains made and your pets looked after.

Talking to agrosociologists a few weeks ago at a conference, I found out that “Village Shops” are the new hot topic for rural regeneration – and there is a whole wave of research and initiatives going on. Most new shops are run as co-operatives and are trying to establish their status as non-for-profit commercial and social entities.

And there is of course the annual International Village Shop happening here!