Quiz: You need to purchase some swine feed for your pigs, an antique saddle, Elvis memorabilia, some live worms for fishing and maybe some ice cream and a cupcake or cookie. But you can only make one stop. Where do you go?
The only place I know of is Cantonment Mercantile, a one-stop shop on U.S. Highway 29 that offers a feed and seed shop, an antique mall and a bakery with fresh goodies. I found it on a drive up north of Nine Mile Road, still getting to know my new stomping grounds. I don’t see many places still using the old-timey, to my ears, “mercantile.” Intrigued, I stopped in.
The business, the former Cantonment Feed & Supply, was purchased five years ago by Sabrena Padgett and her brother Danny Hart, and the two converted the facility to a feed and seed section, antique mall section and bakery section. I had visited Cantonment Feed & Supply before and always was welcomed warmly. But this is something different. Yet still very much the same. If that makes sense.
“I always wanted to be a baker,” said Padgett, a Tate High School alumna, as she waited for a chocolate chip cake to come out of the oven. “Now we have the bakery and we also have ice cream.”