Sam’s Downtown Feed serves San Jose pets and livestock

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With its roots anchored in agriculture and old-design and style purchaser services, Sam’s Downtown Feed & Pet Source has served San Jose for additional than 30 years.

Marketed as “feeding anteaters to zebras,” the shop presents livestock and hen feed, beekeeping materials, grain, hay and zoological feed. In addition to feeding llamas, alpacas and flamingos, it also sells pet meals and supplies for puppies, cats, rats, rabbits and birds.

Operator Sam Blackford, 66, operates the keep out of a 100-12 months-aged making at 759 W. San Carlos St. that resembles a barn, with its picket cross beams, shots of cows, a tractor and hay bales. Blackford stated the loved ones environment and the wholesomeness of feed, grain and livestock provide him joy, while the sweet smells evoke reminiscences of his feed mill times.

“It usually takes me back again,” he explained to San José Highlight. “We’re shut on Sundays. When I open the doorway Monday morning, I really like the aroma. Persons of my technology and older who occur in say they haven’t skilled that scent due to the fact they have been children.”

Blackford claimed it’s the men and women, atmosphere and storied agricultural earlier that would make the small business worthwhile. He loves youngsters and presents them coloring sheets when they take a look at the retailer. He and his wife Lisa have two little ones of their possess and five grandchildren.

“Kids and animals usually go alongside one another,” he reported. “When a youngster arrives in with a new puppy dog or bunny rabbit it warms my heart.”

The relatives company

Blackford’s terrific grandfather arrived to San Jose from Pennsylvania in 1860 and was acknowledged locally for his apricot and prune orchards. The family’s very last title graces an elementary college, superior university and nearby streets. Blackford worked in his father Walter’s feed mill and recollects going to Emma Prusch Farm Park when it was a dairy. Currently, the farm park and Satisfied Hollow Park & Zoo are Blackford’s buyers.

But Blackford was not often involved in this line of perform. Just after attending Willow Glen Significant School and West Valley College, he labored as a DJ at a area radio station and at The Circle Star Theater, a previous supper club in San Carlos. He labored at CBS in Los Angeles in advance of returning to radio in the Bay Region.

His everyday living modified when he and his cousin, Conrad Leedom, took jobs at James Grain Warehouse. They loved doing work in agriculture and in 1986, partnered to open Sam’s Downtown Feed & Pet Offer.

Now the sweet scent of hay, an aged farm truck and a horse statue outside the store are all reminders of a much-gentler pre-pandemic earth.

The publish-pandemic atmosphere has brought on offer chain problems, like troubles with oyster shell deliveries from Tomales Bay, canned pet food and livestock hardware from abroad and grain products and fertilizer from the Ukraine. In addition, several of Blackford’s hay suppliers just can’t get ample drinking water to develop crops.

“It’s very aggravating,” Blackford explained. “We’re getting to compromise and let clients down a bit. It’s character constructing.”

But he’s persevering, thanks to the uniqueness of his every day existence managing an outdated-fashioned feed retail outlet.

Worker Paul Lavrischeff reported people today are dependent on the store’s extensive assortment of hay and feed. The retailer carries rice straw for hen nests and sweet-smelling alfalfa hay for goats, tortoises, rabbits and horses. Men and women also obtain its grass hay and oats for horses and alfalfa and oat hay for cows.

“It’s wonderful to see,” Lavrischeff informed San José Highlight. “It would make you really feel like you’re component of the neighborhood.”

For customers, feed they can not discover elsewhere and a trip down memory lane are what the keep is all about.

Prolonged-time customer Sue Hodge appreciates the selection of seed bins for wild and domestic birds. She feeds doves, pigeons and zebra finches.

“Even the significant ranches have to come below due to the fact there’s nowhere else to go,” she informed San José Spotlight. “I’d be horrified if he ever closes or retires.”

Make contact with Lorraine Gabbert at [email protected].