October is the month of plenty of pork, for a long time was the month for hog slaughtering on farms. Usually this month pork prices are the lowest of the year.
I went to two grocery stores today. Sausage was on my shopping list. Walmart (main instigator of the shortages?) has had more foods in stock than I've seen in years but had virtually no sausage. A few packs of patties or links but no rolls of sausage at all.
Went to another regional chain store. They had more but not a lot. only three or four rolls of one brand. And the price was sky high. It was about $3 a roll a couple of weeks ago. Today it was $4.49.
This store always has pork chops for a great price in October. I didn't look at the prices but nothing was on special and I haven't seen any on sale all month.
Higher prices on any meat isn't a shock but why the dearth of sausage in a month when pork is usually more plentiful than any other time of year?
I think Walmart is irrelevant now. I don't go there. If I want something that local stores don't sell, I order online from companies that do sell it.
Gee. I drive 50-90 miles round trip to get to ANY grocery store and there aren't many. Some of us don't live in towns or cities. You sound like my liberal family members who brag that they never shop at Walmart. But they have five or six other grocery stores within a mile or two of their homes.
We have Food Lion and Aldi's. That's all. And there is nothing within a mile of my house, other than a convenience store that doesn't even have gas pumps.
Nothing within a mile of my house except trees, farms and mountains. I did have three wild turkeys mosey across the road in front of me yesterday. I said I could have shopped for Thanksgiving. No stores closer than 25 miles from me. That's Walmart. If I drive another five miles or so, the regional chain. After driving 25 miles through country roads, I often don't feel much like crawling through town to get to the other store.
And at least at Walmart I don't have to make yet another drive to get to the hardware store or the dollar store for non food items. Believe me, I'm no Walmart fan but I'm no fan of driving all over hell's half acre to shop either. Some of it is probably just enjoying pulling liberal chains when they ask where I got this, that or the other and I say, "Walmart." Then they go into the usual pompous rant. They'd probably faint if they went into Rural King, where I actually found little led lights that clip onto a baseball cap brim.
If I have time, I drive another 15 miles to the town where there are more stores closer together and the butcher shop for meat, farm stand for produce, all close by.
No turkeys here, but we have had deer, raccoons, possums, foxes, and bears in our yard. The back of my property goes to the center of a swamp, so I wouldn't be surprised to see an alligator in my back yard someday.
I hope you know that manufacturers cut corners on the products they send to Walmart in order to meet Walmart's price demands. I know of a guy who bought a printer there. It was a name brand. It was lacking an advertised feature. He called support, and they told him that the ones they sent to Walmart didn't have that feature so they could meet Walmart's demands. So he was SOL.
The only major shopping centers in my general vicinity are in the next state and around an hour drive each way. It's over a hour for me to drive to a store where I can pick out clothes that I can wear. I went in a Walmart once, and the only thing they had that I could wear was socks. I also have to drive an hour to get to a book store.