A Spare $4 Million?

When I walk to work, I like to walk through downtown - this morning I found a toy tire, a four-leaf clover, a five-leaf clover, and a daydream.

Sphar's Feed Store is located on Main Street in Winchester, and until a few years ago, you could still buy seed, ducklings, chicks, fertilizers, pesticides and such at Sphar's. (That's pronounced "Spaaaah", by the way, for those of you who aren't from around here. )

The north side of the former Sphar's building is a beautiful tangle of Virginia creeper, some kind of flowering ivy and, oddly enough, ferns growing up the length of the chimney.

Now the building is abandoned and in sad disrepair. It would probably take approximately (if our library building projects have been anything to go by) $3 to $4 million to completely revamp the building. But what a wonderful place to have as a seed and garden supply center complete with workshop and nursery space....and a huge part of Winchester's agricultural history.

A metal advertisement sign still hanging in there on the Main Street side of the building.



Check out the beautiful rounded brickwork on the arched entry to Sphar's on Main Street. I think this was a loading door for buggies, trucks, wagons and the like in the heyday of the business.

Once we get the seed stock in place, we could sell poultry, too: I was walking by the room that used to serve as a duckling and chick nursery and caught a faint whiff of eau de petit poulet emanating from the broken windows.

One of the saddest things I could see through the windows was a five-pound bag of an unknown variety of white seed beans, lying next to a 1980s vintage computer printer.