The general store opened last year, but the community behind it has been here since 1937. I drove two hours to reach it, and I was not the only one making the trip. The shelves hold organic grains milled to order, local honey, and goat-milk soap shaped like the state.
Down the road, a creamery sells whole milk in glass bottles with the cream risen to the top. A catfish farm lets you catch your own and cleans it on the spot. A processing shop smokes sausage from recipes that came with the families who fled the Dust Bowl.
I bought elderberry syrup and a bag of flour ground that morning, and the woman at the counter told me she co-authored a cookbook about prairie cooking. Louisiana’s Mennonite markets sell everything from freshly milled flour to handmade quilts, and most is produced within a few miles of where you stand.
1. Little Willow Mercantile
Bulk bins, handmade quilts, fresh eggs, and shelves of pantry goods make this downtown shop feel like a general store transported into the present without losing the useful parts. Little Willow Mercantile is at 109 S. Washington Street, DeRidder, LA 70634, where Michaela and Eric Smith opened the store in 2024.
The Smith family is part of the local Mennonite community, and that farm-centered background runs naturally through the inventory. Shoppers can find beans, grains, herbs, spices, teas, cheeses, honey, canned goods, candies, and seasonal produce, along with wheat and corn that can be freshly milled into flour and cornmeal.
Then the shelves start getting more dangerous for anyone who planned to make a quick stop. Handmade pottery, quilts, goat-milk soap, candles, fabric, lip balm, tallow products, toys, and other practical goods turn browsing into a treasure hunt.
Coffee has its own family connection, with beans roasted by Michaela’s grandfather adding another small layer to the shop’s old-fashioned character.
Go slowly and ask what came in recently. The best part of a store tied this closely to farms and small producers is that the selection changes, so one visit never looks quite like the next.
2. Hill Crest Creamery
Open the refrigerator here and the bottles look wonderfully unlike supermarket milk. Hill Crest Creamery is at 635 Willow Branch Road, DeRidder, LA 70634, where the Schmidt family operates a working dairy and on-farm store surrounded by the Mennonite farming community south of town.
Whole milk is the thing to try first. It is low-temperature pasteurized and non-homogenized, which means the cream naturally rises and collects at the top instead of disappearing permanently into the milk.
A quick shake brings everything back together, although some visitors happily skim that rich layer separately.
The farm also produces cream, chocolate milk, buttermilk, butter, yogurt, and eggs, with additional farm-raised products appearing depending on availability. The cows spend much of their time on pasture, and the short distance between milking, processing, bottling, and the farm refrigerator gives the whole operation an appealingly direct feeling.
The farm store is generally open daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., making it one of the easiest stops on the route to work around other plans.
Bring a proper cooler. One bottle of milk tends to turn into butter, yogurt, eggs, and several explanations about why there is suddenly no room left in the refrigerator at home.
3. Highland Growers Llc
Good food starts much earlier than the farmers market, and this longtime DeRidder business shows what happens before anything becomes a loaf of bread, basket of vegetables, or green pasture.
Highland Growers operates at 112 E. 4th Street, DeRidder, LA 70634, with roots stretching back to 1939 and generations of experience serving farms across southwest Louisiana and neighboring East Texas.
Seeds fill much of the practical role here. Gardeners, ranchers, hunters, and commercial growers can shop varieties intended for vegetables, fields, lawns, pasture, and wildlife food plots, with local conditions always part of the conversation.
The business also works with fertilizer, soil testing, agricultural chemicals, and custom blends designed around what a particular piece of ground actually needs. That makes this a less obvious road-trip stop than a bakery or dairy, but a fascinating one for anyone who gardens or wants to understand the agricultural side of the local Mennonite community.
Come with questions rather than a strict shopping list. Staff knowledge is part of the value, particularly if Louisiana heat, soil, weeds, or rainfall have already defeated your garden once.
The pies and tomatoes elsewhere on this route begin with places like this, long before anybody gets to enjoy the finished product.
4. Country Gardens
A tomato plant may be the most optimistic thing you can buy on a road trip. Country Gardens, at 5485 US-171, DeRidder, LA 70634, fills its greenhouses and outdoor displays with the plants that keep gardens, porches, orchards, and kitchen tables productive across this corner of Louisiana.
Vegetable starts are an obvious stop for food-minded visitors, especially during planting season. Tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and other seasonal choices let shoppers skip the fragile seedling stage and go home with something already determined to survive.
Fruit trees make the stop even harder to resist. Apples, peaches, pears, plums, nectarines, and Southern citrus varieties such as satsumas, lemons, kumquats, and grapefruit can turn a casual visit into a long-term backyard project.
The nursery also grows annuals, perennials, roses, and hanging baskets, while mulch, compost, sod, garden supplies, and equipment cover the less glamorous work required to keep everything alive.
Ask what is thriving right now instead of arriving determined to buy one specific variety. Local growing knowledge matters in southwest Louisiana, where heat and humidity can humble even experienced gardeners.
A pie disappears in an evening. A satsuma tree has considerably more ambitious plans for your relationship.
5. Unruh Processing Llc
Smoked sausage cooling in the back of the car makes a convincing argument for bringing a cooler everywhere. Unruh Processing is at 971 Adron Woodard Road, DeRidder, LA 70634, where the family operation has been handling custom meat processing since Dewayne Unruh established the business in 2000.
Beef, pork, sheep, goats, deer, and wild hogs move through the processing side, making this an important practical stop for farmers and hunters throughout the area. For road-trippers, however, the retail side provides the easier reason to pull in.
Smoked pork sausage, summer sausage, steaks, and other cuts are available depending on current inventory. The appeal is straightforward: locally processed meat, a business built around repeat customers, and none of the elaborate presentation that usually appears when somebody tries to turn country food into a lifestyle brand.
The operation has grown over the years while remaining family-centered, with careful processing and food safety forming the serious side of what looks from outside like a simple rural meat shop.
Check current hours and retail availability before making a special drive, particularly if you have one product in mind.
Then bring ice. A few packages of sausage have a remarkable ability to turn an afternoon farm-market loop into plans for breakfast, supper, and whatever gets cooked on the grill tomorrow.
6. Sunrise Catfish Farm
Few grocery trips begin by handing you a fishing pole. Sunrise Catfish Farm, at 155 Milton Schmidt Road, DeRidder, LA 70634, turns buying supper into an afternoon activity with four stocked ponds where families can catch catfish and take their fish home afterward.
The property grew out of the Schmidt family’s farming history in the DeRidder Mennonite community. Dairy farming eventually gave way to commercial catfish production, and today the ponds remain one of the area’s most unusual food stops.
You do not need a fishing license to fish here. A self-serve bait shop keeps things simple, and poles and nets can be rented if you arrive empty-handed.
Once something finally bites, staff can weigh the catch and clean or fillet it, saving visitors from discovering just how complicated dinner can become once scales and knives are involved.
There is plenty to do even after the fishing slows. An air-conditioned refreshment area has offered ice cream, cinnamon rolls, pies, peanut brittle, drinks, and hot food, so the outing can stretch comfortably into several hours.
Go with children and the stop becomes an adventure. Go with adults and everybody suddenly becomes intensely competitive over who caught dinner.
Either way, bring a cooler.
7. Back Home Collection
Fresh butter sits remarkably comfortably beside thousands of books at this delightfully unpredictable DeRidder shop. Back Home Collection is at 902 E. 1st Street, DeRidder, LA 70634, where food, clothing, collectibles, home goods, and an enormous book selection all compete for attention under one roof.
The farm-food corner alone is enough reason to stop. Hill Crest Creamery milk, cream, buttermilk, and home-churned butter connect the store directly to the nearby Mennonite dairy community, giving shoppers another place to pick up local products without driving all the way to the farm.
Then come the baked goods. Homemade pies, cakes, cookies, casseroles, breads, peanut brittle, and other rotating treats make it dangerous to browse while hungry.
The selection has the comforting looseness of a country store rather than the precision of a supermarket bakery case.
Books turn a ten-minute food stop into an hour remarkably easily. With thousands of new and used titles, denim, household items, and collectibles mixed around the shop, nobody in the group has to be interested in exactly the same thing.
Come for butter and bread if that keeps the plan simple. Just do not be surprised when you leave with dessert, a paperback, and something completely unrelated that somehow became essential while you were looking around.
8. Lake Charles Farm & Table Market
Farmers markets work best when you never know exactly what will be waiting on the tables.
The former Cash & Carry Farmers’ Market moved in 2025 and now operates as the Lake Charles Farm & Table Market at the Brick House, 110 W. Pine Street, Lake Charles, LA, making it the southernmost stop on this southwest Louisiana farm-country trail.
The market brings together growers, bakers, food producers, and makers from around the region, so the selection follows seasons more than a fixed inventory. Fresh vegetables and fruit may sit beside eggs, honey, preserves, baked goods, meat, dairy products, prepared foods, handmade soaps, and crafts.
That unpredictability is precisely why arriving early pays off. Popular baked goods and seasonal produce can disappear quickly, while talking directly with vendors often reveals what was picked recently, what is about to come into season, and which products will not return until next year.
The market also provides a useful bridge between the rural businesses around DeRidder and the larger food community of Lake Charles. Producers who spend the week farming have a place to meet shoppers without turning their farms into full-time retail operations.
Check the current market schedule before leaving home, since hours and vendor attendance can shift.