Shelled corn can be found at farm feed stores. It is also sold by local farms....use searchtempest.com to find it on Craigslist. It will sometimes go under the heading of "Deer corn" as hunters use it to bait deer. I am sorry that you are having trouble finding pellets. This is the fourth serious pellet disruption I have seen (2000/2001, post-Katrina in 2005, the Great Pellet Panic of 2008) and now this. Pellet supply is a strange thing as the mills are working around the clock. The problem is that the big box stores are phasing them out for the season and don't have the pre-ordered inventory arriving on a regular basis like they would in December. My local Lowes has all the gas grills, lawn mowers and patio furniture you could ever want, but not a single bag of pellets or rock salt. Yey!
the shortage of 2000/2001 scared me enough that I would buy pellets whenever I saw them and had space to store them. Properly wrapped and waterproofed, they don't go bad. Pellets are a tenuous commodity whose supply is very uncertain. While I hate my current wood burner, fuel for it is readily available.
