Monday, Feb. 16, 2015, noon, 16 degrees at the Reservoir Food Pantry
I drove up to the parking lot we use on pantry day. It’s not our parking lot, really. It belongs to the old Robert’s Auction building. The snow plow guy had cleaned the space very well so I knew right away that we were going to have a good day. Then, I noticed that the walkway from the parking lot to the shed entrance hadn’t been shoveled.
WOW. The snow was knee deep along the walkway. Oh well. At least we could park our cars.
It didn’t matter anyway. The sun was out. People could park. This was the closest to a decent day we’ve had in 3 weeks. We were going to be busy today.
I slogged through the snow to the shed and found Cheryl. Minutes later Bob and Tony arrived. Things were improving! The pantry day began itself. As volunteers arrived, we tackled our jobs:
Fronting the shelves in the pantry.
Arranging produce in the greenhouse.
Preparing takeout bags.
Checking to see if the greenhouse door would close (it didn’t). We’d had trouble closing it last week and wondered how it would manage today (it didn’t).
Finding pens that work for the sign in book. This is always a challenge when the temperature drops below 30.
Jean, a new volunteer in her 80’s, found a shovel in her car and cleared the walkway the best she could.
When the pantry opened, shoppers made their way through the snow from the parking lot to the shed. A steady stream of people came all afternoon. Those who had cars brought those who did not. They were:
Hungry
Cold
Grateful.
Everything stopped about 4 so we packed up and headed out. Only then did I notice that there was no feeling in my fingers, toes, nose, ears. Cheryl and I had worked in the shed where there was some heat in spite of the door opening repeatedly. (The wall thermometer showed a steady 36 all afternoon.)
Bob and Susanne worked in the greenhouse where, in spite of the heater, there was only cold. The open door made the whole room feel like outside. 17 degrees.
Prasida worked in the greenhouse for awhile as she prepared to go on her takeout run. Sean and Bonnie came by and collected produce for their takeouts as well.
We are, as a pantry, people racing against all odds to feed the hungry. We do much to make sure everyone receives fresh produce every pantry day. Our new van, just yesterday christened “The Beast,” will be offering more and more produce as the shoppers increase.
Most of our volunteers are similar to other pantry volunteers. We’re cotton tops old enough to have our priorities straight. We agree that feeding the hungry is important. We make time in our remaining days to do the job.
What sets us apart at Reservoir Food Pantry is the number of volunteers. We have many and more show up every week.
The bottom line: As a group, we don’t care if the weather is hot, cold, wet, dry. We’re at the pantry to serve the people. So, as long as we can get the food, there are now options for everyone in the area who is hungry:
Elderly poor,
Employed poor,
Food insecure,
Generational poor,
Homeless (sheltered),
Homeless (unsheltered),
Ill poor,
Infant poor,
Malnourished,
Newly poor,
Persistent poor,
Resource poor,
Situational poor,
Struggling poor,
Underemployed poor,
Unemployed poor.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Welcome Hunger Buster or Snow White or White Lightening or
Wheels with Meals, or whatever we come up with.
Whatever you’re going to be called…welcome!
We’ve got a contest going here: If you name our shiny new low mileage Chevy Van, you’ll win the prize of a jar of peanut butter.
Our brand new shiny, white Chevy van 2500 has been a long time coming. We outgrew Vanessa months and months ago but nobody really talked about it. Setting up this pantry has been a very expensive venture and we lived with the Caravan as long as we possibly could and then hung on another few months.
We held a fund drive in November which brought in some much needed $$$. Now…thanks to everyone’s generosity Prasida is driving around in our brand new shiny, low mileage Chevy panel truck from Deitz Motors on Route 28.
Now, Prasida and Francine will return from Latham on Mondays with all the food we need. We hope we never run out of produce again…ever.
We’d been looking for months. Finally, last week, Prasida and Bob Overton drove over and saw this gorgeous beauty waiting for us.
I’m not into numerology very much but even I could tell I’d never seen such a gorgeous license plate.
This van might have surfaced weeks sooner but, energetically, we needed to open a space for it in our lives. Plus, (and this is no small deal), Prasida had to get up one day and drink an extra cup of tea before 9:00 a.m.. That threw her into high gear and she really got things done.
This week, our pantry found a snow plow team, arranged for more electricity in our greenhouse, bought a Chevy van, and (whew) I don’t know what else!
All this happened because everyone got together for a lunchtime meeting on Tuesday. To-do lists were passed around. People signed on the dotted line.
The Reservoir Food Pantry took giant steps forward. I offer sincere gratitude and heartfelt thanks to everyone involved in this pantry in any way. We are getting things done this week that I did not think would happen for another year.
It is an honor and a pleasure to be a part of the Reservoir Food Pantry.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
What About our Hungry Neighbors, Anyway?
“WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE COMING TO YOUR PANTRY WHO DON’T NEED THE FOOD? YOU DON’T FEED THEM, DO YOU?”
I hear variations on this theme from people who’ve never been near a pantry. They fantasize that food pantries are visited mostly by people with expensive cars, designer clothing, beautiful jewelry, fancy jobs; freeloaders who aren’t hungry and don’t need the food.
IF ONLY THEY KNEW…HUNGER IS A POTENTIAL FOR ALL OF US.
So, now, I offer you a chance to glimpse at what hunger really means.
Imagine what life would be like if you lived without enough $$$ to buy the food you need to feed yourself and your family.
Because…these people are neighbors. You may not recognize those around you who suffer with hunger and who miss meals. Open your eyes a little and you’ll see them all. You’ll know the names of some, the addresses of others. You’ll even find a relative or 3. These individuals represent millions more because hunger in our country is an epidemic.
AND, LIKE OTHER EPIDEMIC DISEASES, HUNGER DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE. It’s found in all races, all religions, all communities, all categories, and every educational background.
Enlisted men and women in every branch of service are counted among the hungry. They stand tall in our front lines and in our food pantry lines.
Retail workers ring up the sales at cash registers in the check out lines of big box stores and sell us high end merchandise in upscale boutiques in communities from shore to shore in our great nation. When they are not ringing up our purchases they can often be found working a 2nd or even 3rd job.
The hungry also serve us food, clean our houses, grow the food we eat, tend our lawns, launder our clothes, and otherwise do the necessary grunt work. They care for our children in our homes and daycare centers.
Try going through your day without them. Their poverty subsidizes our wealthy lifestyle.
People don’t usually grow up aspiring to spend their adult lives working at 2-3 seemingly meaningless dead end jobs.
There just aren’t that many options for many people these days.
The kitchens of the struggling class where the hungry live usually feature 1 or 2 appliances:
crock pot
electric skillet
microwave.
Often a working refrigerator is not part of the furnishings.
The kitchen cupboards have a few items:
a small bag of flour,
mayonnaise
salt.
A couple of onions and a few potatoes may be in a bowl on the counter.
Unless the person we’re visiting has found a pantry offering fresh vegetables, there is no fresh food. If the person has found a pantry, these things will be available in small quantities.
SOME HUNGRY PEOPLE YOU SEE/KNOW MAKE UP A NEW BREED OF THIEF – FOOD THIEF. They rob grocery store shelves, not cash registers, to get the food to feed their families.
A food pantry is a final destination on a journey down a path to the bottom. Along the path, people shed personal items and personal beliefs. They come to a food pantry, admitting to themselves that they’ve gone about as far down as they can get. They’re unable to provide the most basic need life has to offer…food.
Omitted from this equation is that our whole system has failed. When a person shops at a food pantry, s/he experiences individual hunger and also wholesale, widespread hunger – and looks our nation’s political failure straight in the eye.
Hunger in America is a silent and devastating disease, hidden as much as possible from our population at large. But, there’s a question here:
HOW MUCH LONGER CAN WE KEEP THIS SECRET HIDDEN AWAY WHEN 1 SENIOR IN 7 DOESN’T GET ENOUGH TO EAT AND 1 SCHOOL CHILD IN 5 ONLY EATS IN SCHOOL?
NATIONWIDE, 1 PERSON IN 6 DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH FOOD TO EAT.
WELCOME TO THE STRUGGLING CLASS.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Supermarket Abandonment
Woodstock is a food desert. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Woodstock lacking in anything. After all, 60% or so of Woodstock’s residents are weekenders with homes in the city. They venture up on weekends, hang out and entertain their friends with foods coming from the Sunflower, Sunfrost, the Cub Market. The main ingredient for their meat dishes most often comes from the well stocked Woodstock Meats.
But, what about the rest of the crowd who live here 7 days per week? The lucky ones with working automobiles shop at Hurley Ridge Market on 375 in Hurley, the Price Chopper in Saugerties, or one of the other chains in Kingston: Shoprite, Hannaford’s, Adams Fairacre.
Higher income locals also shop at the Sunflower, Sunfrost, Cub Market. Additionally, they shop in Saugerties or Kingston at Mother Earth’s.
These upscale shoppers, both locals and weekenders, focus their purchases on all natural, organic. Hudson Valley grown food. Popular buzz words are organic, non-GMO, Paleo, free range, antibiotic free, gluten free, hormone free, and…you get the picture.
Those who are not vegetarians or vegans also shop at Woodstock Meats and maybe at Adams Fairacre. The point here is that these shoppers participate in consumption trends associated with their lifestyle and health. And, with the upscale foods available in Woodstock, they’re able to get anything they want, whenever they want it.
The not-so-lucky live a different way. The Woodstock resident without a working automobile shops at the CVS, Rite Aid, Cumberland Farms.
The Woodstock resident without a working automobile gets Sunflower products by diving in the dumpster behind the store and by shopping at pantries located at Family of Woodstock, Holy Ascension Monastery, and in the Woodstock Reformed Church. Some homebound Woodstock residents benefit from Sunflower’s benevolency with produce and bread donated regularly to Meals on Wheels. These meals are delivered to their homes throughout the week for $3.00 per meal.
In years past, the Grand Union was extremely popular in Woodstock. Community groups held raffles, Girl Scouts sold cookies, and neighbors visited with one another while shopping. After snow storms, everyone went to Grand Union, shopped for milk, butter, and eggs, and swapped snow stories.
It was indispensable for the elderly and those without cars. In 2001, the Grand Union closed and CVS got the space. In typical Woodstock fashion, residents took to the streets with demonstrations. But, it was to no avail. On April 11, 2001, Woodstock became a food desert.
The result? Many local people walking on the sidewalks of Woodstock today don’t have enough $$$ to purchase a sufficient supply of nutritious food. Food insufficiency is also known as food insecurity. More people than we realize deal with this situation on a daily basis.
Without access to nutritious food, they suffer from overconsumption. When a person eats too much of the wrong thing and too little of the right thing, hunger, poverty, and diseases such as diabetes overlap and connect.
For those of you who believe the fault is entirely that of the hungry, poverty stricken person: please remember that the community is as much to blame as the individual. People eat what they have access to. They don’t eat what they can’t get. Less prestigious stores in Woodstock offer too few choices of healthy and affordable food. They offer packaged food rich in fat, sugar, salt, preservatives, artificial coloring, artificial flavoring, pesticides.
As the wealthy and privileged shop for the best available food and adapt the latest food and health trends to their diets, the lower, less privileged class is left further and farther behind. They will probably never catch up.
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Thurman Greco
Awaken The Connection
PANTRIES CAN BE POWERFUL PLACES. Everyone coming to a pantry needs healing of one kind or another. People come to pantries for just that healing.
The Reservoir Food Pantry offers an opportunity for all of us to find a place of connection and wholeness within ourselves.
This connections makes us aware that what we think and do matters, that our feelings and intentions are important, and that we are not alone or separate. We are not above or below others.
THESE REALIZATIONS CAN BE INCREDIBLY POWERFUL. Once we become more aware, we feel more responsible for our inner growth and for all life around us.
Feeding people and allowing others to feed us makes us know that we are all one huge family on this planet. Knowing this concept can wake up the world.
JOIN US. Work in the pantry, shop in the pantry. Participation in the pantry will allow you to experience deeply your connection to all living beings.
YOUR COMMITMENT TO A PANTRY WILL ALLOW YOU TO JOURNEY DOWN A PATH WHERE WE CAN ALL BE ONE AND DEEPER COMMUNICATION IS A REALITY.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Dear Neighbor
THIS WEEK WAS GLORIOUS IN THE RESERVOIR FOOD PANTRY. Although the pantry was so cold that the pens froze at the sign-in book, we didn’t even mind. After all, I’m experienced with working in a cold space. The Woodstock Reformed Church was never heated either. So what. It’s better for the produce, don’t you agree?
But, back to the glorious part…our first ever mailer went out this week. Or, rather, the whole project was completed on Tuesday when I took the last load of letters to the Kingston Post Office to the Bulk Mail room.
What a wonderful feeling that was! We’ve been working for months on this mailer. Robyn Daugherty addressed envelopes on many pantry afternoons beginning about last March.
Bonnie Lykes and Felice Castellano took up pen and envelope throughout the summer months. Then, other people joined in at the table and we finally finished the job this week.
Finalists included Louise Cacchio, Garrett O’Dell, Susanne Traub, and Barbara Freisner.
Prasida and I signed the letters.
The entire project was a huge leap of faith. After all, the Reservoir Food Pantry only opened in September, 2013, on Route 28 in Boiceville, when volunteers delivered food to 21 homebound households.. With little to no fanfare, we’ve been growing steadily. The need for a food pantry in our area was great when we opened, and it’s even greater today.
WE SERVE OVER 900 PEOPLE MONTHLY. 40% of those served are homebound residents in the area unable to come to the pantry. Families and individuals visiting the Reservoir Food Pantry weekly come from many different circumstances. Some are single parent families. Some work more than one job and are still unable to buy food after they pay the rent and get the gas to go to work. Some have lost their jobs, their homes. Still others are struggling with life-altering circumstances, be it a health issue, an accident, the loss of a family member, or other personal disaster.
The Reservoir Food Pantry was founded by local residents, Sean Bigler and Bonnie Lykes. We’re fortunate to have the support pf volunteers from the community. There are no salaried employees. We nourish the hungry, both in our pantry and by delivering food to those unable to visit the pantry. We offer canned, packaged food, bread and fresh produce regularly. We also offer a limited amount of items of dignity.
THE PANTRY NEEDS YOUR HELP. Your generosity is appreciated and your gift will be used to directly help neighbors. Please make your check payable to the Reservoir Food Pantry, and mail it to P. O. Box 245, Boiceville, NY 12412.
If you prefer to donate by credit card, please visit our website at www.reservoirfoodpantry.org/donate.
Reservoir Food Pantry, Inc., is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit charity and your contribution is tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Happy Holiday!
Traditionally, holidays revolve around a meal served at a food laden table. People sit around the table, or several tables, eat too much delicious food and visit with relatives, friends, neighbors. They swap stories; catch up on news.
FOR MORE AND MORE OF US, THIS JUST DOESN’T HAPPEN ANYMORE. Households and individuals find themselves unable to finance the expense of the holiday table: the turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, gravy, fruit salad, pies, cakes.
Not only can people not afford the food, more and more people no longer have the table to sit at, the chairs to sit on, and the stove to cook the food.
THE RECIPES, POTS AND PANS, CHINA, SILVERWARE, CRYSTAL ARE LONG SINCE GONE. Cooking without a kitchen is the way of the modern household living on a minimum wage.
With luck, today’s minimum wage household will have the gas to get to the soup kitchen. Otherwise, it’s going to be a regular day with a meal prepared in a crock pot, electric skillet, toaster over, or hot plate.
For the pantry shopper, there’s an opportunity to get extra fruits and vegetables. Some better connected pantries will offer canned hams or turkeys.
The first year a person uses a pantry for primary shopping, Thanksgiving is a challenge, a holiday gone wrong. After several years, Thanksgiving becomes whatever the household can make of it. The adjustment is, for some, difficult, and for others …more difficult.
The difficulty lies, mostly, in the ability to get food items considered “traditional” by a family when the money is simply not available to purchase the item in the grocery store.
AFTER SEVERAL YEARS AND SEVERAL HOLIDAYS, A NEW TRADITION EMERGES. The food gatherer in the household becomes, if time allows, more skilled at scrounging for and gathering food at both the pantry and the grocery store.
If the household is composed of people with multiple jobs, if there are other issues:
transportation challenges
disabilities,
serious illness,
the effort is yet more difficult.
As time goes by, the person/household hopefully adjusts to the situation as the members transition from being situational poor to resource poor to struggling poor.
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If you want to send a donation, our address is: Reservoir Food Pantry, P O Box 245, Boiceville, NY 12412. Or, use the Donate Button on this blog. Thank you in advance for your generosity.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Do you shop at a Pantry? Do you work at a Pantry? Do you donate to a Pantry? – Part 3
THIS SOUP HAS NOTHING IN IT BUT SALT.
At first, when I was just learning to be a pantry coordinator, I didn’t understand what was wrong. We got in some soup which everyone looked at, read the label, and left on the shelf. So, I asked Barry to visit the pantry.
“WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH THIS SOUP? Most of the people are leaving it on the shelf. There’s only 6 different things they can take home here. Why are they leaving the soup behind?”
“Well, it’s the nutritional content” he said, reading the label. There’s no nutrition. And, everyone knows too much salt is not good.”
I began to watch the shoppers reading the labels and I asked questions. I got an earful of important information from people trying to live on pantry food. I learned several important things:
THOSE SHOPPING IN A PANTRY HAVE LITTLE OR NO MONEY FOR HEALTH CARE/MEDICAL EXPENSES. FOOD IS THE FRONT LINE OF DEFENSE FOR THOSE ON A LIMITED BUDGET. The pantry food is, sometimes, nutritionally inadequate because
there may not always be enough of it
there may not be enough fresh vegetables
everything is canned resulting in high sodium products
there is no real choice.
At the time, there were fewer than 10 items in the pantry to choose from which didn’t offer a shopper enough options to deal with dietary restrictions (celiac disease, hypertension, diabetes), personal preference, and enough variety to offer good nutritional selection.
As a new coordinator, I still didn’t yet know all my options and wasn’t comfortable with the Food Bank system yet. This much I knew:
The food supply I had to choose from was then and is now supply driven instead of need driven. In other words, I can’t order everything the pantry needs at a given time because it’s not always available. Foods available at the Food Bank are donations from grocery stores, farms, food manufacturers.
MUCH FOOD BANK FOOD IS DIVERTED FROM A LANDFILL. In other words, it’s salvage. I order food donated from test marketing disasters, crop overproduction, Food Bank food drives.
MOST FOOD COMING INTO OUR PANTRY ARE NUTRITIONALLY SOUND BECAUSE I WON’T ORDER IT IF IT ISN’T. There are some issues with sodium and fat…but not many.
Several things happened in those early years that I coordinated the pantry. They really helped:
The HPNAP people took a stand against too much salt which I got all excited about. They issued guidelines forbidding agencies to use HPNAP funds to purchase foods have too many grams of salt per serving.
Gradually, as the economy declined, the HPNAP people added other nutritional improvements:
1% milk
Whole grain breads
Lean meats
A minimum 3 -day-supply of food for everyone in the household.
Fresh produce.
THESE GUIDELINES COMPLETELY CHANGED HOW THE PANTRY OPERATED AND WHAT WAS AVAILABLE. IT WAS GLORIOUS!
The pantry offered very little junk food even though there was certainly a lot of it at the Food Bank. The Food Bank accepts donations but that doesn’t mean I have to put the junk food on my pantry’s shelf.
These guidelines and availability are still a reality in the pantry world as our calendar approaches 2015. I leave the junk food off my orders so other coordinators can have it.
And, I’m still grateful for:
crop overproduction
Food Bank food drives
HPNAP guidelines
food that can be diverted from the landfill
generous bakeries
the Farm Stand
the Food Bank truck that’s making the rounds of the grocery stores, farms, food manufacturers so we can have their overage at our food pantry.
Peace and food for all.
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Thurman Greco
Thank you to Pieta and the Ulster County Board of Realtors Community Service Committee.
This letter is to everyone at the Ulster County Board of Realtors Community Services Committee who offer ongoing support our food pantry throughout the year.
Specifically, thank you to:
Jean Semilof – Westwood Metes and Bounds
Pieta Williams – Halter Associates Realty
Mitch Rapaport, Margo O’Bourne, and Victoria Hoyt – Win Morrison
Grace Bowne, Dorcinda Knauth – Weichert Realtors, The Spiesman Group
Steve Hubbard – Steve Hubbard Real Estate
Gillian Harper – Wells Fargo Mortgage
Elizabeth Dolly Decker – Hello Dolly Real Estate
Michele Rizzi – Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union
Nan Potter – Potter Realty.
Pieta, you always make my day better when I came down the stairs to my home and see a bag of goodies: razors, shampoo, feminine hygiene products, tooth paste. These are basics – things most of us take for granted.
But, when a person shops at a pantry, nothing can be taken for granted. People coming to the Reservoir Food Pantry have little and need much.
At the Reservoir Food Pantry, we know items of dignity are important to our shoppers, because these items are simply beyond the financial reach for many. People sometimes go to a pantry when there is absolutely no money in the household.
This is true of all categories:
seniors
homeless
ill
unemployed.
Members of the Ulster County Board of Realtors Community Services Committee, you have an ongoing awareness of the issues confronting poor and destitute people in Ulster County. You demonstrate this throughout the year, as you generously give items of dignity for our pantry shoppers.
As Boiceville’s only pantry, we see a level of need not obvious in a more urban setting.
Thank you to everyone at the Ulster County Board of Realtors.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
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November, 2014
“Say goodbye to the landlord for me;
Sons of bitches always bored me.” – Guy Clark
Yet another round of food stamp cuts went into effect just a year ago this month. This national event with far reaching repercussions didn’t negatively affect everyone. After all, a person not receiving SNAP card funds wasn’t even affected unless s/he was politically conservative. In that case, November 5, 2013 was a glorious day.
FOR THOSE RECEIVING SNAP CARD FUNDS, THE IMPACT WAS SERIOUS.
Diane, a pantry shopper has been a widow now for a little over 2 years. She depends totally on her low social security check. Her SNAP card allotment was reduced to $45. This $45 is her total food budget. After Diane pays her rent and utilities, she has no $$$ left for food. All the food she eats comes from the SNAP card and a pantry. She purchases her clothes at the Family of Woodstock free store.
Diane’s old car recently needed repairs and she tried to borrow the needed $$$. That never happened so she wisely gave up and moved to Saugerties to be on a bus line. Honestly, I don’t know how she managed to pull off a move. They are very expensive endeavors.
FOR PANTRY VOLUNTEERS, THE NOVEMBER 5TH CUTS BROUGHT DREAD. We know reducing SNAP card benefits isn’t the answer. When people shop for groceries with SNAP funds, they not only offer nourishment to themselves and their families, they bring much needed outside $$$ to the area, which is often depressed.
Many people have financial problems today which they are never going to overcome without a serious change in our country’s attitude toward poverty. People have no $$$ for food because of:
lack of viable employment
high housing costs
high medical costs
Pantry shoppers lack resources to get beyond a chronic condition of lack in their lives. A few people today are rich at the expense of the poor. According to Couleecap, the richest 1% increased their share of total income by 10%, while, on average, the remaining 99% saw their piece of the pie shrink by 1-2%.
As food benefits were gutted on that fateful day in November, pantry volunteers had valid concerns:
THEY FEARED A NEW WAVE OF OVERWHELMINGLY LONG LINES OF HUNGRY PEOPLE.
They feared we would all run out of food for the people and be unable to get enough to feed the ever increasing number.
There was a realization that few understand: it’s been a long time since we really were emergency food providers.
MANY FEARS BECAME REALITY. Pantry shopping has definitely become more popular. Every week Prasida and Francine bring back more and more food and every bit of it is distributed. Sean Bigler records our weekly journey on a chart on the Reservoir Food Pantry Facebook page and on our website.
The Food Banks of Northeastern New York and the Hudson Valley mustered forces to provide enough food every week. They send trucks to farms, grocers, food manufacturers and bring food back for pantries to take to their shoppers. If the hungry can make it to a pantry, they are fed.
POOR AND STRUGGLING PEOPLE HAVE SLIPPED YET ANOTHER NOTCH AWAY FROM THE RICH. I am convinced, every time I open the pantry doors, that there are now 2 Americas: the haves and the have nots.
We recently received a request for statistics:
How many have we turned away?
How long is our waiting list?
THE QUESTIONS WERE ENDLESS, IT SEEMED. Well, we don’t have those statistics in the Reservoir Food Pantry because we feed the people. The weekly trip to Latham continues rain, shine or snow. The monthly food drives at the Kingston Walmart are important for pantry volunteers.
Most weeks we run out of food about the same time we run out of people so we don’t turn anyone away. We offer a heartfelt “thank you” to everyone who donates food to food banks and food pantries.
At the pantry’s close last Monday, there were 4 carrots left over in a small box, and another small box 1/2 filled with green beans.
We cannot do our job week after week without the continued support of:
Migliorelli Farm,
Ulster Corp gleaners,
Shandaken Community Gardens,
Kingston Walmart,
Boiceville IGA.
Father Nicholas at Holy Ascension Monastery shares donated yogurt with our pantry.
Pieta Williams brings items of dignity.
Lisa Library sends new books for the children.
Beecher Smith and John Parete at Boiceville Inn are the reason we have a pantry with shelves now.
LAST MONTH WE SERVED 856 PEOPLE. In September the number was 834. We expect November’s number to be higher. It has never gone down yet. Why should the trend be different this month?
THE ACTUAL NUMBER DOESN’T MATTER. We don’t plan to turn anyone away.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
