Food pantries’ shortages spur helping hands

When people are going hungry, every source of food starts to count. Registered Maine guide Clayton Blake saw an opportunity to help area food pantries when he heard something that clicked. Many animal carcasses involved in auto collisions were not being salvaged for meat. "They were going to waste," he says. As a hunter and the operator of a humane slaughterhouse in Alexander, Blake already was participating in the Hunters for the Hungry program, which provides a means for hunters to donate all or a portion of their hunt to a local food pantry.
Blake contacted game wardens, state police, the sheriff's department, local police departments and municipalities. On his own time Blake will pick up the animal carcass, bring it to his slaughterhouse and "salvage anything that's fit for human consumption." He donates the meat to area food pantries, and recently that meat has come to be increasingly important as pantries have had more difficulty finding low‑cost meats, whether canned, frozen or fresh, for their clients.
Blake is one of a number of county residents working to do their best in difficult times for many. Almost 20% of Washington County's population has trouble getting enough to eat. People who are "food insecure" lack food 60% of the time on average, or almost two meals a day. Blake is particularly concerned about the elderly. "The older ones, they built the world and they are just being cast aside. They won't ask for help. They're too proud, they just won't do it. I make sure they get some meat."

Food supply shortages
One of the primary sources of food for pantries is the Good Shepherd Food Bank. In fiscal year 2011 Good Shepherd distributed 588,740 lbs. of food to its partner agencies in Washington County. That figure has almost doubled since 2008, when the figure was 301,000 pounds. According to Good Shepherd Communications Manager Clara McConnell, "The 'meal gap' -- or the pounds of food needed in the county to feed the food insecure population -- is approximately 5 million pounds."
Local food pantries try to help those who need it most. They receive food from other sources besides Good Shepherd, including government assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, and Women, Infants and Children (WIC), as well as local organizations such as Washington Hancock Community Agency, foundations, churches, civic groups and individuals like Blake. However, the need has become so great that food pantries are finding it increasingly difficult to meet demand.
No food pantry is seeing fewer people. Every month there have been new families coming in, but November saw a significant increase above even that steady incline. The Machias Food Pantry had 17 new families come during the month. Long‑time pantry volunteer Helen Vose says, "We'll have to see if that trend continues." Before the Thanksgiving turkeys, of which they gave away 222, "we were still getting in new people." She adds, "I don't know where they're coming from, if they've been here all along or not."
Tonya Scott at the Woodland Food Pantry had a similar experience over the holiday month. "The week before Thanksgiving, six new families came in." The pantry serves about 175 families a month. Along with an increase in single working mothers and two‑income families that are just above the line to receive federal assistance, she is also seeing an increase in the number of senior citizens. "I'm glad they're finally coming in," she says of the older generation.
The Labor of Love Food Pantry in Eastport is up about 10 families to 215 per month. Also up about 10 families a month is the Irene Chadbourne Ecumenical Food Pantry in Calais. It now serves about 100 families. Vose notes, "We averaged about 80 families a week before the November bump. That's a lot of people."
Ann Sawtelle notes that the Whiting Community Food Pantry served 375 over the Thanksgiving holiday, which is "higher than we've ever seen." But she has also seen regular pantry numbers only inch up over the year. "We had a lot of [elderly] people who've passed away this year, but we're up a little bit, but because of those losses, not as much." She also notes that when seniors receive commodity food boxes from the Eastern Area Agency on Aging, they don't come to the food pantry. And others who've been making wreaths and earning a little extra income also refrain from using the pantry when they don't need to.
Exacerbating the problem of need is the increasing difficulty of finding enough food. Pantries generally put together bags of food for each family to pick up on specific days of the week. A bag of supplies might contain about $150 worth of food. Labor of Love's Fern Garrapy says that Good Shepherd has "just not been getting the canned goods they used to get. So we're not getting staples." Her list of scarce items includes tomato sauce, pasta, canned meats and fish. The list is added to by other food pantry coordinators and includes powdered or non‑refrigerated boxed milk, beans and rice.
Arthur Carter at the Calais pantry notes, "Good Shepherd and WHCA are way down in terms of what they supply. There's quite a change in the USDA food supply. Our freezers are empty. We can't buy meat C the prices are too high." Garrapy and Vose purchase some meat at those grocery stores that will give them a small percentage off the cost. Sawtelle says, "Everybody is having food shortages. We used to get cases of powdered milk. We don't anymore."

Community members step forward
Community members have been stepping forward with donations. Carter says that Blake recently donated some wild game meat. "That helped us," says Carter. He explains that, when Good Shepherd does supply chicken, it will be a 40‑pound frozen block. "It's in one big chunk. We can't use it because it needs to be packaged and in useable meal amounts. It's great for a soup kitchen, but not for us."
One couple, Kay and Jeffrey Wright, have been helping the Calais and Eastport pantries with food grown on their Red Beach farm by Kay's sister, Kathy Whyard. The couple also administer pantry help through the Charles. G. Wright Endowment for Humanity. Carter notes that the endowment provided the Calais food pantry with 100 Thanksgiving dinners. "All the makings," he says. "It certainly is a great feeling that there are people backing you up."
Whyard says that she's paying it forward. "I was on the receiving end of food pantries and soup kitchens for a year in my life." She wants people to know, "There's dignity in all of this, on both sides." In 2010 she and the Wrights grew 2,200 pounds of food for donation. This year was down a bit because of the weather, with a donation of 2,000 pounds. "We grew beets, two kinds of cabbage, carrots, Swiss chard, kale, cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, green onions, potatoes, parsnips, summer squash, winter squash, turnips," she pauses. "It makes a big difference, and all you do is dig. It's a little bit of work, and the plant, nature, does the rest."
"The kale went really well," says Garrapy of Whyard and Wright's weekly truckload. "We learned to make kale chips -- they're really good."
Others have been joining the vegetable growing bandwagon in order to be able to donate food to pantries. Garrapy notes of one couple in Eastport who grew vegetables on a friend's plot of land in Perry, and a Perry store owner brought in pumpkins.
"I've got say," Carter comments, "the donations have been coming in." But Scott says the "faithful few" in the Woodland area who have been supplying the pantry with donations are beginning to feel the pinch themselves. "There's a change. People are doing what they can, but it's not as much as years past."
At the Whiting food pantry, Sawtelle says a number of people brought in garden produce during the fall. And people will bring by bags of donated food for distribution. "No one realizes how important that bag of food is." She laughs and adds, "There really is a Santa."
Blake says, "They're a lot of people who need help. It's one reason why I do it -- to help."
Additional food pantries that serve Washington and Charlotte counties include: Deer Island Food Bank, Grand Manan Food Bank, Campobello Island Food Pantry and St. Ann's Food Pantry at Pleasant Point.

Local food pantries welcome donations
If anyone wishes to send a financial donation to area food pantries, the addresses are as follows: Deer Island Food Bank, 30 Richardson Rd., Richardson, NB E5V 1S5; Grand Manan Food Bank, Action Ministries, 70 Red Point Rd., Grand Manan, NB E5G 4J2; Irene Chadbourne Food Pantry, c/o Carmela Walton, 705 Main Street, Princeton, ME 04668; Labor of Love Food Pantry, c/o Fern Garrapy, 9 Janney Street, Eastport, ME 04631; St. Ann's Food Pantry (Pleasant Point), P.O. Box 343, Perry, ME 04667; Machias Food Pantry, P.O. Box 265, Machias, ME 04654; Whiting Community Food Pantry, 340 U.S. Rt. 1, Dennysville, ME 04628; Woodland Food Pantry, c/o Church of the Living Stone, 55 Broadway, Baileyville, ME 04736. The Good Shepherd Food Bank may be visited at <www.gsfb.org>.