Food pantries see need increasing High energy costs force more people to seek help from community cupboards

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CORINTH – With the cost of heating oil and gasoline growing, so are the lines at local food pantries.

For low-income families especially, the rising cost of fuel and prescription drugs has left little income to fill their stomachs even as Thanksgiving and the holiday season approach.

“We’ve had some people call and say, ‘gee, we haven’t had anything in our cupboard for days, we just didn’t know what to do,'” Walter Young, director of the Safe Place Community Center Food Cupboard in Corinth, said Thursday.

Corinth is by no means unique. A survey of a dozen food cupboards around Maine this week revealed a trend of sharply increased demand and, in some instances, a corresponding supply crunch.

Young said the Corinth pantry, which provides the Charleston-Corinth region under the auspices of the Charleston Pentecostal Church, has been feeding 10 to 15 new people every week.

“We just don’t really know where it’s going to go; we keep hustling to stay up with it,” he said of the growth.

So far, the pantry has been able to do just that thanks to generous private, business and church donations that augment support from the Good Shepherd Food Bank and Manna Ministries, which provide turkeys for the holiday.

In addition to the longer food line, Young said the rising cost of gasoline and heating oil also affect the pantry’s budget. The pantry has to travel to get the food items and heat the central location in the former town office.

Those costs and longer lines also worry pastor Tom Bruce at the Living Word Community Food Cupboard in Dover-Foxcroft.

“It’s getting tougher each year because we’re feeding more families,” Bruce said Thursday. “With the rising cost of home heating fuel, it has driven the food pantry into overdrive,” he said.

“I had 200 turkeys in the freezer and the volunteers said they were going through them like water,” Bruce said. He had thought 350 turkeys would be enough to feed the families it serves in the Dover-Foxcroft area and the Milo-Brownville region, but now he’s not so sure.

“I have had a 25 percent increase in recent weeks,” Bruce said.

Linda Clukey of the Dexter Food Cupboard said she is seeing 10 more people a week since oil and gasoline costs began climbing. Operated through the town, the cupboard serves only emergency needs, she said.

“This past year there has been a steady increase and in the last three months even more so,” Robert Hicks of the Corinna Food Cupboard said Thursday. “There is definitely a steady increase.”

Bangor

Bill Rae, executive director of Manna Ministries of Bangor, said demand for emergency food assistance is up from last year, but at the same time the community’s capacity for helping keep Manna’s pantry stocked is being hurt by the rising costs for many of life’s basics.

At this time last year, Rae said, Manna was providing groceries for about 420 families a week. This year, the number has risen to 480 families.

Rae said Manna has been seeing more young families and single-parent households as well as more elderly people in recent months.

“You’ve got to make a choice between fuel and rent and medicine,” he said. “People will give up eating before they’ll give up paying rent or paying for prescriptions.”

Similar increases are showing up at Manna’s soup kitchen, which is serving 130 or 140 meals daily this year compared to about 120 meals a day last year.

Newport

Phil Brown of the Newport Food Bank, which serves five area towns, said Thursday that the demand for food in his area is “way up.”

Last year, 80 families requested Thanksgiving baskets. “Today I have 105 families signed up and the phone is still ringing,” he said.

“They tell us they are coming to us for food so they will have money left for oil and prescriptions,” Brown said. “We are registering five to eight new families a week.”

Brown said the increased demand was not precipitated by colder weather. “This has been going on for three months,” he said.

Brown said the food bank has only about $500 in its fuel account. “You can imagine how far that goes,” he said.

He is optimistic, however, about the food bank’s ability to keep the shelves full and the families fed.

“Everyone in this area has really stepped up,” he said. Brown said the food bank has received 80 food packages from the Hannaford campaign, along with donations from local farmers.

“John Burgess for years has provided us with all the squash we can use. Seth Bradstreet brings us potatoes, and Rowe’s Orchards provides all the apples we need,” Brown said. “Just last night, Highland Farms in Garland brought in 1,300 pounds of produce – squash, carrots, turnips. And an elderly man stopped me yesterday and gave me a check for $300.”

Pittsfield

Sumner “Bud” Jones of the Pittsfield Food Pantry said 118 families would pick up Thanksgiving boxes Monday. “Each box is worth about $80. It will be a turkey and all the fixings, general groceries.” He said that number is up from about 70 families last year.

“We’re hearing about the cost of oil, but we are seeing a lot of young families that are just not working,” Jones said. “And it’ll keep getting worse as time goes on and the fuel bills begin piling up.”

Jones estimated that the pantry contributes $100,000 annually to the local economy. “People have to eat. If we didn’t feed them, they’d be lined up at the town offices,” he said.

Bar Harbor

The Bar Harbor Food Pantry gets about 200 clients a month, according to pantry board member Barbara Steele.

She said Thursday that clients are allowed only one visit a month. Seasonal summer workers are allowed one visit at the beginning of the summer before they get their first paychecks, but this time of year it is generally year-round residents who can’t find winter work who come to the pantry for food.

Steele said the Bar Harbor Congregational Church each year puts together Thanksgiving food baskets for people who need them and that anything the church has left over usually goes to the pantry. She said the Good Shepherd Food Bank in Brewer, where the pantry gets most of its food, has been low on supplies for months, forcing the pantry to hold more fundraisers and to go elsewhere for goods.

Belfast

The Stone Soup Kitchen at 9 Field St. at the Belfast Center has seen the demand for food “increase tremendously” this year, according to coordinator Linda Marie Corcoran.

“We’re seeing 160 people a day,” she said. “People come for free produce that’s donated by Hannaford Supermarket and the Belfast Co-op.”

At the same time, she has had to cut down on food boxes this year because government supplies were cut in half.

“We’re going to be serving Thanksgiving dinner Thursday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. All are welcome,” she said.

Machias

Helen Vose, who runs the food pantry at the Center Street Congregational Church in Machias, said things certainly are busier this year than last. The Washington County pantry served about 40 families this time last year, but that number increased to 60 this month.

“Right now, we’re able to keep up, but how it will be in the future, that does concern me as we get further into the winter,” Vose said. “Our community is wonderful. I don’t know what we’d do without all the donations, but I think we’re going to see a decrease. People are going to have a hard enough time taking care of their own family.”

Ellsworth

The Emmaus Center, a homeless shelter in downtown Ellsworth, collects all sorts of donations year round and has been busy putting together Thanksgiving food baskets.

Sister Lucille McDonald said demands have been steadily increasing as other costs go up.

“We’re sort of the hub of Hancock County and we work with a number of different organizations for donations,” she said. “People have always been good, but the increased demands reach them too, which means they might not be able to give as much as they would have in years past.”

Blue Hill

The Tree of Life food pantry in Blue Hill is in a unique position in that it has a steady source of income that allows it to continue to provide food to residents of seven area towns despite the steady increase in demand at this time of year.

Tree of Life also runs the Turnstyle, a clothing thrift shop that provides that income, according to Tree of Life president Rusty Roberts.

“We’re blessed with the Turnstyle,” she said. “It makes so much, more than enough to purchase the food we need. And we have a couple of guys that find ways to get the food.”

The pantry obtains most of its food items through the Good Shepherd Food Bank, and its needs now require that a truck make a special delivery to Blue Hill once a month. The added funds also allow Tree of Life to purchase food through wholesale dealers and in bulk purchases.

Annual food drives also provide needed resources, Roberts said. On Thursday, there was a steady stream of people – mainly local pupils – delivering food to the pantry.

Those items will be needed, she said, as the demand for food increases during the winter.

Although warm weather through the fall has kept numbers down longer than usual, the pantry has seen a steady increase in the past several weeks in the numbers of people.

The pantry in recent weeks has seen the numbers of families receiving food rise from 80 to 90 and, last week, to 104 families. This week, Roberts said, the pantry provided food for 140 families in the area.

That translates into more than 400 people served, she said. As the weather gets colder and energy prices rise, Roberts predicted that those numbers would continue to increase.

“I think we’re going to see more people,” she said. “The numbers are already beginning to increase and we’re anticipating we’ll see close to 170 families before we’re through winter.”

Aroostook County

Dixie Shaw, program director of the Catholic Charities Maine Home Supplies and Food Bank, said on Thursday the organization stocks 21 food pantries from Danforth to Madawaska and helps low- to moderate-income residents by supplying building materials, furniture, appliances and other household items.

Last year its food pantries served more than 23,000 people, she said. Some of those were repeat customers who needed help throughout the year. Although figures aren’t yet available for this year, Shaw said she believes the need has increased.

“More and more people are needing help,” she said. “The largest increase of people who are needing help is the working family. In past years it was the elderly, individuals who are disabled or single parents. Now, the price of everything has gone up and even a lot of working families can’t make ends meet.

“I think people have realized the face of hunger has changed,” she continued. “It’s not just a child overseas with a bloated belly, it’s a general lack of enough food, enough nutritional food, and people who are going to the cupboard to prepare a meal and they have some of the food but not all of it and no means to buy it with. So what do you do then?”

Each year, CCM conducts its Feed the County collection campaign, traveling throughout Aroostook County to collect monetary gifts and donations of nonperishable food and canned goods. Such campaigns continue to receive overwhelming support, she added.

Shaw said donations have increased, in large part because, Shaw said, she believes there is an increased awareness about the work of CCM in The County.

“People out there know what we are doing and they see us out there collecting food,” she said. “They want to help.”

Want to help?

Contact Good Shepherd Food Bank at 782-3554, 7:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 7:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Friday; Manna Ministries at 990-2870, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday; or contact your local food bank.

BDN writers Sharon Mack, Bill Trotter, Eric Russell, Rich Hewitt, Dawn Gagnon and Jen Lynds contributed to this report.