Your Food Pantry Needs Little Help Right Now

7/31/2023

GNTL - Grownups Noticing Their Lives 

Food Pantry – Consider Donating NOW

I’ve been volunteering at the local food pantry once a week since March. This is a satisfying volunteer gig; it doesn’t require prep and I don’t think much about it when I’m not there. I work with other genial volunteers who tend to also be retired folks. (But not all.) We work pretty hard, chat a little, and then when the morning’s work is done we leave.

There are diverse but related areas in which to volunteer. I work in the warehouse where pallets of food are delivered from various grocery purveyors. We break those pallets down into crates of fruits, vegetables, meats, and frozen or refrigerated prepared foods that get moved to the cooler or freezer lockers. There is a logical flow of where foods go after they leave us.

Our particular task is ensuring the food we are passing along is healthy, not past its expiration date, in good shape - and the bottom line is “Would you buy this food in this condition?” If produce is soggy or moldy or gamy we toss it into boxes where at the end of the day local farmers pick it up for their animals. If the clamshell of berries has one of two yucky fruits, we pull them out and put the rest of the good fruit in a crate to be distributed. If there are lots of yucky berries, the whole thing gets tossed. This takes several hours but it makes sense. I usually leave around 1:00 and by then there is a line of people waiting their turn to enter the donation room that is set up like a mini grocery store. They choose foods they know their families would like to eat.

Here’s why I am explaining this.

It’s summer. It’s August. It is taking an HOUR less to sort the donations than it did in the spring. It’s not a crisis but it’s not good. From what I’ve overheard in conversations between full-time employees and others, this sometimes happens, especially in summer. Grocery stories donate more perishable fruits that don’t last as well. Grocery stories are trying, these days, to minimize their waste, so they have less to donate. (They get tax credits for donated foods actually distributed.)

The Post Office does less ambitious food drives; in other years those drives brought in canned goods that lasted longer into the summer. Organizations that donate foods are less active in the summer.

Can you consider donating to your local food pantry? If you have time and like to stand up and move around for a few hours, maybe donate time. If you have money, consider sending a check.

And if while you are shopping you notice a good sale on foods, particularly canned or boxed goods - buy extra to donate! Ordinary canned vegetables and fruits. Spaghetti sauce. Boxes of pasta. Peanut butter and jams. If it's in a container where it can be stored for a few weeks and it’s a food you and your family like, buy some to donate.

I read frugal blogs where people are often happy at the amazing deals they find that they then take home to store or freeze for their families. Some of us have these kinds of “provisioning skills.” Maybe it’s time to use our abilities for others.

Anyways, I worked two hours today, not three. I decided I would donate my last hour writing this.

The politics of why people are hungry is utterly maddening. No matter what, people are struggling and are hungry. Many of those people are kids or seniors. We can help.

Plus this! If you are a gardener with those humorous zucchini harvest problems, by all mean, check with your food pantry about how to donate. Here in Waukesha, there's a garden produce donation rack and those shelves are a distinct place of beauty in our county. I didn’t think to take a photo this morning, but it was laden with green and yellow zucchinis, boxes of yellow and red tomatoes, big lacy bunches of dill.

We can do this.

This is the Waukesha Food Pantry website: https://www.waukeshafoodpantry.org/