Rappahannock Plant A Row

Please join other Food Pantry and Plant a Row supporters on Saturday, December 4, from 2:00 to 5:00 at the Washington Baptist Church social hall.  The Pantry wouldn’t be the success it is without our hundreds of volunteers, gardeners, and donors.  This celebration is a thank you to all friends of the Pantry.  Bring an appetite – and a dish to share – entree, vegetable, side dish, or dessert.  We’ll also be collecting coffee, tea, cocoa mix, nuts, and dried fruit for the Pantry.  Please call the Pantry at 675-1177 for more information.

Updates

Pantry Manager and Pirate Mimi Forbes

Halloween was a howl at the Food Pantry. Manager and Pirate Mimi Forbes disarmed all with her get-up (see photo below.) Volunteer John Mann was a Bob Marley look-alike. At least one child came to the Pantry in costume. Treats were distributed to all. Thanks to Mimi, the Pantry is a fun place to visit – as volunteer, donor, or recipient.

Thanksgiving is a BIG deal at the Pantry. Two-hundred and fifty turkeys and fixings will be distributed the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving. We’d love donations of canned green beans, cranberry sauce, yams, and pumpkin for pies, and instant mashed potatoes and stuffing mix. On Saturday, November 20 from 9:00 to 2:00 we need volunteers to assemble the boxes. Monday, November 22 and Tuesday, November 23, from 10:00 to 4:00 we need volunteers to distribute the food. Please call the Pantry at 675-1177 to sign up to help.

The Pantry has a spiffy cooler for milk, eggs, butter, cheese, and such, thanks to Frank Huff, vending manager of the Pepsi Distribution Center on Lee Highway east of Warrenton. We’re grateful to Brad Schneider for hauling the cooler to the Pantry. We now have tons of room for dairy products. So, bring on the milk, cheese, butter, and egg donations!

The cozy little Pantry has been transformed – the walls are now a lively “key lime green.” A volunteer did the painting. The Paint Bucket in Culpeper donated the paint. And thanks to Eddie Fletcher and his family, the Pantry has a cardboard recycling bin. Appreciate it, folks!

Next Monday, November 8, starting at 5:00, is the third annual Rappahannock Apple and Vegetable Peel at Rappahannock Elementary School. The “Great Peel” is a community effort to bring locally grown food to our county school children. It’s a lot of fun and a great way to support Rappahannock farmers and orchards. Bring an apron, paring knife, peeler, and cutting board, if you can.

Come on along to the Trinity Episcopal Church’s parish hall in Washington on Friday, November 19 at 7:00 for a Sing-a-Long of old favorites. Songbooks will be provided, and wine and cheese for nibbles. Your $10 (suggested) donation will all go to the Pantry. Call Kay Wilson at 987-9229 for more information.

Hal Hunter hauled 367 lbs. of venison from Hunters for the Hungry (no relation) to the Pantry in October. Thanks to an anonymous donor, the Pantry has 20 clothing and shoe vouchers for recipients to use at the Washington Thrift Store. And regular donors Sunnyside Farm, Trinity Episcopal, Clay Fulghum and Marshall Jones, David Morrow, and Steve Welch came through for the Pantry again last month.

Hoop House News from Hal: “We added soil amendments to the topsoil (chicken manure and mushroom soil), and the Farm School students planted one of the rows. All the hoops are up (Chris Russell and Mark Cuppett helped Ron Makela) but the plastic cover over the hoops is waiting on some materials Ron needs to anchor it.”

Mimi boasts that she has “The best volunteers in the world.” Andy Platt of Woodville has been helping at the Pantry for about a year. He generally works a couple of afternoon a week, frequently accompanying recipients as they “shop.” What makes Andy a standout volunteer are his strong back, cheerful demeanor, and his willingness to fill in at the Pantry when Mimi finds herself shorthanded. Andy’s background is in the environmental area, specifically, the Superfund. He won raves for his acting talent in last May’s RAAC skits. Andy is the proud father of Erin, and grandfather of J.

We’re still planning a post-harvest volunteer and donor pot luck for Saturday afternoon, December 4. We don’t have a place lined up yet – we may end up in a stable – but there’s precedent for that. Details as they emerge.

Updates

“There’s very little greed – but a lot of gratitude at the Pantry,” says Noel Laing, who finds volunteering at the Rappahannock Food Pantry rewarding. Noel is a “regular” – every Thursday morning you’ll find him at the Pantry, unloading food, stocking shelves and issuing donor receipts. Pantry director Mimi Forbes needs a few more “regulars” like Noel for the Tuesday morning (9-12:30) and afternoon (12:30-4:00) shifts and for Saturdays (9:00-2:00.) To volunteer, call the Pantry at 675-1177 or email plantarowrapp@aol.com.

A generous Flint Hill resident made a second $5,000 donation to the Pantry. Another anonymous (and repeat) donor stocked our freezers with 657 lbs of beef. Thank you, ladies!

Other standout donors in September were Steve Welch (902 lbs of bread), Trinity Episcopal Church (425 lbs of various food items), the Amissville Ruritan Club (250 lbs of canned and boxed food), Williams Orchard (307 lbs of peaches), Sunnyside Farms (130 lbs of vegetables and 49 doz eggs), and David Morrow (224 lbs of produce and 4.5 doz eggs).

Dan Foos and his children Lisa and Walter delivering food from Catholic Charities of the Arlington Diocese to the Pantry.

Volunteers Tom Johnson and Fred Eggers shelving the Catholic Charities food.

Last month, three of the ten members of the Dan Foos family delivered 345 lbs of food from Catholic Charities. Home schooled kids Lisa and Walter Foos brought winning smiles, great attitudes, and strong backs to the job.

Are you a Costco shopper? Costco was selling eggs in bulk for .50 a dozen for 7 dozen eggs. If you buy some for the Pantry, we’ll repackage them in empty egg cartons. Our recipients love eggs.

Toiletries like shampoo, toothpaste, bar soap, lotion are popular at the Pantry. If you have hotel or motel toiletries from your travels that you can’t use, we’d love them.

We’re working with the Washington Fire Department Thrift Store to develop vouchers that Pantry clients can exchange for Thrift Store clothing. Since we don’t have room enough to accept clothing donations, this is a good alternative.

Join us at the third annual Rappahannock Apple and Vegetable Peel at Rappahannock Elementary School on Monday, November 8 at 5:00. The “Great Peel” is a community effort to bring locally grown food to our county school children. It’s a lot of fun and a great way to support Rappahannock growers. Bring an apron, paring knife, peeler, apple corer, and cutting board.

The curtain seems to have come down abruptly on summer and the holidays approach. We’ll distribute Thanksgiving boxes to more than 250 families. The turkeys are ordered and we expect some of the fixings from schools but we’ll need more. We’d love donations of canned green beans, cranberry sauce, yams, and pumpkin, as well as instant mashed potatoes and stuffing mix. We’re short on storage space, so please wait until November to bring Thanksgiving basket items. We’ll need a slew of volunteers on Saturday, November 20 to assemble the boxes and on the following Monday and Tuesday to distribute them.

Volunteers, donors – heck, all friends of the Food Pantry – note that we’re planning a post harvest, mid-holiday volunteer celebration Saturday afternoon, December 4.

Updates

The Pantry isn’t moving!  We’ll remain in our cozy room at 603 Mt. Salem Avenue in Washington.

Early this summer our landlord told Pantry director Mimi Forbes that he’d need the Pantry space for an office. We were disappointed, but went into high gear looking for a suitable new location. Members of the Food Pantry Advisory Board and Mimi must have toured about 20 potential sites. The Pine Knot Inn, vacant for nearly ten years but in the process of being refurbished, seemed the best candidate.

The Pine Knot Inn is 62% larger than the current Pantry space, has a kitchen for healthy cooking demonstrations, and has land for a community garden. However, the rent and utilities at the Pine Knot Inn would have been twice that of the Mt. Salem Avenue location. There would have been additional costs to prepare the property for Food Pantry use. And the prospect of a move wasn’t anyone’s idea of a picnic.

While in the late stages of planning for the move, our landlord surprised us again. He informed the Food Pantry Advisory Group that his home office was now equipped with a high speed internet connection and that he wouldn’t need our room for his office. He apologized at great length for the inconvenience and offered us a two-year lease at no increase in rent.

On August 26, Bette Mahoney, Noel Laing, Kathy Eggers, Hal Hunter (via Skype videochat), Pantry director Mimi Forbes and Roland Serrano of the Piedmont Community Partnership hashed out the pros and cons of staying or moving to the Pine Knot Inn. They decided to solicit the opinions of Pantry supporters, advisors, volunteers, and donors. Within a few days a consensus was clear – most everyone thought we should stay where we are because incurring the added costs of the more spacious location just wasn’t prudent.

We can now focus our attention on making the Rappahannock Food Pantry the best Food Pantry possible. A few weeks ago we surveyed Pantry users to learn how we could better serve them. Hal Hunter networked with Food Pantry experts while vacationing in Maine. Hal suggests that we strive for as many of the attributes of the “Maine Model Food Pantry” as feasible for our small operation.

We can now work to see that every Rappahannock resident who needs our help is aware of the Pantry and encouraged to use it. We can strive for a large donor base and better fundraising so that we can increase food purchases by $5,000 per year. We can look for inexpensive sources of foods recommended by our nutrition advisors, like oatmeal and brown rice. We can try to make eggs, milk, and butter available more regularly.

The Pantry is now – and will continue to be – at 603 Mt. Salem Avenue in Washington. Take the middle exit to Washington from Rt. 211 – we’re the second driveway on the right. You can’t miss the Food Pantry sign. The Pantry phone is 675-1177. The Pantry is open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:00 to 4:00 and Saturdays from 9:00 to 2:00.

Updates