Food for Life report 2011

From Ruby Stephens, chairperson, and Bonnie Routh, treasurer, Food for Life

With God’s guidance and the wonderful people of Union County, we are still God’s helping hands.

In January, we bought 50 pounds of ground beef for the Lorimor Food Pantry and 50 pounds for the Afton Food Pantry. Sheila Sutton is my contact person for the Lorimor area and Jane Edwards for Afton.

On Feb. 10, I received a call from Margaret Wilkins and she said at the Christmas basket meeting the committee voted to set aside $2,000 to pay for meat processing charges for the Food for Life program. Steve Crittenden is the contact person for this. When Bonnie, our treasurer, receives a bill for meat processing, she contacts Steve and he pays the processing charges.

What a wonderful donation this has been; the meat processing charges have really gone up.

Again, we can count on the Union County farmers. One farmer donated two animals, one business family bought a cow from a brother and donated that to Food for Life and just as we were getting really low again the fourth cow was donated.

The churches, businesses and individuals are so generous with money donations, two or three have been donating since we started in 1983. Money donations were $1,987.

We bought meat for the Lorimor and Afton pantries in January, August and September. We bought meat a couple of times for the Creston Pantry, also.

In November I got a call from an employee of Iowa Select Hog Facilities and he asked if I had been contacted about the whole boneless loin donation that was being offered to food pantries. He was instrumental in helping us get 54, 9 pound whole boneless loin roasts. We filled up the freezers in Creston, and I took some to Afton and Lorimor. 2,847 pounds of meat have been donated to us this year.

Marcy LaMasters is now the Union County Family Development Center director, and she has been sending me reports again. During October, she served 56 families, 129 individuals; November 78 families, 208 individuals and December 53 families, 159 individuals. This was through the Creston Food Pantry.