11-15-08

Hunger Stalks Fall Mountain Area

Fall Mountain Food Shelf in Emergency Mode

By Chuck Bingaman

          Hundreds of men, women and children in our area are hungry. 

They cannot afford even basic food supplies this fall. 

They are facing a “perfect storm” of financial hits including spreading job layoffs, soaring heating oil and gasoline prices, and steadily increasing food costs.

And one of their lifelines, the Fall Mountain Food Shelf, is starving as well.

“We’ve never had a year like this,” admitted Mary Lou Huffling, volunteer head of the Food Shelf Friday while making thirty pies for a Saturday bake sale.  “We’ve had a family living in their car and, recently, we had a family living in a tent.”

Huffling reported that, for the past few years, the Food Shelf has served 200 to 250 families each month in the area.  In October, it served 774 families in its Langdon town hall outlet space and another hundred or so in Charlestown.  Last year the Food Shelf gave out 250 to 300 Thanksgiving baskets.  This year they’re seeking 500 turkeys and wondering if that will be enough.

“We’ve talked to food pantries in Newport, Brattleboro, Bellows Falls and Keene. It’s the same story…” Huffling says.  “They all have many more people relying on them this year.’

And Huffling, who volunteers “at least 50 hours each week”, is facing her own “perfect storm.”  Where formerly she could purchase surplus food at

Mary Lou Huffling in the Food Shelf Alstead kitchen on Friday.

the New Hampshire Food Bank, often for as little as $.18 per pound, now she’s lucky when the Food Bank has any supplies because many of its sources have dried up.  Food manufacturers, they say, are seeking to cut waste as much as possible and to sell it—when they have it—for whatever they can get for it.  While Wal-Mart and Mr. G’s continue to give the Food Shelf discounts and Shaw’s gives produce each week, higher transportation costs continue to drive up costs of nearly every food product Huffling must buy.

“Not so long ago we could buy three packages of elbow pasta for a dollar.  Now the cheapest package you can get is $.79.  That’s a big difference.”

As a result, many of the shelves at the Food Shelf are bare, and the storeroom is quickly emptying. 

Through it all, Huffling maintains a dazzling smile, a level of energy few people in any situation could match.  And a positive attitude that keeps volunteers and hungry people from utter discouragement.

“We have a very special shopping program using high school special ed students!” she beams.  “We work with them every week, make our shopping lists, and agree on maximum prices we’ll pay.  They go to the stores with their teachers, do the shopping, and stock our shelves.  The kids love it, they learn to shop, and we love it too!”

Huffling is facing many new customers this fall, people who have never had to ask for assistance and who are acutely embarrassed about it.  “We see many tears,” she said, “and we are hearing form many people calling for others that just can’t bring themselves to call us or come to us themselves.  For the first time, we are seeing many elderly people that have never had to seek food aid. But we tell them how glad we are to help them and how happy we are that they came.”

But even the volunteers are feeling the stress.  Last week, Huffling said, one of her volunteers returned in tears from calling on an ill and elderly couple whose refrigerator was empty and who had only a single can of corn in their house to eat. 

The Fall Mountain Food Shelf also prepares and delivers 174 hot meals on wheels—“with dessert”, Huffling notes—every Tuesday and Thursday to residents of Alstead, Charlestown, Acworth, Walpole, North Walpole, Langdon and Drewsville.  And it offers a congregant hot lunch for 70 to 80 people on those days at the Alstead Firehouse.  “People are so hungry for social nourishment, in addition to a good meal, that they begin arriving for lunch around 8:00 a.m.,” says Huffling.

Huffling says that all who come to the food distribution center in Langdon must complete an Emergency Food Assistance Program form, “but we take people at their word—at face value—and do not check on eligibility levels.  It’s very heard for many people to come, and many are coming to us for the first time this year. We don’t want anyone to go away hungry!”

Huffling is also very appreciative of the many sources of support she has and cited the late Stan Castor of Stan’s Wholesale Food in Westmoreland and his wife, Wal-Mart, Mr. G’s.  Last weekend the Walpole Unitarian Church sponsored a ham and bean supper to benefit the Food Shelf, and many other churches in the area have pitched in.  Even The Walpole Players recently announced that those attending their December 18, 19, and 20 performances of “A Christmas Carol” in the Town Hall will be asked to make a donation to the Food Shelf in lieu of paying money for tickets.  In addition, area Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H and local Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, and Moose Lodges raise money and do food collections.

While gifts of non-perishable foods are welcome, especially canned vegetables and fruit, tuna fish, peanut butter and even toilet paper, gifts of checks and cash are more useful for the Food Shelf because they minimize transportation needs and enable the volunteers to purchase exactly what their customers need and want.  Those wanting to give to the Fall Mountain Food Shelf may send their tax-deductible contributions to P.O. Box 191, Alstead, NH 03602 or drop them off at the Food Shelf outlet in the Langdon Town Hall on Rt. 12A.

Hunger is stalking the Fall Mountain Area.  The Fall Mountain Food Shelf is making heroic efforts.  Demand is outstripping supply.

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