Last fall the ever-increasing difficulty of Crosslines McDonald County has in meeting the needs of its monthly food bank clients was partially met in a highly innovative way.
This year the needs are greater and so are the hopes of this unusual program.
A partnership between Goodman Food Processing and Crosslines, with help of the Missouri Department of Conservation, provided over 1,500 pounds of deer meat last fall for the food pantry at Crosslines.
"It was such a blessing," said Angie Martin, executive director of Crosslines. "Without that meat last year, we would have had several months that we would not have had any meat."
Cory Knight, owner of Goodman Food Processing, said he participates in the Conservation Department's "Share The Harvest" program. The program pays the cost of processing a deer for hunters if the meat is then donated to a food pantry.
"We had 16 deer that we processed that were donated to Crosslines last year," Knight said. "We want to do more this year. We can do better than that if we get the word out."
Knight said the program is simple for the hunters. He said all they have to do is drop off their deer at Goodman Food Processing and fill out a short form.
"There is absolutely no cost to the hunter," Knight said. "It just takes a few minutes. We will process the deer and freeze the meat and Crosslines will come pick it up."
Martin said she hopes hunters will be as generous this year if not more due to increased caseloads.
"Last month we fed 720 families," Martin said. "That amounted to over 2,000 individuals. Every day we are signing up new people. It just blows my mind. I have been doing this for almost 10 years and I never thought we would get above 500 families."
Martin said she is worrying about having enough food for this winter.
"If we have another hard winter, it will be hard on people to make ends meet," she said. "I see people in the winter who don't normally come at other times because of the high utility bills they have for a couple of months in the winter."
Martin said the food pantry gets its supplies from a variety of sources including government commodities, purchases with funds donated or raised at the thrift store, donations, including three trips to Walmart in Jane each week where they are given produce and other date-sensitive foods.
Martin said families are allowed to come to the food pantry just once a month. She said Crosslines provides the families enough food for four or five meals.
"A lot of the people have to make it stretch farther," Martin said. "Especially the elderly."
She said she was a little apprehensive last year about how well her clients would respond to deer meat.
"Our clients really appreciated it," Martin said. "I have never seen them so grateful. The only meat we usually have is chicken and it goes really fast. Words can't explain how big a thing this was for us."
Martin said she encourages any hunter to take their kill to Goodman Food Processing and donate the meat to Crosslines.
"Not only do we get the meat," Martin said, "but it frees up some money where we can buy a whole lot of other food. Meat is our biggest cost."
Community on 08/28/2014