Welcome back, Floyd Forum readers! I’ve got a little scoop for you today, and a very happy story to finish out 2020. (I’m going to keep my ear to the ground and it’s possible I’ll publish again between Christmas and New Year’s, but this will be my last story before Dec. 25.)
At its last regularly-scheduled meeting of the year on Dec. 8, the Floyd County Board of Supervisors authorized spending $200,000 in CARES Act funding on food distributions. I’ve got the details of what went on behind-the-scenes to support local producers and get thousands of pounds of food to eight food pantries throughout the county.
This really is an incredible feat that the county pulled off—and it means that over the last two weeks, 657 families had a little more food in their cupboards. It’s a testament to hard work, generosity, collaboration and compassion for your neighbor. In my opinion, the perfect story to publish right before Christmas.
I’ve so enjoyed writing for you all over the past couple months. This newsletter, and of course, the people featured in its many stories, are among the blessings I’m counting this year. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for reading and for letting me be a part of this community. Happy Holidays, and I’ll talk to you again soon.
-Ashley
Floyd feeds the hungry in year-end sprint to spend CARES money
Ten days. $200,000. The Floyd County Board of Supervisors at its Dec. 8 meeting authorized spending the majority of its remaining CARES Act funding to feed the hungry. The deadline to spend the money is Dec. 30, and to Little River District Supervisor Linda DeVito Kuchenbuch, the county’s responsibility was clear. “People are hungry, period, end of story,” Kuchenbuch said during a Dec. 20 phone call, dismissing the term “food insecurity” out-of-hand.
She said that many times over the past few months, she’s reflected on what a job loss or significant financial challenge would have meant for her family, had it happened during a period when they were less economically secure. “I have laid in bed, thinking what would this have been like for my family, had it happened in like 1998 or 2003? It would’ve been very difficult for our family. Three children, one income; it would have been very hard. I would have probably been at a food pantry,” she said.
She knows Floyd County residents are hard-working, humble and pride themselves on being self-reliant. She knows they’re hesitant to accept help. But the coronavirus pandemic has created extraordinary circumstances, she said. “We know at this holiday season, many families are finding themselves in place they never thought they’d ever have to be in. We understand that it’s hard to ask for help, but just know that all of our food pantries in Floyd County are ready and waiting,” to help your family in its time of need, she said.
The county’s eight food pantries are perhaps the best-equipped they’ve ever been to serve people, thanks to herculean efforts by Community & Economic Development Director Lydeana Martin, Floyd Farmers Market Manager Melissa Branks, county staff, elected officials, and dozens of local farmers, producers and vendors over the past two weeks.
Finding a Win/Win
At its last regularly-scheduled meeting of 2020, Floyd County Supervisors debated how to spend what remained of the county’s $2.75 million in federal CARES Act funding. At that meeting, they allocated $225,000 for hazard pay for EMS, first responders, police officers and solid waste employees. Kuchenbuch spearheaded the discussion of using up to $300,000 to pay for food.
Then, Locust Grove District Supervisor Lauren Yoder added to the idea. Yoder, who is a farmer himself, outlined a win/win scenario wherein the county would not only buy mass quantities of food to distribute to local residents, but buy it from local producers. Why couldn’t the county get fresh produce from local farms, or meat that was locally-raised? The county has focused its recovery efforts on supporting local businesses, investing hundreds of thousands into its RISES small business grant program. This would be a way to continue that effort, by bolstering local producers with needed income after a tough year.
Shortly after the Dec. 8 meeting, County Administrator Terri Morris contacted Martin to get the ball rolling. It had a ticking clock: Invoices had to be in by Dec. 21, Martin explained, and everything had to be delivered and reported by Dec. 30. Martin said she consulted the Community Foundation of the New River Valley’s Thrive Network materials to find a list of local food pantries and producers.
There were eight pantries listed for Floyd County, many of them hosted at churches without significant storage space or refrigeration capacity. Martin surveyed the pantries to find out what resources they already had; what they needed; how often they conducted food distributions and how many families they have typically served since March. For five of the pantries, Martin said, the county purchased freezers.
Producing Under Pressure
Once the food pantries were prepared, there was the matter of finding produce, bread, eggs and local meat and getting it delivered to the distribution sites, which are spread all over the rural county. Martin enlisted the help of Melissa Branks, who operates the Floyd Farmers Market for SustainFloyd.
Branks started calling vendors, asking what they had available to sell, what they could produce by the end of the week, and then asking, “Can you do more?”
“It happened really, really quickly, and of course all of us were wishing it happened in July where we could’ve had tomatoes and all the summer vegetables,” Branks said. “But everybody just stepped up and said, ‘We’ll get it done.’”
Local grain miller Tom Maxey went from committing 200 pounds of cornbread mix to 2,800 pounds, Branks said. Baker Barb Gillespie, who owns Grateful Bread, produced 800 loaves of bread, along with 100 bags of bagels and nearly 500 scones. Maxey “has been milling like crazy, like a madman,” Branks described. Gillespie “has spent nights baking,” she said. “It’s pretty mind-blowing as far as the work needed.”
Riverstone Organic Farm in Floyd supplied the majority of the produce, supplemented by several other farms throughout the county. All told, the county purchased 2,100 pounds of cabbage; 800 pounds of carrots and 900 pounds of sweet potatoes, along with other root vegetables that don’t require refrigeration. The 550 dozen eggs were all gathered by a one-woman operation.
The county also provided each food bank with a $50/household budget to purchase canned and shelf-stable goods from local supermarkets, including Slaughter’s, Willis Village Mart and Smith’s Grocery. The county purchased seven live animals for slaughter, and will store the meat to provide as pantries need it in the coming weeks.
For some of the pantries, the past two weeks marked the first time they were able to provide fresh produce or meat in their distributions. So it was a boon for the pantries and those who rely on them. But it also buoyed local producers, Branks said.
“For some of our vendors, these past two weeks, they have earned more than they do an entire Farmers Market season. That’s pretty amazing for them as well, especially after the year we’ve had,” she said.
Complicated Logistics
Martin detailed essentially round-the-clock logistical planning to make the project happen in such an abbreviated timeline. “Melissa and I have become best friends over phone and email the last ten days,” she said jokingly.
Turns out, distributing food is complicated, especially during the holiday season.
The most obvious concern was a potential lack of storage space for the amount of food the county would buy with $200,000, Martin said. “From the beginning, the board had envisioned there was going to be need for freezers—we’re in the middle of a study on cold storage,” she said. The Supervisors have long known that the region lacks cold storage capacity, and so part of the funding was allocated to buy fridges and freezers for the pantry, as well as three for local meat producers, so they could store meat until pantries were ready to distribute it.
There was also the issue of finding a slaughter date for the live cattle and pork the county purchased. Because of severe disruptions to the national supply chain precipitated by the pandemic, lots of people, particularly in rural areas, have relied on local meat producers. That meant many producers didn’t have excess supply to sell. It also meant the small-scale slaughterhouses that typically partner with these producers are overburdened. Some are booking slaughter dates into 2022 at this point. The county also had to ensure the meat was processed at a USDA-certified facility, which is required by law for food that is purchased or distributed in retail quantities.
“(Supervisor) Lauren Yoder is a farmer and does USDA meat, but he was concerned about the appearance of impropriety, so we did not purchase any from him, even though he had the most of anybody,” Martin explained. Yoder did however, generously offer up one of his own processing slots for the county to use, she said. Yoder also communicated the problem to Thompson’s Meat Processing in Floyd, and they really wanted to support the project. So the facility provided another three slaughter slots.
The county is supplying beef and pork to local pantries, but couldn’t source poultry, Martin said. “Understandably between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there was none available,” she said.
Community Capacity
At the end of the day, a huge network of Floyd County folks worked together and pulled it off. Martin said it speaks to the “community capacity” that exists here. “Just the fact that the list existed from the Community Foundation and had been documented, and it was easy for me to contact everybody,” Martin said, sets the region apart. “The Farmers Market itself being such an important gathering place and piece of infrastructure for our farming community,” she said, in conjunction with the “network that exists among farmers,” meant Floyd had the capacity to bring all the pieces together in a short amount of time. And it had the resources to provide lots of food to hungry people who needed it.
Plenty! was one of the pantries that received food, and is probably best known throughout the county. However, Branks said the other seven pantries combined serve just as many people as Plenty! does. All told, Plenty! received 42% of the delivery packages, while the other seven pantries combined received 58%. More than 650 families will be provided with food purchased with the CARES money.
Martin said she hopes the takeaway for folks will be that “the people who work at these food pantries are heroes, and that they work week-in and week-out just completely behind-the-scenes, most of them volunteers, many of them getting stuff out of their own pockets to fill the gaps,” she said. They’ve been “incredibly grateful and gracious,” she said, and “the work they do is just extraordinary.” Martin said she would encourage folks to keep the pantries in mind for future charitable giving, as they’ll continue to feed the county’s hungry even after the coronavirus crisis has passed.