Original article published in the Mower County Independent, Thursday, March 21, 2024. Reprinted with permission and gratitude.
By Gretchen Mensink Lovejoy
One community.
Thirty-three tons of help.
“We distributed almost 33 tons of food in 2023 to people in need,” related Spring Valley Area Food Shelf volunteer Carol Gross, sharing that the local food pantry has done exactly what it was meant to do – meet the needs of people whose incomes do not have meeting ends.
The food shelf, founded in 2008, is a work of the Spring Valley Area Ministerial Association and is currently housed in a building just off East Jefferson Street in downtown Spring Valley. Current Spring Valley Area Food Shelf board members are Carol Gross, Rita Hartert, Steve Heusinkveld, Sharon Jahn, Maureen Johnson, Gail Rollie and Pastors Mark and Deanna Woodward, and Geraldine Williams serves as bookkeeper. Board members and others who assist do so on an entirely volunteer basis, but they spend hour upon hour serving their neighbors through the functions of the food shelf – shopping with food shelf clients, working during shopping hours, sanitizing the food shelf’s busier corners, attending informational meetings, unloading delivery trucks, holding monthly meetings, and more.
The pantry’s 2023 annual report elaborated, “The Spring Valley Area Food Shelf serves the needs of residents within primarily a 15-mile radius of Spring Valley and is located at 102 E. Jefferson Street.” Statistics listed for last year’s visits were included in the report, and it cited, “An average of 84 households, or 201 people, used the food shelf each month in 2023, a 58 percent increase over 2022. Shoppers are allowed one visit per month to supplement their food supplies but are never turned away if more food is needed in a certain month. Forty-two percent of households served are composed of one person. Of our total shoppers per month, 14 percent are seniors, 32 percent are children, and the rest are adults 19-64. It should be noted that some households do not use the food shelf every month. The number of shoppers and the amount of food per month increased significantly in the last six months of the year. An average of 65 pounds of food per household was distributed.”
Last year, the Spring Valley Area Food Shelf’s expenses totaled $51,983.62, including rent, local food purchases at Kwik Trip, Sunshine Foods and Dollar General, as well as shelf stable milk not available for local purchase bought from Channel One. Kwik Trip gave weekly food donations picked up by volunteers, Sunshine Foods and Dollar General have ongoing food collection boxes picked up by volunteers, Sunshine Foods gives a discount on all purchases, and meat selections were made at Sunshine Foods, Valley Butchery and Ody’s Country Meats. In addition to donations from churches, monetary, food and other donations were received from the Kingsland district students, a donor gave hams to spur a challenge to the community to donate hams given through a drawing, cattlemen donated ground beef, and one community member generously delivered $2,000 worth of meat to the food shelf so that others may have enough protein on their tables. Furthermore, community members who used Thrivent Action Team projects, along with the July Open Your Heart campaign that garnered $10,850, have made a significant difference for the food shelf.
And the report relayed that “while our expenses exceeded income for the year, our checkbook balance at the beginning of the year and generous donations during and at the end of the year continue to give us a working balance.” That money recirculates through local grocery outlets — Gross noted that shopping locally helps keep the economy strong and builds relationships with business owners and managers. “We spent more than twice as much buying food in Spring Valley than we did buying food from Channel One.” T
he food shelf’s ongoing wish list likely includes laundry detergent, toilet paper, paper towels, soap, dish soap, canned goods, boxed dinners such as Hamburger Helper or macaroni and cheese, peanut butter, jelly, canned soup, canned fruit, juice, rice, tuna, baking supplies – flour, sugar, cake mixes and beyond, and bumper crop garden produce. As Gross pointed out, cash is especially useful as volunteers go shopping to fill carts with even more food than can be bought using the same amount of money spent by someone shopping at the grocery store and giving purchased foods to the food shelf. She stated, “We are also participating in Minnesota FoodShare Month during March, meaning that the amount of food and money donated during the month is partially matched by Minnesota Food Share.”
The Spring Valley Area Food Shelf is located at 102 E. Jefferson St. and is open Wednesdays from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., as well as from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on Saturdays. For more information, log onto the Spring Valley city website or stop in during operating hours to register for assistance or to volunteer. The 2023 report concluded, “The food shelf continues because of the monetary and food generosity of so many – and countless – volunteer hours.”
Courtesy of the Mower County Independent, 135 E Main St. LeRoy, MN 55951, (507)-324-5325
