Erica Doughty finishes adding a few items to the Little Free Pantry in Steep Falls. Doughty, an administrator at Steep Falls Family Practice, is one of the community members who monitors the pantry. In the small, closely-knit Standish neighborhood of Steep Falls, neighbors have come together to help take care of each other through the holiday season and beyond.
In mid-October, the group constructed a free-standing cabinet in Steep Falls Park, which serves as a Little Free Pantry. Neighbors are encouraged to “take what they need, leave what they don’t, and give what they can” to this mini, community-run food pantry.
Set away from the white gazebo at the center of the park, the dark-wood cabinet with a plexiglass door sits under a tree and adjacent to a park bench.
The concept is simple: The cupboard is open to all members of the community no matter the time of day, so residents can take items, or bring items to contribute, at their leisure.
Erica Doughty, an administrator at Steep Falls Family Practice, said she got the idea for the Little Free Pantry after seeing a post about one Facebook.
The first Little Free Pantry was constructed in Arkansas in May. Jessica McClard, founder of Little Free Pantry, was inspired by Little Free Libraries, according to the little pantry Facebook page. The Little Free Library uses the same concept to provide a community gathering place and free books. Standish has its own Little Free Library on Richville Road, run by Elizabeth Perry.
Doughty said since the Little Free Pantry got started in the south, the pantries have been “popping up all over the country.” More than 17,000 people have liked the Little Free Pantry Facebook page.
Inspired by the trend, Doughty brought the concept to the Steep Falls Improvement Society, a committee of roughly 10 people that monitors the park.
Mary Hulit, society member, said the committee thought, “We’ll give it a try, because there are a lot of people that could really use that.”
Hulit’s husband, James Hulit, constructed the pantry out of scrap materials, and she painted the pantry and a sign underneath. A fellow member of the improvement society, Mike Foster, made the pantry’s plexiglass door.
Hulit said she hoped the project “could help anyone in the village who might need something they didn’t have.” The pantry has been stocked with a variety of items, she said, from fleece-lined mittens to hygeine products and cereal.
Last Friday, Doughty was stocking the pantry with diapers, cat food, juice boxes and granola bars, among other things. She said she is impressed with the variety of items, and with how quickly things are taken off the shelves and replaced.
“Because it’s a small food pantry, it’s just neighbors helping neighbors,” she said.
The project is not meant as a substitute for larger food pantries run by churches and community organizations.
And while there are people who are in need in the area who can make use of the little pantry, Doughty said, it “is not necessarily just for low-income people. It’s there for everyone.”
For example, she said, bikers could stop at the pantry for a drink or a granola bar.
In the week after the pantry first was built, she worried all the food and toiletries would be “wiped out,” but so far the pantry has run smoothly with little oversight.
“There’s no vandalism or graffiti,” Doughty said. “I think people really respect it.”
Doughty, who drives by the pantry every day on her way to work, said several community members also help monitor the pantry. Employees at Sweetie’s Ice Cream and Eddie’s Market, businesses that both face the park, have helped.
Inside the little pantry, behind the boxes of pasta and bags of flour, is a pad of sticky notes and a manilla folder, labeled for comments and feedback.
The one sticky note placed in the manilla folder says, in a childlike scrawl, “We love it. Don’t get rid of it.”
Erica Doughty finishes adding a few items to the Little Free Pantry in Steep Falls. Doughty, an administrator at Steep Falls Family Practice, is one of the community members who monitors the pantry.
