Marshfield Food Pantry staff and volunteers are prepping for the holiday season and looking forward to moving into a new space in the spring.
The additional space in the Library Plaza project will allow the pantry more room for refrigeration and give people the feeling of walking through a grocery store, said Director Jim Hewitt.
The new location is slated to be completed in February and will double the space the pantry has in the basement of the First Congregational Church’s parish hall, Hewitt said.
Hewitt said more than 200 families use the pantry monthly, each picking up a week’s worth of food, unless they have a much greater need. Throughout the year, the pantry serves about 500 families, since Marshfield has a transient population that moves into apartment buildings and don’t stay long, he added.
“We might see someone for a few months and then they will move. Or sometimes they just need help to get on their feet and they’ll be on their way. That’s primarily what we’re designed to do,” he said.
Adding more refrigeration, and having shopping shelves will help make the experience better for the people who go there, and will help the pantry provide more nutritious food.
“Part of the challenge is we need to give out nutritious food, which means fresh produce, which need refrigeration,” he said. “The next step down is frozen vegetables, which is better than canned.”
Eating healthy food can be a challenge for families on really tight budgets, because fresh produce costs much more than processed foods, he said.
“Healthy is expensive. You can get a Big Mac and a soda for $5. You can’t buy much produce for that,” he said.
This holiday season, the pantry will be having extra days for people to come pick up supplies for holiday meals. The Greater Boston Food Bank gave the food pantry 96 frozen turkeys, and Roche Bros. grocery store donated another 120 turkeys.
People who come for the holidays get all the fixings for a Thanksgiving dinner, he said, including cranberry sauce, stuffing, vegetables, pies and a dairy voucher so they can go to the store to get milk, eggs, butter and cheese.
For Thanksgiving, residents in need can come to the pantry between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 19.
If you’re interested in helping stock the pantry shelves, Hewitt said they’re most in need of donations of personal care items.
“If you’re income is such that you have to make the choice between shampoo or food, you might not buy shampoo,” he said.
The pantry also accepts monetary donations and nonperishable food items, like cereal, peanut butter, jelly, tuna, oatmeal, pancake mix and syrup, he said.
The pantry will soon be sending out a mailer asking for monetary donations, and he said the community has always been very supportive when they’ve asked for help.
“The town’s just incredibly generous when it comes to the food pantry,” he said. “Sometimes it’s overwhelming.”
Follow Kaila Braley on Twitter @MarinerKaila.
