Weld Food Bank's mobile pantry helps many in need of food in Weld communities - Greeley Tribune

Weld Food Bank's mobile pantry helps many in need of food in Weld communities - Greeley Tribune

Snow swirled in a gray sky and near-single-digit temperatures turned breath to fog last week as more than 50 people waited in the Windsor First United Church of Christ parking lot for their turn to fill up a wagon with food.

One of them, Paul Burton, dropped his kids off at school that morning then headed right over.

Burton, a Windsor resident, worked the oilfields in North Dakota and Colorado, but jobs are harder to find now. His wife works for a surveying company. He had an interview today about which he felt hopeful.

His wife usually goes to the monthly mobile food pantry, but Burton’s trying to help his family any way he can.

“It’s amazing how many people need just a little help.— Doug Jones, Weld Food Bank volunteer

The food they get each month from the Weld Food Bank makes that a lot easier, Burton said.

“Without (the food pantry), it would be a lot harder going grocery shopping,” he said. “Especially for vegetables and fruits, the healthy food.”

Windsor often is upheld as a prosperous, even flourishing community, but plenty of people who live there struggle to put healthy food on the table. The Weld Food Bank’s mobile pantry helps them.

“People look at Windsor as a thriving community, but there are a lot people silently struggling with hunger,” Weld Food Bank communication manager Weston Edmunds said.

When the truck arrived, volunteers unloaded cereal, milk, yogurt, fruits, vegetables and frozen turkeys. After two hours, more than 80 people had wagons full of food.

The snow kept a lot of people away last Wednesday morning. Usually the Windsor Mobile Food Pantry serves about 150 people each month, said long-time volunteer Penny Ballman.

Around the holidays when temperatures plummet, utility bills go up and finding money for presents become concerns for many families on a small or fixed budgets.

When people live on a lean budget, it becomes hard to spend money on expensive, perishable food and healthy foods, said Weld Food Bank executive director Bob O’Connor. Potatoes, pears, carrots, peppers and other produce filled more than half of most wagons leaving the mobile food pantry Wednesday morning.

More than 70 percent of the people served by the Weld Food Bank fall into a category Edmunds calls them “the working poor.” Many of the families have working moms or dads. But these families live paycheck-to-paycheck and stay just enough above the poverty line to force hard decisions when it comes to food, he said.

Bundled up in winter clothes, Windsor residents Jen Salazar and Amaris Anderson showed up a little before 10 a.m. and each took a number — that’s how volunteers keep the line organized. Their numbers were in the 50s, so they’d have to wait a bit for their turns.

Neither Salazar nor Anderson had come to the mobile food pantry before, but they both needed a little extra help this month.

Salazar has three kids, and her husband just started making a little more money at work, just enough for the family to lose their food stamp eligibility. She doesn’t like asking for help. But she wants to make sure her family can eat, and any extra food she can get means she has a little more money for rent, heat and presents.

“When I get home I’m going to unpack whatever I have and take a big sigh of relief because there will be a little more food,” Salazar said.

Anderson nodded her head as she listened to Salazar on Wednesday morning. She shares a similar story, except she’s trying to make ends meet with eight kids at home.

Just that morning Anderson knew her kids would get to school late and miss breakfast. She wanted to make sure they would still have something to eat. Her search of the kitchen found some breakfast pastries but not much more, she said.

A lot of people in Windsor don’t think hunger is a problem for the town, said volunteer and Windsor resident Doug Jones.

“It’s amazing how many people need just a little help,” he said.

When Burton, the father, took his wagon of food back to his truck and carefully unloaded the food, it included a special holiday treat: turkey.

So many people donated turkeys before Thanksgiving, the Weld Food Bank had enough left over to distribute some Wednesday morning, Edmunds said.

“It’s awesome,” Burton said with smile. “We were trying to figure out what we would do for Christmas. Now we don’t have to. My wife will be so happy.”