For more than a decade, Willing Hands has been delivering fresh produce from local farms to West Fairlee on Tuesday mornings. And for most of that time, Pamela Mainville has been leading the effort to connect local families in need with the available resources of the Upper Valley. A retired chef from the Mountain School and long-time Willing Hands volunteer, Pamela has seen food insecurity up close in her community and as a perennial concern.
“The need,” she says, “has always been here. And with all the farms in the area, the food has been as well. Willing Hands is the bridge between the two.”
During the height of the COVID pandemic, Jen Shatney and a couple of teachers started a parallel dry goods distribution effort, the “Tuesday Noon Grocery Club,” at Westshire Elementary School.
Jen recalls, “I said to one of the volunteers, ‘We should find a way to combine this with the Willing Hands deliveries,’ And she said, ‘Jen, you’d be just the person to do it.’”
Jen reached out, and Pamela was delighted to join efforts. Together, they now provide dry goods from the Community Food Shelf, which Jen leads, in the basement of the community building, with the Tuesday delivery of fresh produce from Willing Hands. With four additional eager, longtime volunteers, they package bags for 20-plus households each Tuesday morning.
Tuesday’s Team in Action
The day begins around 9:30 AM, when the volunteers assemble in the large room adjacent to the town clerk’s office. They put together tables and create an assembly line for the typical 300 pounds of fresh produce coming in.
When Tim, India, or another Willing Hands driver shows up, Lynn and Laurie, Dave and Kat, and Jen and Pamela carefully transfer the crates to their assembly line. Drawing on their experience during COVID, they find it more efficient to have customers drive up to the door, offer them a clipboard checklist of dry goods, and prep each family’s produce and requested items while the customers wait. It’s also a good chance to check on the families, particularly those who are home-bound, who have friends or family members pick up their portion.
“We know all our customers, and we ensure that everything gets distributed,” Pamela notes, “nothing goes to waste.”
Any wilted leaves or cracked vegetables go into a box for the chickens who live a few doors down the road. (The hens, by now accustomed to the sound of the Willing Hands truck, start up a chorus when they hear the truck approaching.)
Laurie, one of the volunteers, also brings in several dozen eggs each week in the summer.
“I was already donating eggs to the food shelf when I heard about the Willing Hands deliveries. So, then I started volunteering here,” notes Laurie. She laughs, “After meeting Lynn, I talked her into volunteering on Tuesdays too.”
There is something genuinely heart-healing about this gang of volunteers’ energy. They crack jokes with one another and eagerly await the arrival of the day’s customers, jumping up from the table to meet the next car in line. Most of the food is distributed between noon and 2 PM, but several of the bags will be transferred upstairs to families from the daycare center who have requested them. Others will be delivered by volunteers to individuals around town who are unable to make it to the community building after their shift is over.
Small Town, Big Impact
Jen hopes that the completion of renovations to the adjacent building, Bean Hall, will allow the food shelf to move into that space and expand their storage. Regardless, the combined efforts of the shelf and Willing Hands food deliveries will continue to provide much-needed fresh local food to grateful families in West Fairlee.
“Willing Hands is huge for us,” Jen says. “We are a very small operation in a rural town, really a food desert.”
Pamela agrees. “Most of our families would have to drive to Bradford or Lebanon to access the produce Willing Hands provides. It truly fills an important need.”