Food pantries prepare for winter

By Jon Hochschartner
Local food pantries are facing mixed circumstances. Some volunteers say their organizations are well stocked, while others report relatively bare shelves.
Linda Young, director of the Lake Placid Ecumenical Food Pantry, falls into the latter camp.
She said that on a recent Thursday the pantry looked well stocked, but by Friday it was almost empty.
That said, Young did not sound overly concerned.
"Our program is a ministry, so it's god driven," she said. "The food comes in, the food goes out, and it comes back in. People care and they step up to the plate. "
Young said that with an average of 35 to 45 families coming in every Friday, the pantry was seeing a usage increase compared to previous years. She blamed the recession.
Betty Maus, the director of Tupper Lake Food Pantry, said her stock was below last year's. She blamed human error.
"We were kind of dissapointed about a recent drive, because the date got changed," she said. "People didn't know, (so) they didn't put stuff out to collect...We usually get somewhere around 2000 pounds of food with the Post Office drive, and we did not get that this year."
Maus said that while the numbers using the service has stayed around the same, the population has changed more toward single people than families.
Mary Ellen Kieth, the coordinator of Saint Paul's/Assumption Food Pantry, said her organization just had it's big distribution day of the month, so the pantry was not well stocked.
She said it's a month to month organization, so there was no telling how well they'd be stocked in a few weeks time. The pantry is also dealing with a theft increase from collection recepticles, and the loss of labor since Camp Gabriels' minimum security prison closed.
Keith said the numbers using the pantry have stayed relatively the same since 1980, when her organization primarily served seniors.
"The clientelle is different (now)," she said. "There are younger people. There are families that are unemployed. We've got people who are helping out their grandchildren."
Francis Paradis, director of Minerva Food Pantry, said that in terms of stock, so far she's doing "OK."
"We have a few more clients than last year," she said. "We serve approximately 50 to 55 families. I've seen a few more senior citizens comer in, but I have been making an effort to encourage them to come."
Dorothy Crawford, coordinator of Plattsburgh Interfaith Food Shelf, said her her organization was well stocked.
"We serve about 460 households per month," she said."We haven't seen a lot of increase in the numbers because this area has been rather economically depressed to begin with...Last fall we were serving over 500 families a month. We're back to where we normally are (now)."