“People don’t have ovens or microwaves or even hotplates. Sometimes they live in a car. One asked me for food with flip tops because she didn’t have a spoon,” said Rusty Roberts, eight-year president of Blue Hill’s Tree of Life and manager of its food pantry. “Some live in chaos.”
The Tree of Life has been feeding area needy for 20 years. Started in the basement of the Blue Hill Congregational Church’s parsonage in 1988, it has grown, moved — and moved again and again, each time to larger quarters, and twice built its own building. Now an independent, 501 c (3) non-profit, self-sustaining entity, The Tree of Life and the thrift shop whose sales support it, the Turnstyle, operates, thanks to 75 volunteers, out of a building next to Rite Aid, on Blue Hill’s South Street.
It now costs the Tree of Life about $12 a week to feed a family or about $4 to feed a single person. That doesn’t sound like much when you think of the cost of a week’s groceries, but much of the pantry’s food comes from donations by Boy and Girl Scouts, schools, churches and other groups. “We can’t get artificial sugar, powdered milk, eggs, paper towels, toilet paper,” Roberts said. The pantry has to buy these and such other items as peanut butter, jams and jellies, but does so at discounted prices.
The Tree of Life has come a long, long way from the days when volunteers weighed out flour and packed some canned goods and day-old bread in brown paper bags for its few clients. In February it had registered 540 families from seven area towns. Those 540 times three comes to $1,620 per week earned from sales of used clothing. (The TurnStyle thrift shop operates Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from 10 to 3.) In the days when volunteers weighed out flour from 25-lb. bags, 16-year volunteer Serita Brown recalled, “If we made $78 a week, we thought we were doing well. Now to break even, we have to take in $1,700.”
Each Thursday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., men, women, children, babes in arms, and elderly living on Social Security arrive at the food pantry. The only criteria: to need food and live in the area. Roberts said, “The food is of the type and brands we’d all buy and use. We even have Stonewall Kitchen products,” though she admitted, “sometimes the expiration date has passed.”
Clients come into a warm room, pick up a banana box, go through the door to the pantry where they give their names to a volunteer at the register. Then they slide their boxes along a counter designed specifically for that purpose, reaching for food goods on shelves above. On shelves below volunteers store items to restock the shelves. As quickly as clients empty the upper shelves, volunteers step in, grab refills and restock. On the other side of the aisle the client can find personal products, baby food, and miscellaneous items — that day, laundry bluing.
Opposite more canned and bottled goods further down, clients can choose frozen meats, fresh vegetables and fruits. At the end of the aisle they can find baking items and desserts. Heading back to the exit door they select dry cereal, pasta, spaghetti sauces, rice, and macaroni and cheese. On the other side of the aisle they find many different kinds of fresh breads. At the top they can choose fruit juices and ethnic foods.
On March 6, 69 families got groceries in the first hour and a half. Roberts greeted most by name, welcoming them and asking about their families. That day they could chose from many different types of gourmet vinegars and vinaigrettes, gourmet mustards and other condiments. Further down the line they found jars of peanut butter (one only, please) and jams and jellies (one per family). This also applies to (chunk light) tuna, baked beans, and dry milk. Families of four or more may take two cans. On the opposite side they could find cucumbers, apples, broccoli, oranges, grapes, sweet potatoes, and yellow, orange and green peppers. On the shelves at the end of the aisle sat cans of Wolfgang Puck organic vegetable broth along with more conventional brands. A posh grocery store must have donated the oddest gourmet item of the day: a single box of imported English charcoal crackers. Such items make shopping and volunteering at the Tree of Life fun.
Client Dannie Grindle, who threatened to wear a bald spot on baby Tyler’s, head from where she kissed him every few seconds, said, “A lot of food pantries don’t let you pick what you want. They throw food in a box, and a lot of the time it’s stuff you’re not going to use.” By 3 p.m. the pantry had served 340 people.
Occasionally some take advantage, but not for long. “One woman claimed she had six children,” Roberts recalled. “She had one and the state had taken that one away. She’s into drugs. She was taking food and selling it. One older man had imaginary friends and took home food for three people.” Someone checked and found his front hall clogged with food. Roberts, a college Psychology major, has developed a sixth sense about clients and volunteers.
“I gamble a lot,” she said. “If I sense there’s a serious problem in the household, we give them a lot of extra food and bedding, and point them in the right direction. We keep a bulletin board with phone numbers of services. We encourage, we help, but they have to help themselves.”
A man told Roberts, “It’s not only the nicest, the cleanest, and best stocked food pantry, but it’s gourmet.” He said it all. q