September 21, 2022

What a blessing it has been this week to have thirty students and their advisors from Christ School select our pantry for their Day of Service. Calvary has been instrumental in offering opportunities for Christ School students to serve our community throughout the years. This past Wednesday, our day began with prayer in the labyrinth led by Father J. The students worked from 9:00-12:00 in the garden weeding, mulching, and preparing the garden beds for the winter months. In the pantry, there was weighing, sorting, and shelving donated food items and beautifying the front of the pantry by planting pansies. To our admiration they filled two of four compost bins full of weeds, shelved several hundred pounds of donated items and planted over 400 pansies. We express our thanks and appreciation to Christ School students and advisors for their Day of Service with us. P.S. That's 30 students times 3 hours.....90 hours of service WOW! Plus their advisors!

A busy week for Chef Martha. Not only did she prepare a tasty omelet for our neighbors to sample on Saturday, on Tuesday she was videoed by WLOS in the garden preparing three more recipes for the grill using pantry items. Our 106 families, representing 350 individuals and seven new families will have recipes and items available for them in the pantry on Saturday.

Carol, Pat, and Marie volunteered at the Annual Huger Walk at Jackson Park in Hendersonville on Saturday. They distributed Food Pantry flyers and talked with folks about our pantry. As donations are still coming in, we will share with you the grand total next week. We have bright yellow recyclable bags donated from the Hunger Walk for our neighbor's pantry vegetables on Saturday.

Donations this week were boxes of Spring Mix lettuce grown at Bright Farms. MilkCo donated several boxes of milk. Ingles and Bimbo Bakery donated bread, rolls, and buns. St. Andrew's gleaners and the Rotary Club donated tomatoes, green and red peppers, and corn. Shopping locally the Pantry purchased items from MANNA, Sav-Mor, JMJ Tomato Co, and Ingles.

On behalf of the executive committee, thank you to our volunteers and our area churches, civic groups, local merchants, and families for all you do to feed our community helping to reduce food insecurity.

Kathy Noyes