In a Nutshell: Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen… Have nothing on us!

Maddie, our AmeriCorps Vista volunteer, and I drive up the icy road toward the Trego Civic Center at 11:45 a.m. It’s the day of our Trego Mobile Pantry Holiday Distribution, the biggest food distribution in the history of North Valley Food Bank (NVFB). The official start time is 1 p.m. but a line of 30 cars already meanders up the road past the Trego Pub.

Our team of four staff and volunteer drivers departed Whitefish about one and a half hours before us with 13 pallets of food divided into the 16-foot NVFB truck and a rented 26-foot Penske truck. By the time Maddie and I arrive, they have already used a forklift to unload the 14,000 pounds of food. A team of 20 Trego Civic Center volunteers prepares everything for the distribution. Inside the Community Hall area of the Civic Center, we are greeted by wide smiles, the smokey smell of the wood stove, warm hugs and Wham’s Last Christmas jingling on the radio. Volunteers stand around two assembly lines of folding tables and pack 220 grocery bags with pancake mix, canned pears, rice, mixed veggies, black beans, tomato soup, canned salmon, fresh yams and squashes. Outside, volunteers set up separate distribution stations for holiday boxes, bags of groceries, hamburger meat, milk, hams and yams.

At 12:30 p.m. everyone circles up for a huddle. With hands in the middle, together raised to the snowy sky, and a unanimous “Go team”, the wheels of the well-oiled volunteer machine begin to turn. The first car pulls forward to check-in. “Family of four” shouts the checker. The trunk opens and five volunteers load it with holiday goodies. An hour later, all the hams are gone, distributed to 220 families. Hopefully, they can enjoy them without worries of what the new year will bring.

Countless hours of behind-the-scenes work go into preparing a mobile pantry distribution like this. We write schedules, estimate the number of customers, gauge how much food will be donated and estimate how much we’ll need to purchase, raise funds, place orders, receive and store food, recruit volunteers, write menus and repackage bulk items. This year, we were fortunate to receive support from the Montana Food Bank Network (MFBN). They delivered pre-packaged holiday boxes specifically for our mobile pantries, which saved us many hours of work.

It has been a wonderful experience to work with the Trego community over the past two years. What started as a mobile pantry for 25 families has become a weekly distribution for an average of 175 households. The community surrounding the volunteers of the Trego Civic Center have stepped up, organized themselves and are now running their weekly distribution. The Community Hall reminds me of a photograph of the original Whitefish Food Bank. The community is as dedicated as June and her friends were back in the 1970s. They see a need among their neighbors and work diligently to address it. They apply for grants and are committed to remodeling the Community Hall to accommodate more food.

I am deeply grateful to work with many passionate, dedicated, hardworking and smart volunteers, staff and board members. I thank all of YOU for bringing a unique set of skills, great team spirit and incredible kindness to the NVFB family table. Without you, our valuable work would not be possible!

While you read this column on this freezing Wednesday morning here in Whitefish, NVFB is wrapping up another 275 holiday boxes for local distribution. Our team and 80 volunteers are ready to do it all over again. If you need holiday food, we welcome you from noon to 6 p.m. today, Wednesday, Dec. 21, and tomorrow, Thursday, Dec. 22.

Sophie Albert is the executive director of North Valley Food Bank. Albert provides insights into happenings at the food bank, rural food insecurity, stories of the community and more in the monthly Whitefish Pilot column titled, In a Nutshell.