Nearly two dozen members of Mount Airy’s Calvary Baptist Church recently gathered for what might seem like a peculiar purpose — to separate and distribute 22,000 pounds of sweet potatoes.
The work was part of an informal association the church has with the Society of St. Andrews, a Big Island, Virginia-based ministry which aims to supply food to needy families.
Rev. Alex Martin, better known as Pastor Alex to his parishioners at Calvary Baptist, said his church has been affiliated with the ministry for several years.
“The Society of St. Andrews works with farmers to glean their fields and to rescue sometimes imperfect produce that otherwise might go to waste and to try to get it into the hands of organizations that can distribute it to those in need,” he said.
Unlike many other food distribution programs, there is no set schedule for when the ministry will have available food — but when it does, there’s usually a lot.
“One of the challenges of this particular ministry is that we never really know all that far in advance when this extra produce is going to be available…we’ll get notification that says ‘we’ve got X number of pounds of this but we’ve got to leave (deliver) it tomorrow.”
That was the case with the recent sweet potato delivery, although the church had five or six day’s notice this time around, which Martin said is unusual. When they arrived, Martin said there were 22,000 pounds of them, delivered on box pallets that contained roughly 1,200 pounds each.
He and Doug Odell, who serves as the church’s point of contact with the society, were able to put together an effort that included nearly two dozen of the church’s members arriving on a recent Friday, where they were able to separate and bag some of the potatoes for area residents and other ministries.
“The bulk of those potatoes went out in bulk to different food banks and food pantries throughout the area. Most of those taking larger pickups came by on Friday afternoon…we have a number of different community partners from churches, food banks and agencies who came by to pick up the produce we’d set aside from them.”
Saturday morning, area families and smaller ministries were able to drive by, pick up bags loaded with 5 to 20 pounds of potatoes.
Martin said he first became associated with the group while he was in college. “I had a chance to work with them when I was in college. I was really impressed with the work they did.” When he arrived at Calvary in Mount Airy, the church was already aware of and working with the group.
“We’ve done things like this (the recent food distribution) in the past. We’ve had a few different times we’ve been able to rescue some sweet potatoes, help them out with some eggs that they ended up getting a hold of.”
He explained that the Society of St. Andrews has agreements with a number of growers throughout the Southeast, where volunteers can go into fields and glean produce left after the harvest. At other times, farms will have a shipment of produce that, while good and healthy, doesn’t qualify for normal retail distribution channels.
“This particular shipment was gleaned from a sweet potato operation down in Georgia; that’s where this load came from.”
While distributing such large quantities of food can be a challenge — Calvary has had to turn them down on a couple of occasions — Martin said his church is in a good position to generally be able to help.
“We’ve developed a network, a number of different community partners from churches, food banks and agencies who come by to pick up the produce we set aside from them. We feel like we can put these resources to pretty good use when they are available to us.”
He invites area churches which manage food pantries and who might be interested in receiving produce to get on Calvary’s distribution list by calling the church at 336-786-4778.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com