NORTHFIELD — In its Thanksgiving food drive this year, Northfield Elementary School donated 509 items to the Northfield Food Pantry.
In past years, the procedure has been for all the students to form a line from the school to the library across the street where the food pantry is, and to pass the items they’d collected in a firemen’s chain to be stocked there.
This year the weather wasn’t conducive to that, so on the Monday before Thanksgiving, the fourth-grade class that coordinated the food drive took a field trip to the food pantry and did the firemen’s chain in miniature, forming a line from the library’s basement entrance into the food pantry, where they organized and stocked the food with help from their teachers and library staff.
The 509 items the school donated, which included personal care items like soap and laundry detergent, as well as non-perishable food items, will be significantly helpful for the food pantry, said Caty Kostecki, who manages it and is on its organizing board. With the school’s donation, she said, the pantry likely won’t have to make any major purchases through January.
The Northfield Food Pantry has been open for five years now. It was established to fill the void left by previous food pantry-type resources in Northfield that had disappeared, Kostecki said.
The Food Pantry now serves about 45 households, Kostecki said, and only serves Northfield. If someone from out of Northfield comes, they get a box of supplies and information on other food pantries that are set up for larger populations.
Demand for the Food Pantry had been fairly stable until it began to increase again about six months ago, Kostecki said.
Northfield Elementary School’s food drive is one of several donation drives that support the Food Pantry, including one organized by the post office each spring and frequent donations from local churches, Kostecki said.
There are ways for individual people to help too. At the town transfer station there is a collection bin for returnable cans and bottles that supports the Food Pantry, and there is a donation box at the library for household items and non-perishable food. Cash donations are accepted too. Personal care items are generally in higher demand because they can’t be bought with food stamps, Kostecki said.
“I’m really humbled by all the community support we continue to get. We’re really lucky in that respect,” Kostecki said.