4 minute read
Seven Loaves Also Nourishes Its Volunteers
Seven Loaves Also Nourishes Its Volunteers
By M.J. McAteer
As a retired lady of leisure, I’ve started helping once a week at Seven Loaves Services Inc., the food pantry located around the back of Middleburg’ s United Methodist Church. My title is prepackager.
On my first day last summer, I was told to report at 9 a.m., but, per usual, I arrived ahead of time, only to find volunteers already bustling around the food pantry at a speed that I associate with Costco Checkers. They were in a flurry sorting, bagging, shelving and schlepping.
Because I was early, my contact, Tami Erickson, Seven Loaves’s operations manager and its sole employee, wasn’t in yet. So, Terri Matus, who has been volunteering since Covid and knew the ropes, put me to work scooping rice into baggies. It was a job right in my wheelhouse. Later, I bagged coffee and dog food and helped unload deliveries of donated food.
My fellow pre-packagers were a friendly bunch, many of them church ladies. Some came from near, like Trish Boger, a self-described empty-nester, who lives in tiny Bloomfield. Others came from not so near, like Matus, who lives in Fairfax, and Kathy Summers, who drives in from Gainesville.
Most Seven Loaves volunteers are men and women of a certain age, like me, but young people donate their time to the pantry, too. Dana Connor, a pre-packager who lives in Aldie, usually is accompanied by her teenage daughter, Ace, and her niece, Halle Taylor.
That first day, I really didn’t know much about Seven Loaves, beyond it obviously being a good cause. Since then, I’ve learned more about the faith-based nonprofit.
It’s been around for 30 years, thanks to the support from a half-dozen local churches and a number of area businesses, organizations and individuals. It also has about 60 volunteers who take on just about all the physical labor involved with food collection and distribution, including the pre-packaging, the pickups of store donations and deliveries to the home-bound.
I had not realized the pantry has to purchase a good deal of what it gives away--including all the canned goods and most of the dairy. Or that it has designated grocery store partners--the Middleburg Safeway, two Walmarts, a Giant and a Harris Teeter--that donate produce, breads, snacks, deli items and meats.
The pantry also relies on some well-known local partners that donate produce and meat, including Locust Hill Farm on Zulla Road, the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Upperville, Ovoka Farm in Paris and Horns and Hens in The Plains.
Individuals donate, too. One angel patron, Erickson told me, supplies all the dry dog food that Seven Loaves gives out.
As a pre-packager, I’ve been working on Tuesdays. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the distribution days, other volunteers ferry bags of groceries to clients, who, postCovid, wait in their vehicles for the food to be brought to them. Each household can receive food once a week, no proof of need, religion or residency required.
“Food insecurity is real,” said Erickson, adding that one in 14 people in Loudoun County is at risk of going hungry.
Seven Loaves regularly serves about 135 to 150 households a week. Each receives a bag of nonperishables, a bag of dairy, a bag of meat and a bag of produce and baked goods. For households with children, the pantry adds a bag with readyto-eat food for school lunches.
Since that first day on the job at Seven Loaves, I’ve done date checking, shelving, bagging and lugging, but the pre-packagers shift is short, just two or three hours, so hardly taxing, and in exchange I get to feel good about helping people, even in a small way.
Working with the Tuesday crew also makes me feel good. The positive vibe they exude is a pleasure to share in these negative times. The mission of Seven Loaves may be to feed people’ s bodies, but helping it fulfill that mission also can nourish a volunteer’s soul.
Donation boxes are located outside the pantry, at Emmanuel Episcopal Church on Washington Street and at the Middleburg Library. People may also donate via the pantry’s wish lists on Amazon and Walmart. Seven Loaves is located at 15 West Washington St., Middleburg, Va. 20118. Details:https://www.sevenloavesmiddleburg.org.
