Don't forget about food pantries

Dear Editor and Readers:

Greetings from the Ronan Bread Basket, your Ronan-Pablo-Charlo food bank. It is September again and time for the annual “Be a Friend Indeed, Help a Friend in Need” campaign from Montana’s Town Pump Corporation. The Town Pump will match all of our monetary donations from September through November up to $5,000 and we need your help to make our $5,000 goal this year.

Please think of the 180 or so families that we serve each month with food and the cost of that food. If you can help, please send a check to The Ronan Bread Basket at P.O. Box 346 in Ronan 59864 or drop it by the Bread Basket during our regular hours of 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays. Every dollar helps us reach our goal and continue to provide healthy food for our neighbors.

In addition our Bread Basket has committed to provide backpack meals for children at our local schools so they will have easy to fix food for the weekend. Currently, the backpack program has added another $15,000 to our expenses and we have to rely on our generous community to help pay for these meals.

We are so grateful to a large number of local folks who step up to help with monthly, yearly, or periodical financial help and with donations of fresh vegetables, eggs, fruit, 4-H beef and pork, and harvested game.

We are also grateful for the weekly donations from the West Shore Food Bank in Lakeside and the Polson Loaves and Fishes Food Bank. A big Thank You goes out to Harvest Foods from whom we receive countless pounds of food each week. For those of you who hunt, we are still willing to take harvested game animals and will pay for the processing if you will let us know which packing house will process your deer, elk or bison.

We have so many “Friends Indeed” to thank in our community. Join them and help your local Food Bank serve our community.

— Ronan Bread Basket Board