On Wednesday, the Fauquier Community Food Bank will open the doors to a “satellite” food pantry in Delaplane. The new location is open to everyone who qualifies, but it is meant especially help isolated older people living in the sparsely populated hills of northern Fauquier County.
The new food pantry is located on the Emmanuel Episcopal Church campus next to U.S. 17, just off Interstate 66. Since the “satellite” pantry will run on the same system as the main food bank in Warrenton, there’s no need for clients to re-register in Delaplane. Initially, the new location will be open each Wednesday and on the first Saturday of each month. (See box.)
Struggles with finding reliable transportation to the main food pantry in Warrenton is “what I hear from people the most,” especially from older people, said Sharon Ames, the food bank’s executive director.
Outside of the multimillion-dollar horse farms, childhood poverty is also widespread in the northern end of the county. Three out of five students at Thompson Elementary School in Rectortown, for instance, qualify for free or reduced lunches, the highest rate of any Fauquier school except Southeastern Alternative.
Families with school-aged children are easier to reach, said Ames, because of the support networks available through the schools. Providing services to older adults isolated in rural areas is much more difficult.
To address those needs, establishing a presence in northern Fauquier has been one of her goals for years, she said. For some people living in deeply rural parts of northern Fauquier, the difference between needing to find a ride to the I-66 corridor and finding transportation to Warrenton can be the difference in eating and not eating.
“For me, this is a dream come true,” said Ames. “How long can our arms be, to reach out to people?” The new location, she said, is a step in reaching out to some of the area’s most vulnerable residents.
Sharon Ames, executive director of the Fauquier Community Food Bank and Thrift Store
Kathy Baumgartner, Emmanuel Episcopal’s treasurer, has shared a similar vision since shortly after she moved to Delaplane in 2014. She and others at the church explored various options for establishing a food pantry over the years, but they decided it wouldn’t be feasible without the backing of a larger network.
Eventually, Baumgartner and Ames connected and realized their shared goal to serve northern Fauquier. And eventually, all the pieces started to fall into place. “We connected from the very beginning,” said Baumgartner.
Beginning last year, they started working out the details of what would become “Share the Harvest,” the name for the collaborative effort opening its doors this week.
Emmanuel’s vestry was willing to provide the space, and Baumgartner could help manage the logistics on the campus. Ames and her staff would figure out the logistics of distributing food to Delaplane after it is delivered to the main location in Warrenton.
Both women emphasized repeatedly that the location of the food pantry does not mean it’s a religious program; all who need services are welcome at the Delaplane location just as they would be in Warrenton. The church is simply providing space for the food bank to expand its operations.
The PATH Foundation provided a $25,000 grant to help pay for renovations to an auxiliary building on the campus originally built for storage for the church’s annual strawberry festival. The church paid for the rest of the renovation expenses, with parishioners volunteering to do some of the work.
An unassuming auxiliary building on the Emmanuel Episcopal Church campus in Delaplane was renovated this year as a new “satellite” food pantry. Food bank clients will be welcome to relax in the church’s parish hall next door when they visit.
That small building will serve as the food pantry, but Ames and Baumgartner said that they hope that the Delaplane location can be a model for something more than a place where people in need can pick up food.
To that end, Emmanuel is also providing space in its parish hall (Jameson Hall) for food bank clients to wait while volunteers collect the food they selected. The food pantry building is too small for clients to browse the shelves as they can in Warrenton, so clients in Delaplane will fill out a form instead.
“We’re making our space a little more inviting, so when you’re waiting for your food you can just decompress,” said Baumgartner. “If you’re food insecure, there’s a huge level of stress.”
There will be light refreshments like coffee, protein bars and bananas available at first, and Baumgartner said that she hopes that will evolve into more substantive meals like sandwiches if there are enough resources and volunteers to sustain it. Eventually, she envisions hosting regular “community lunches” for area seniors.
Both Baumgartner and Ames emphasized that their goal for the northern Fauquier program is to be flexible and to adapt programs to meet the evolving needs of the food bank’s clients. There may be another location, for instance, that is a better fit in the long term. But they both said that collaborations like Share the Harvest will be key to addressing the community’s needs.
“We can’t say, ‘This is my project, you can’t do it,’” said Ames. “We have to work together.”
Baumgartner chimed in. “We have to stay focused on the goal: helping people not be hungry.”
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