Baskets, backpacks, to-go meals: How thousands in region will be fed this Thanksgiving

This year, a Thanksgiving meal for a group of 10 will cost, on average, more than $53.

The estimate from the American Farm Bureau Federation is 14% higher than a year ago, and the highest in the survey’s 36 years.

Now, estimate how much it would cost to feed a group of 1,500.

“The cost for turkey dinner is almost double from what it was last year,” said Frankie Flowers, a Poughkeepsie community activist. “And, there's not as much. All the stores are saying they're having a hard time getting food.”

And yet, Flowers is among a number of individuals and organizations around the region who will be serving meals Thursday and have been packing up meals to send home to those in need in recent days.

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Despite the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen the number of those seeking support services grow and has necessitated increased safety measures, thousands will be fed this year at various events.

Flowers’ Thursday event was created last year to take the place of a charitable gathering that ran for 35 years, the Eileen Hickey holiday dinners, which have been cancelled for the second consecutive year. Each year on Thanksgiving and Christmas, the Hickey dinners would serve roughly a thousand in Poughkeepsie.

Instead, Flowers and his crew of volunteers — Flowers has continued the work started by his father, John Flowers, who left a legacy of community giving at special events when he died in 2015 — will be at the Family Partnership Center in the city handing out to-go prepared meals. Dan Hickey, who, along with Flowers, was one of the organizers of the Hickey dinners, which are named for his late wife, will provide the food, and Poughkeepsie-based food prep company Fuel4Life will prepare it, Flowers said.

“We're going to package it all down there (at Fuel4Life), and then we're going to hand it out at the Family Partnership Center, like we did last year, in to-go containers,” Flowers said.

On Sunday, Flowers and a group of volunteers delivered roughly 750 Thanksgiving food baskets from MAG Auto Corp in the Town of Poughkeepsie.

"(Our volunteers) want to keep people from feeling like there is no hope — keep things positive and on the up and up and maybe give that extra push to let others know that someone cares about them," Flowers said.

The need for such events is evident. Hudson River Housing earlier this month noted it continues to see the number of people seeking emergency housing increase, as has been the case throughout the pandemic. In addition to the roughly 600 rentals it manages with people in need to consistent housing, the agency estimates it provides emergency shelter to around 110 each night another 20-30 receive housing from the county Department of Community and Family Services.

Not all the people who are in need of Thanksgiving assistance are homeless; roughly 28% of Dutchess households were above the federal poverty line but not making enough money to meet basics everyday needs, according to a United Way of New York report released last year using statistics from 2018.

Meal giveaway programs

The Thanksgiving event will follow several individual efforts to send food home to families., including one Wednesday at the Poughkeepsie Salvation Army Corps at 19 Pershing Ave., where meals will be distributed from noon to 1:30 p.m.

Common Ground Farm in Beacon each year backs up backpacks full of produce and a coupon for a free turkey at a local grocery store to send home with students in need in the Beacon City School District.

Youth Mission Outreach in Poughkeepsie on Saturday gave out 29 Thanksgiving meal baskets at Needle in the Haystack Thrift store in Poughkeepsie.

Newburgh Loaves and Fishes’ massive annual giveaway proceeded this year despite problems in the supply chain making some items more expensive or hard to find. The interfaith distribution planned to hand out 700 turkeys weighing 10 to 12 pounds each on Saturday; it estimated the cost in turkeys alone at $10,000.

They also contended with a run on rice, increasing costs of canned goods and an apparent scarcity of instant mashed potatoes.

"Availability is the struggle," said Paul Zalanowski, who runs the Deacon Jack Seymour Food Pantry with his wife, Linda, at Sacred Heart Church in Newburgh that hosts Loaves and Fishes.

Deacon Irma Bahr-Madrid, chair of Newburgh Loaves and Fishes, said 100 of their turkeys were to be donated by local organizations and the other 600 came from the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley.

In the past two months, grocery store prices have risen, pushing more people to look for help feeding their families, according to information provided by Molly Nicol, CEO of the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley.

The food bank is a branch of the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York and a member of the national food bank network Feeding America. It provides supplies to area agencies, pantries and food programs for children and seniors.

Meats, in general, have been hard for the food bank to come by lately. It has also struggled to get butter, cheese and graham crackers, according to Nicol.

Those shortages have forced the food bank to source alternative supplies, such as turkey breasts, chicken, different cuts of meat and Nutri-Grain bars instead of graham crackers, all at a higher cost, Nicol said.

People wanted

Before the live giveaway in Poughkeepsie Thursday, Flowers handed out baskets of complete but uncooked meals Sunday, and, with the help of volunteers, he anticipated making 1,400 deliveries of meals around the region in all.

Flowers said finding delivery drivers is a challenge and was seeking volunteers. He said when it comes to volunteering and donating, any and all help is appreciated, for whatever task they are offering.

“We're never going to turn someone away,” he said. “No matter how many volunteers we have, we'll find something for them to do.”

People, in fact, may be the resource in most short supply for area food banks. The Food Bank of the Hudson Valley is looking to hire drivers and warehouse workers to handle its stock.

“There's a ton of warehouses, including Amazon, and they're all offering bonuses and the like to have drivers and warehouse workers,” Sara Gunn, director of the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley, said. “So, we're all sort of fighting for the same pool of workers right now.”

In addition to an evergreen need for monetary donations, Gunn said the food bank can also use volunteers beyond the holiday season.

“In January and February, that’s the time when we're a little bit short on volunteers,” Gunn said. “You're getting into the depths of winter and everything, so that's really the time when we really could use people supporting us.”

To find your closest food pantry, visit regionalfoodbank.net/find-nearest-agency/ or call 845-534-5344. To volunteer for Flowers’ charity events on Thanksgiving or beyond, visit his Facebook page at facebook.com/frankie.flowers.71.

Staff writer Lana Bellamy contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Poughkeepsie Journal: Free Thanksgiving meals in Poughkeepsie, Beacon despite costs