By Jodi Hausen,Staff Writer

Franklin County food pantries have been doing a bustling business, with demand much higher than in recent years, according to volunteers.

“With winter heating costs, people can’t get by without calling on the food pantries,” Elaine Romanoski said Friday.

Romanoski, chairwoman for the Phillips United Shared Ministry Food Pantry, has volunteered with the organization that provides emergency food for families living in Phillips, Avon and Madrid for about 10 years.

Both Romanoski and Carolyn McLaughlin, a seven-year volunteer coordinator for Care & Share Food Closet in Farmington, said demand in the county has increased nearly 30 percent in the last year. The Farmington pantry serves about 150 families and 300 individuals monthly from Farmington, New Vineyard, New Sharon, Temple, Chesterville and North New Portland. The Phillips pantry serves about 130 families.

Both attribute the drain on people’s budgets to increased costs in heating fuel and prescription drugs and a reduction in food stamp allotments. In addition, the loss of several manufacturing facilities in the region has left many without jobs. Many new clients are either people willing but unable to find work, or those who are underemployed, McLaughlin said.

Phillips used to be a lumbering town, Romanoski said, and many residents are retired from self-employed timber operations. Wives of these retirees were typically stay-at-home mothers and so contributed little to Social Security accounts. These families are now attempting to live on Social Security checks of about $450 monthly.

Romanoski said that though demand has increased, the pantry’s food intake has decreased. Within two weeks, she said, supplies will be very low and staples quite limited.

Supplies of surplus food distributed by the federal government have shrunk significantly, McLaughlin agreed. The Farmington food bank, which is a distribution center for the county, typically received about 600 cases of food five times a year from the federal government. Their last delivery from the feds was less than 150 cases, she said.

But not all is gloom and doom in Franklin County.

McLaughlin said that although donations were late in coming, several events, businesses and individuals pitched in to bolster their supplies in Farmington. Through the donation of a truck and driver from a local business, the Farmington facility began receiving monthly deliveries from the Good Shepherd Food-Bank in Auburn about four months ago. The United Way’s fill-the-bus food drive was a big boost, as were donations in lieu of buying gifts from small groups gathering for Christmas, she said.

“The community is really stepping up to the plate,” McLaughlin said. “It touched me how the community has come through this year.”