FARMINGTON – With energy to spare, students at Mallett School toted small plastic bags of food from the school to the Community Center Friday as part of the annual “Helping Hands” food drive.

Cascade Brook School students also participated in collecting food that was boxed and trucked to the Community Center, where 26 retired teachers and friends sorted the food into boxes of vegetables, soups, paper products, etc.

All items will be delivered to the Care and Share Food Closet with help from the diversified occupations program at Foster Regional Applied Technology Center, said Pauline Rodrigue, volunteer coordinator for SAD 9.

Later in the day, Rodrigue reported that more than 2 tons of food was collected. There were 116 boxes with an estimated 40 pounds per box, she said.

Students from both schools brought food items from home to share with community members through the local food closet, which has been busy this fall.

More than 199 families, estimated at about 500 people, were served through the food closet in October, said Anita Holmes who organized the volunteers for Friday’s event. Holmes and many of those volunteers also work at the food closet.

“This is a lot of food, but when we give a big family five cans of vegetables and a small family three cans, we can go through a couple hundred cans pretty quickly,” Holmes said.

Since Monday, 60 families have been served, including 21 families Thursday, said Carolyn McLaughlin, volunteer coordinator for the food closet. Packing boxes for each family keeps volunteers busy, she added.

“We like to give them the added attention and to also let them have some choices in what foods they take,” McLaughlin said.

The food closet is an emergency service that provides three to five days of food for every 30-day period. It serves the towns of Farmington, West Farmington, New Sharon, New Vineyard, North New Portland, Temple and parts of Chesterville and is open from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The closet also receives support from area churches.

Traditionally, Mallett School children have formed a line from the school to the Community Center and passed each bag bucket-brigade style. This year, each child picked up a bag at the school and walked with teachers and volunteers to the Community Center where they filed in and dropped the bag on a table to be sorted. Groups of classes continued the process until all of the food had been moved.

It gave the students some exercise and kept them from standing in the cold, Rodrigue said.