JAY — Dozens of volunteers were at the Community Center of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church Sunday afternoon, Nov. 24, to help assemble Thanksgiving boxes for 197 area families.

Families had to sign up ahead of time with Food Cupboard Jay, Livermore and Livermore Falls, Martina Eastman said Nov. 18. “We have never had that number,” she noted. “Cooking a turkey can be intimidating so a gift card will be given to purchase the turkey or other meat, butter, milk and things like that.”

Last year 180 families received boxes.

On Nov. 24 the first order of business was unloading a 20-bushel bin of McIntosh apples [Macs] into 1/2-peck bags. Joel and Melissa Gilbert, owners of Berry Fruit Farm in Livermore Falls donated the apples for the boxes.

Eric Tompkins, who organizes the Thanksgiving box program, said the number of requests this year was the most in a number of years. Each box contains a bag of apples, a bag of potatoes, canned vegetables, stuffing mix and ingredients to make a pie, he stated. Larger families receive more of some items, he noted.

Volunteers lined up in an assembly line with each responsible for adding one item to every box. Each box had a list on one side of it indicating what was to be added. Every time the number of people to be served increased, Tompkins called out the change and for volunteers to add more items as noted on the box.

There was a new addition for the boxes this year: families who chose were also given a small bouquet of dried flowers.

“Thanksgiving will be brighter for the families with some flowers,” Eastman said Sunday. “Food feeds the body, flowers feed the soul.”

Eastman has had people gathering vases for her all year, people saved them for her. She washed them all in her dishwasher, then wrapped and stored them in boxes.

Barbara Cook of Jay and her sister Mary Cote of Livermore Falls spent time Sunday unwrapping and counting the vases available. Later Elise Despres of Canton, who worked at OTIS Federal Credit Union in Jay helped Eastman arrange bouquets in the vases.

“I was thinking of fresh flowers, but that would be so much more complicated,” Eastman said. She used things from her garden, gathered others along the roadside, the Pasture Lane Farm Market Amish community donated several cockscomb [an easy to dry flower], and Eastman purchased some items.

“A birch tree fell down at the Recreation Field in Livermore Falls,” she said. She cut many small branches with catkins [seed pods] on them to add contrast to the vibrant colors of the dried leaves and flowers she had already bundled together.

Everything found in nature can add to a bouquet, Eastman noted. “Just the color of the dried yellow and orange leaves, the red berries, the red of the cockscomb, this is going to cheer families up,” she added.

“Are those going to be in the boxes,” James McCarthy, a volunteer from Jay asked as he walked by. “Wow, those are cute. They are adorable.”

As filled boxes were put on the floor, the stacks of empty boxes waiting to be filled had to be moved closer to the door. “It is always a race of space,” Tompkins noted.

Need at the cupboard is increasing, it is a huge expense, Eastman said Nov. 18.

Last month 190 families received food from the cupboard, Eastman said. “Over the last 30 years we have received good donations,” she noted. “We have been careful. Expenses far exceed them. We need a nest egg.”