‘We’re just forgotten.’ Wolfe County food pantry steps in for those left behind.
At 3 a.m. last Friday morning, Michael Antreau parked his car along the grassy verge of Highway 205, covered himself with a sleeping bag, and went to sleep.
He stayed that way until about 10 a.m., despite the frigid temperatures until Nicky Stacy tapped gently on his car window. Michael has been living in a camper with his family, she said, and is a regular at the Hazel Green Food Project in Wolfe County.
“I wanted to make sure I got here in time,” he said. “This helps out a lot.”
He might have waited a few hours later, but by 10 a.m., the row of cars behind him extended at least half a mile down the highway.
“It’s like that every single time,” said Stacy, who founded the Food Project four years ago as her neighbors tried to pull out of the nightmare of COVID deprivation. “People will be here all day.”
As she talked, Stacy’s army of volunteers moved palettes of hand sanitizer and protein shakes to get ready for the stream of cars, while a few more sorted through a huge bin of apples.
The Food Project is an equal opportunity pantry: Stacy doesn’t ask for family incomes and doesn’t care which county you come from. The second and fourth Fridays of every month, cars start lining up early with license plates from all over — Morgan, Powell and Breathitt.
They may have jobs, Stacy said, but after all the bills have been paid and the medication bought, there’s simply no money left for food.
In turn, her recipients are happy for the smorgasbord of items she offers up. Last week it was mattresses from a motel being renovated, some office furniture and on Thursday, someone dropped off a load of shingles. Later on, it might be diapers or vegetables or canned goods.
Most of it comes from the Christian Appalachian Project or God’s Pantry Food Bank, or wherever else Stacy has managed to cajole into donations. Earlier this week, she took a load of Nerf guns and Squishmallows stuffed animals to all 105 kids at Red River Elementary, where Stacy attended.
All is welcome and every bit goes back out the door.
Friday is the week before Thanksgiving, so Stacy has managed to scrape up enough donations to buy 150 frozen turkeys with all the fixings from the Save A Lot that she will distribute later on today at the elementary school.
“The kids will ask me, ‘You got us a turkey, right?’ “ she said. “No kid should have to worry about whether they’ll have a Thanksgiving dinner.”
‘Just forgotten’
Nicky and her husband, Eddie, both grew up in the Hazel Green community, which stretches along the winding Red River and its emerald valley.
The main town of Hazel Green is one like so many in Kentucky, still charming with its small farms and a few big Victorian houses, but a place that clearly peaked a long time ago.
One of those, the biggest brick one on State Street, belonged to state Sen. W.O. Mize, who in 1880, got state funding for the Hazel Green Academy, a handsome set of Italianate buildings above Main Street. Napoleon Bonaparte Hays, later Kentucky Attorney General, was the first principal.
The school was handed over to the Disciples of Christ Church, which operated it until 1983. The buildings still stand in disrepair, windows broken here, roof missing there.
That’s the fancy side of Hazel Green, says Nicky. She always felt like her side of the county, the one closer to the Mountain Parkway, suffered more, especially when the picturesque Red River spilled its banks and flooded people’s homes.
Wolfe County didn’t have coal. It was mostly made up of small farmers who survived on their annual tobacco production, which dried up after the tobacco buyout in 2004.
Counties like Wolfe and Owsley didn’t have a coal hangover, they just didn’t have much of any kind of jobs or economy on which to get by. Wolfe has a poverty rate of 36.8, according to the census, which is more than double the state average, and has the highest food insecurity percentage in the state at 22.8 percent.
These stats had always annoyed Nicky Stacy, all the while she was getting married and having her five children.
“We’re just forgotten,” she said. “I really believe that Eastern Kentucky is just forgotten.”
During COVID, the USDA started handing out food boxes, and Nicky and Eddie started handing them out. In 2021, the Red River flooded, and they started collecting supplies. Eddie works for Habitat for Humanity, and those organizers put the Stacys in touch with God’s Pantry, which coordinates food donations around the state.
With donations from God’s Pantry, she started giving away food at the Hazel Green Fire Department on Highway 205. As more people started coming, Fire Chief Arthur Vest, also the local magistrate, would move the fire trucks on distribution day so there was more room.
One day, God’s Pantry sent some folks from Anthem Healthcare to sign up the many elderly clients in the line for Medicare. They were so impressed they sent Stacy a check for $25,000. That allowed the Food Project to build a warehouse next door complete with a working kitchen and bathroom.
“And now we’re outgrowing it,” she said.
Despite keeping many balls in the air, Nicky is small, calm and kind; and the only frenetic thing about her is the constant beeping of her phone. She’s helped out by regulars like Herschel, who makes the coffee, and Jenny Vest, who makes Facebook Live videos to tell folks what’s available on certain days.
“People feel comfortable with us and they’ll tell us what they need,” Vest said. “We need more ... Every Kentucky lawmaker should come here and work – it should be mandatory.”
Henry Tolson has been a volunteer for two years. He’s 59, a former farmer and electrician for whom work has pretty much dried up. He gets about $30 a month in food stamp benefits. But he comes to help, along with Wiener, a Chihuahua mix tucked into his jacket.
“I believe in giving back,” he said. “Hazel Green don’t have nothing. I’ve lived here all my life, and they’ve never done nothing about it. It was all tobacco, when they done away with that, they done away with all the incomes.”
“If it wasn’t for this place, I wouldn’t make it,” Tolson said. “That’s why I’m here because I want to pay it forward.”
“They” could mean anything from the fiscal court to the federal government, amorphous and largely uncaring. “She” is Nicky, who is taking care of them, every day, all the time.
“If she was as tall as her heart is big, she’d be 7 feet tall,” Tolson said.
“She needs more help because what she’s doing is good for the country. If it weren’t for her, there’d be a lot of little kids going hungry. Grownups, too. She doesn’t do it for the recognition, she just does it.”
Long lines
Hazel Green has two relatively big employers that flank the food project, Lion Apparel and the Chop Shop, a meat processing plant and retail meat store just down the road. Owner Jonathan Whitt takes in 1,000 head of cattle a week, sends it out all over the country.
But pretty often, he sees Stacy’s name on his phone, and figures out what he can hand over to her.
Today it’s 300 pounds of sausage.
Eddie Stacy loads up the Food Project truck to take back to the line.
“I call Jonathan a lot because we hear that the only protein people get is peanut butter,” Nicky said. “He has a heart to give to the community. Anytime I’m running short, he’s the first person I call.”
“There’d be a lot of hungry faces if she weren’t here,” Whitt said.
It’s now noon, and the line is ready to start. Drivers pop their trunks and the volunteers stand by the grouped pallets, ready to load drinks, hand sanitizer, shampoo, sausage and apples into the cars. It moves slowly but steadily.
Once Stacy is satisfied, she and Eddie get back in the truck to drive to Red River Elementary to unload the turkeys. Despite the snow day status, a few teachers showed up to set up tables and put together bags of stuffing, mashed potatoes and green beans.
Red River was built in 1964, but there’s plenty of room for a student enrollment that’s dwindled to about 105 kids in grades K-6. Class sizes are small, obviously, and everyone knows everyone else, so Stacy will often get word from the school about what a family might need.
“We all went here, so we all help,” she said as cars slowly drove up to get their turkey and fixings. “People are thankful, and I’m thankful to be able to do this.”
She’s also exhausted. She spends way more than 40 hours a week at the job for which she is still a volunteer. While she raises five kids. And at some point, an eternal question raises itself: Shouldn’t there be a better, more systemic way to help people?
When asked about her prescription, Stacy says she’d like to see COVID-era programs be brought back. Along with a winter feeding program the same way there’s a summer feeding program. There’s not enough funding for a backpack program like Lexington has, which helps feed kids during long breaks.
She was called to Frankfort once to testify against proposals to add work or volunteer requirements to SNAP benefits. It died, but she hasn’t seen too much more interest from lawmakers. To be fair, it’s a daunting problem; to be less fair, why bother when you know people like Stacy will pick up the slack?
People around here appreciate the Stacys and their incessant work. They leave $1 dollar bills in their mailbox, or drop off change in the food line to try to offset the costs.
But the need never ends, and Nicky Stacy won’t stop.
“I go to bed and get up and come back here,” she said. “I don’t know ... someone has to do it.”
On Thanksgiving Day, the Stacys will return back to the warehouse with their kids. Then a volunteer will start frying some turkeys outside while others gather in the kitchen to cook the rest of the meal. They’ll set up long tables, maybe 50 people in all.
They’ll serve the food, bow their heads and pray, in gratitude for the food and for each other and the work they do together.
Then the Stacys will go home, and Nicky will get ready for another Friday distribution, hoping and praying and begging she has enough for everyone who needs it.
To donate to the Hazel Green Food Project and talk with Stacy, go to the group’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/HazelGreenFoodProject/.
This story was originally published November 25, 2024 at 4:45 AM.
