When the Food Runs Out

More and more Vermonters can’t afford groceries by the end of the month. The paycheck isn’t enough. The food stamps won’t stretch. And they’re looking to community meals and food shelves for regular help. The trouble is, food shelves weren’t designed to provide sustainable food. They were set up for emergencies. For fires, for floods. But every day, an army of volunteers–mostly women between the ages of 55 and 70–hustle food from area stores and local farmers and the Vermont Foodbank….to feed people.

This is a show about what it feels like when you don’t have enough to eat.

“The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Interview with Food Shelf Director Lisa Pitcher

Here is an unedited interview with Lisa Pitcher, the awesome Executive Director of Our Place, a community drop-in center in Bellows Falls, Vermont. She talks about the charitable food system in Vermont…how it works, and how it’s not working.

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Credits

Music for this show was made by the excellent Mike Donofrio

Thanks to Lisa Pitcher, Mark Davis, Judy Stermer, Tobin and Peter, Pam Smart, Sharon Fannon, Robin Bradley, Evie Lovett, and the great people who put on Monday lunches at the Unitarian Church in Montpelier, VT.

Too Much Month at the End of the Money is a country western song by Marty Stuart.