Andrea:
Welcome to Live Wire, a podcast powered by Kosciusko REMC. We are a member owned and locally operated cooperative that supplies electricity to portions of Kosciusko, Fulton, Wabash, and Whitley Counties here in Northern Indiana. Live Wire is a program where we come together to discuss co-op matters, energy community topics, and to communicate with KREMC members. I'm your host, Andrea Melton.
Today on Live Wire, we welcome Bill Doege, manager of the Milford Food Bank. If you've been reading our weekly blogs at KREMC.com, you know that Milford Food Bank was the recent recipient of an Operation Round Up grant. It is a faith-based organization staffed with dedicated volunteers, and the scope of what Milford Food Bank is doing in the community and beyond is truly incredible. Bill, thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of Live Wire.

Bill:
Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you for having me.

Andrea:
We are here today primarily to bring attention to an annual fundraiser you have coming up at Milford Food Bank. I know there's a very special and big project in the works that will benefit from this fundraiser. But, Bill, for those listening who maybe don't know much about Milford Food Bank, how about we start with a little rundown of your work at Milford Food Bank and how the organization is impacting our community and other nearby communities.

Bill:
The Milford Food Bank was started in 2009 by William Troup. He's a local man that's grew up in the Milford area all his life, and just held a heart to want to feed people. He went to a local food bank down in Wolcott, Indiana. He saw all the food there, and that's what started it. He asked how could he get the food to bring to Milford, and they said, "Just bring a trailer." So that started the Milford Food Bank. He started with five pantries, trailer load of food, and it just blossomed from there.
Over the first year, Bill grew it from five to 10, and he grew out of his space that was in the tiny little barn outside town. So then he asked Ron Baumgartner, which is the owner of the Papers Incorporated, to use part of his warehouse space to store food. And that's how I got to meet Bill is I was running and helping operate the warehouse at the Papers at that time. I got to know Bill, we hung out a lot. We started taking food out to the apartment complexes. We just grew a nice relationship, and God really prompted me through Bill that I needed to step up and help Bill run this ministry.
So over the years, I'm going to fast forward real quick. That was like year one, two. We were only at 10-15 pantries. In year five we were at about 30, 35 pantries, and now currently as of today, we are at 135 partners. And when I say partners, that means food pantries, kitchens, recovery homes men's and women's, just churches that just want to outreach to their communities that don't have a budget per se, and they want to do God's work, but they don't have the resources financially to support a food ministry, but that's where the Milford Food Bank can come alongside them and give them the resources to put in their church so they can bless their community.
But that's a quick rundown of Milford Food Bank. From 2009 to present like I said we started with five. We're at 135 now and we have currently. I'm the operations manager. I'm the only paid employee. Everybody else at the food bank is a volunteer, which we have about 25 core volunteers that come in every week and help us load the pantries out and the partners out on Mondays and Fridays. And then we have packing days during the week that we pack food. Right now, currently today, we're bagging up a bunch of Yellow Delicious apples. We just got in a whole semi-load of them. You never know what's coming in the door. You just got to be prepared for it and just take the blessing and run with it because sometimes when you get a semi load of apples, it is kind of like how are you going to get through all that?

Andrea:
That's a lot of apples.

Bill:
Yes, it is. It's extremely a lot of apples. That's a quick rundown of Milford Food Bank and our volunteers. Like I said, I couldn't do it without our volunteers. They are the core to the food bank, and they're truly the ones that run the food bank. I'm just the guy that's behind the scenes making sure everything's functioning and getting delivered and getting our trucks out on the road. We have two box trucks that's on the road all the time picking up food and delivering food.

Andrea:
It's an extraordinary organization and operation. And when I was there, it was wonderful and very humbling to see the work being done there. And it is quite an amazing team you have for sure. So Milford Food Bank distributes, gets all of this food to its partner organizations. I know while you're not the type of food bank where people can come in at any time and shop or get what they need, I do know that you have spent the summer and are still setting things outside of the food bank for the public to come pick up on occasion. And you do a great job of keeping people notified of when those things have been set out, if they're following you on Facebook as I have been over the past few weeks. There's a lot of great produce and different things being set out there for the community on a whole too.

Bill:
Yes, our biggest goal is to serve our communities through our partnerships with our food pantries and our kitchens and then partnerships. But the one thing that when our beginning, me and Bill, like I said, we went to apartments, and we walked and gave bags of food out to people, individuals, and God just kept that in my heart that we need to also try to provide to the community sources of food. And that's why we have the produce stand that's out front of our building currently that just started. At the end of July we started that. So we try to put fresh food in the hands of anybody that wants to come to Milford and get it. I do post it on Facebook, when stuff is set outside. The things that are on the stand, we just ask for a free will donation because the food bank does purchase all them items. In turn, if you can afford it, that's fine. If you can't afford it, that's fine too, just take it and go on. Because somebody else will take care of your need because there's always somebody that'll over bless the food bank, and that always covers the people that can't unfortunately afford the food right now.
But we also want to make sure people feel welcomed when they come to our vegetable stand or even to the building. It's just the way our economy is right now. There's so many people hurting and financially strained, and that's hitting the middle class more now than ever has been. We always have been serving the lower class, and now the middle class is starting to get affected by the economy now with the grocery prices and just overall of everything costing so much money and the downturn of the economy too, a lot of layoffs and a lot of jobs being lost.

Andrea:
Absolutely.

Bill:
God put that in my heart in July to get that up and running. Like I said, that's all run by volunteers and myself. We try to keep it full as much as we can, but there is days that it isn't full, and that's just because we don't have anybody there to staff it.

Andrea:
Right. It's interesting, earlier I was talking to one of the ladies on our member services team, and I let her know that you'd be coming in today and coming to talk with me on the podcast, keep an eye out, let me know when you'd arrived. And she told me that sometime in the past she had done some volunteering for a local food bank, and she was just sharing with me her memories of that experience and that she was surprised that at that particular food bank, more people didn't come to see what they had and to get what they needed. And she was surprised that they weren't busier at that time. And I told her that when we spoke for the blog article, one thing you mentioned that really rang true with me is that people, they can be embarrassed even if they need that. It might keep them from taking that step from coming to get the food they need, even if they have children at home, even any number of circumstances.
So I think it is great to reiterate that it is for everyone and that people can struggle no matter where they've been previously in their life compared to where they are now, no matter what type of home they live in or what car they drive or what neighborhood they're in or where they came from. People can struggle and anything can happen at any time to create a situation where you might need some help.

Bill:
That is so true because during COVID we had our COVID giveaways on Wednesdays every week for two and a half years, three years, probably pretty close. We moved it over to Ligonier to the school because we were over at the school first, and it got so big over there. We were serving 300 plus cars on a Saturday afternoon. And then it just got to the point where I couldn't haul enough food over there because one day we had so many cars that the police department actually had to direct traffic on the highway. We had cars backed up all the way to Highway 33. We want people to feel welcome when they come and get anything that we set out because we set out frozen food, we set out bread, we set out different things all week long on different days. Like I said, just follow us on Facebook, and you'll see the posts.
But the biggest thing is this is a judgment free zone. We want you to feel like you can come. If you want to make applesauce and you want to come get 40 pounds of apples, by all means come get 40 pounds of apples. If you want to take watermelons to all your neighbors, load 10 of them in your car and take them to your neighbors because we want you to go out and bless people as well as we're blessing you. Some people see when people are loading their cars up, they think they're taking more than they should, and I sometimes have to remind them that they're taking it for their families and their neighbors and friends that can't make it during that time of day, so they take it home for the evening so they can pick them up from their house.
So we just got to be very cautious of what we say because most times people that are taking a lot is because they're being hands and feet of Jesus and just out there blessing somebody else with the food that they're picking up that day. That's just the main goal of the Milford Food Bank is we're just here to serve our communities the best we can and be a good neighbor to everybody that we can touch.

Andrea:
Well, I think you're doing an amazing job at the Milford Food Bank and with that mission for sure. Bill, you have an annual fundraiser coming up it looks like November 4th. It's the third annual Gobble Up Hunger, but this year there might be maybe a different focus. I know there are some big things going on and we need to raise some funds to see them through. So tell us about that.

Bill:
This year we're having our third annual Gobble Up Hunger on November 4th. It's at the Milford School. We start it off with a walk run that starts at... Well, the races start at four o'clock, but registration starts at 3:00. And following that, we have our haystack supper that starts at 4:30 and runs to 7:00. And while that's going on, we have our silent auction that's going on, so you can come bid on a bunch of pies and cupcakes and cookies and just things to take home and enjoy over the weekend. And then at 6:30 we kick off our live auction, and we just have fun selling a bunch of nice items that have been donated to the food bank to put more finances in our account so that we can bless our communities with food and just keep our trucks and everything running.
This year the one big thing that we're trying to strive to get it all ready, we're still working on it, but we're hoping we can kick it off that night is our building project. That's going to be our new warehouse with a couple truck docks, and it'll be our office. Our packing room will be in this building, and this building will be located right across the street from our building on James Street. We're hoping to be able to put up a... Right now, tentatively the plan is about an 11,000 square foot building so we can store all our extra items in this building so that way we're right across the street from our facility that we actually, I call it our mini grocery store, where the pantries come and they shop, so that way we don't have to go all the way down around the block to go get stuff out of the warehouse currently at the Papers Incorporated that Ron so graciously donates it to us. We couldn't do what we do without Ron too, so a quick plug there for the Papers Incorporated.

Andrea:
There's so much stuff there, Bill. When I came to talk with you and see the Milford Food Bank, we spent quite a bit of time there at the mini grocery store, which is also a good sized building and has a lot of food in it. And then you said, "Do you want to take a walk down to the Papers and see the rest?" And, wow, there was a lot more. It would be and will be wonderful for you to get this new space close to your property.

Bill:
It would just make things run a little bit more efficiently and easier for everybody. That way when I'm not there and not able to drive the truck back and forth and that kind of thing, the volunteers could just literally get on the forklift and run across the street and grab what they need and bring it back over. It would just make things a lot easier. So this project, we're hoping to have it kicked off that night. We're hoping to have pictures. I'm hoping to have the numbers, what it's going to cost to erect the building and get the grounds all prepped and just get this up and going so we can get people excited to come alongside us and just be a sponsor. Businesses, if you want to be a sponsor for the Gobble Up Hunger event, we are taking sponsors for that night.
And if you want to be a sponsor for our box truck, if you want to put your logo on the side of our box truck, we're doing that. That just helps keep them trucks running down the road with fuel. So there's those opportunities for businesses to get their logos on our truck. Our trucks are running all over the place, so you get really a lot of exposure there. We also need sponsors for our event, but those sponsors, and it just depends on where you want to donate, but can start at $1,000 and go all the way to $5,000. That gets you pretty much a table at the event. I'm pretty sure it's six people you can have come and have dinner and then stay for the auction and spend some more money at the auction.

Andrea:
Absolutely.

Bill:
The Gobble Up Hunger is our biggest fundraiser of the year. We only have a couple fundraisers we do. This year we did our first annual golf outing at Maxwelton, and that went really well, and we're planning on having another one next year. But really Gobble Up Hunger is our bread and butter for putting the finances back in the bank account to just keep the ministry running every day to day. And, of course, we can't do it without all our local people that do donate currently. A big thank you to all you that send checks routinely in the mail to us. We can't do that without you guys, and we can't do it without the businesses that support us and our churches. So just a big thank you to everybody that does support the Milford Food Bank currently.

Andrea:
Awesome. So we have Gobble Up Hunger, folks, it's November 4th at the Milford School there in Milford. There's a two, one and a half mile run and walk, a haystack supper, silent auction and live auction. Visit milfordfoodbank.org. If you want to learn more, if you would like to be a sponsor, donate, attend the event, whatever you want to do, visit their website. They would love to have your support. Milford Food Bank doing incredible things in Milford. The impact is really phenomenal, not just locally, but across, I would say the northern part of the state I know and into Michigan. A lot of people are being helped by this organization.

Bill:
Just to give you just a quick, quick number, because it always blows my mind every time I hear it. I'd never imagined where we came from in our beginning to where we're at now, but as of three weeks ago, I had to do a presentation at a church. And so I got some numbers around. And from January one of this year to three weeks ago, Milford Food Bank has given away, and this is given away, 2.4 million pounds of food since January one. That's a lot of food in that. And from last year to this year, that's up about 600,000 pounds. So that just tells you the strain our economy is in right now. But God is good. That's all I got to say is God is good, and he keeps us plugging away. Thank you for having me.

Andrea:
Wonderful. Thank you, Bill. And thank you to your team for what you do. Have a great rest of your day, and hopefully we talk again soon.

Bill:
Yeah, this is great. Hope to be back.

Andrea:
You've been listening to Live Wire, the official podcast of Kosciusko REMC. To learn more about KREMC visit our website krmc.com and follow us on social media. Thanks for listening.