Ruby Flodin was a woman who lived her entire life “open-handed” toward others. Having settled in the small western Wisconsin community of Wood River, up until her passing in 2001 at the age of eighty-nine, Ruby was never distinguished as wealthy by worldly standards. She was, however, abundantly rich in grace and giving.
Despite the notoriously sandy country up and down the St. Croix River Valley from St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, to Lake Superior, Ruby always seemed to cultivate a fertile garden with plenty of food to give away to anyone who needed it. Ruby could also be found foraging wild blueberries in the Crex Meadows brush prairies located just north of Grantsburg; considered an “historic blueberry spot” ever since the state of Wisconsin purchased twelve-thousand acres of tax delinquent land from the Crex grass rugs carpet company in 1946.
Minnesotans had been raiding Wisconsin’s wild berry patches since the late 1800’s, when a train, referred to as the “Blueberry Special,” transported Minnesota ladies across the St. Croix to pluck the indigo fruit in Ruby’s backyard. Back then, the women would instruct the train conductor to drop them off “wherever the picking was best.”
It was Ruby’s legacy of giving that inspired her grandson, Lyn Sahr, to start Ruby’s Pantry in 2002. For the first seven years of Lyn’s life, he had lived with his grandparents, Norbert and Ruby Flodin, shadowing them to a small country church five times a week.
Six years ago, April 24, 2014, when a group gathered in the 4-H Building to “plant the seeds” as to the possibility of bringing Ruby’s Pantry to Cook County, some questioned whether the need existed?
This past Tuesday, when I lined up for Ruby’s Pantry distribution with some three-hundred plus neighbors cloistered in their vehicles, I reflected back on that initial meeting.
In response to the question of need, consider:
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research, in 2018 an estimated one in nine Americans were food insecure, equating to over thirty-seven million Americans, including more than eleven million children. As of April 2020, the percentage of households deemed food insecure was estimated between twenty-two to thirty-eight percent. So, at minimum, the number of households that lack the resources for a stable food supply has doubled, and possibly tripled, making current rates of food insecurity higher than at any point since data collection began.
Escalating grocery store price tags aren’t helping. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the price of groceries grew two point six percent, including seasonal adjustments, in April of this year …the biggest increase from one month to the next since 1974.
Ninety-eight percent of food banks in America, according to the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, are reporting increased demand, with about forty percent reporting immediate critical shortfalls. Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks that has been responding to the hunger crisis in America for the past forty years, asserts that there is “soaring demand” and “plummeting supply” as a direct result of the pandemic. They also contend that almost seventy percent of food banks are in need of volunteers to help out.
Back in 2014 there were forty-eight Ruby’s Pantry Distribution Centers serving primarily the northern tier of Minnesota and Wisconsin. That number has nearly doubled. Today Ruby’s North Branch distribution center serves some eighty-one “Pop- Up Pantry” locations throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin, which equates to some twenty-five thousand families a month. Cook County’s Ruby’s Pantry food distribution program is sponsored by Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church, distributing some three-hundred shares a month, through a network of ever-faithful community volunteers.
There are two things that sets Ruby’s Pantry apart from any other program. First of all there are no income or age requirements to participate with Ruby’s. The second is frozen foods. Other food pantries aren’t equipped to handle large volumes of frozen and refrigerated foods.
When Ruby’s grandson Lyn first began this ministry outreach, he was asked, “What do you call this? It needs a name.” Lyn answered, “I guess we will call it Ruby’s Pantry,” after his Godly grandmother who left a rich legacy of having generously used her pantry to supply an abundance of nourishment, help and love to friends and strangers alike.
It was American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson who maintained, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
Ruby would wholeheartedly agree, believing most folks would rather “see a sermon than hear one.”
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works, as well as other topics. At times the column is editorial in nature.
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