600 chickens donated to Samaritan House

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/12/2011 (5388 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A longtime Brandon poultry company has decided to donate 600 fryer chickens to hungry families through Samaritan House Ministries.

The donation of whole chickens, which will be delivered to the goodwill organization sometime today, came about after Clark Poultry owner Brad Lawson took a tour of the Samaritan House facility and decided he wanted to do something to help.

“I just wanted to help in any way I could have,” Lawson said. “I just wanted it to make sense.”

Near the end of the tour, Samaritan House general manager Marla Somersall showed Lawson the facility’s freezer unit and told him that one of the constant problems the organization faces is a chronic shortage of meat and protein.

When Lawson saw that they had lots of starches, breads and cereals and carbohydrates, but not much meat, he quickly had an idea.

“I thought, aha, that maybe works for me because of our involvement with the poultry industry,” Lawson said.

“They seem to have a lot of need feeding 1,300 families per month I believe. So it just seemed like the right thing to do. It just all came together for me in my mind,” he added.

Clark’s Poultry, which sells hatched chicks to area producers, has been in business in Brandon for the last 65 years, and for the last 40 years it has been owned by the Lawson family.

With Lawson’s ties to the industry, he said he made a few calls to suppliers in Winnipeg — specifically Granny’s Poultry Co-op, which sells government-inspected chickens.

The donation will go a long way to feeding larger Brandon families who find themselves short of food, Somersall told the Sun.

“If we do it in the larger hampers, that’ll be a month’s worth of protein for us,” she said. “It’s fantastic. That’s far more protein than we usually put into a hamper.”

While the Samaritan House food bank has had more difficulty finding enough food to feed a growing number of people who are dependent on the service in Brandon, Somersall said the facility’s most chronic shortages are with proteins, fruits and vegetables.

“We’re always short of protein, and very short of fruits and vegetables. We basically don’t give out any fruits and vegetables anymore, except for once in awhile.”

And donations have been tougher to find over the last two years, as people find it more difficult to dedicate part of their budget for donations.

Media reports do help get the word out, especially during the Christmas season, but Somersall worries about the months after New Year’s, when donations begin to dry up.

“We’re seeing donations come in and we’re thankful for what’s here, but it just makes us nervous to think that this is what we have for the next three months, because donations are usually quiet for the first few months of the year.

“Given the number of people we’re serving, we’re counting our chickens …”

For Lawson, his tour of the facility and interview with Somersall was an eye-opening experience.

“I thought it would be more of a rush at Christmas time, but I was proven wrong,” Lawson said. “A lot of people maybe think there’s a bigger need at Christmas time, but she said especially right after Christmas when people have stopped giving, or stopped being in the giving mood — we have a huge need early in the new year.”

Those who want to have their own tour of Samaritan House and have some first-hand experience volunteering at the facility are invited to an open house on Dec. 17, between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.

There will be hot cider, hot chocolate, an afternoon of music with the band Trail Mix, and Donald Benham, a special guest speaker from Winnipeg Harvest.

Bring your family to tour the facility or volunteer for a little while to see Christmas from another point of view. Somersall says she hopes many people will come out and take part.

“We’re hoping that we’ll have a good crowd. To us it’s really just a way to say thank you to the community. The last two years have been such a struggle to keep up to the food need that the community has been incredible to help keep us ahead of that.”

For more information, call 726-0758 or drop by at 630 Rosser Ave.

» mgoerzen@brandonsun.com