Little Free Food Pantry at Baber Cemetery helps Pottsville community
May 14—POTTSVILLE — Visitors entering Charles Baber Cemetery from West Market Street will notice just inside the cemetery gates a house-shaped cabinet that is filled with food items.
The food inside the Little Free Food Pantry is for those in need, said the Rev. Kurt Kovalovich, the cemetery's executive director and a supply pastor for Episcopal churches in Schuylkill County, including Trinity Episcopal Church on South Centre Street, and a cemetery board trustee.
Similar to Little Free Libraries, from which people can take or leave books, the little pantry enables the public to either donate or take food, if it's needed.
Kovalovich said the idea came to him about a year ago while searching online for ways to give away excess food the church accumulated through its "Bring a Can to Church" program, during which parishioners bring non-perishable items to church.
The items were donated to the emergency food pantry at Schuylkill Community Action in Pottsville. The response from parishioners was so overwhelming, the pastor said, that the church had leftover food items that the pantry couldn't take.
"There was all this food sitting at Trinity," he said, adding some of the excess food was donated to the Salvation Army Pottsville Corps.
The cemetery board approved the pantry plans last year.
The Little Free Food Pantry organization was founded in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and spread nationwide. The one at Baber Cemetery isn't the only one in the county, Kovalovich said, as another one is at Zion Lutheran Church in Tamaqua.
The pantry, which resembles a kitchen cabinet, was made by parishioner Jim Tokarz. It was installed in late April by Tokarz, sexton John Wilk and Tom Dodd, head of cemetery maintenance, and dedicated during the church's Arbor Day ceremony on April 30. A wooden placard below the cabinet reading "Take What You Need — Leave What You Can" was made by Allen Brennan.
Kovalovich said that while no one is in charge of stocking the pantry, parishioners will be able to sign up to take items to the pantry and look after it when church services resume in-person in early June. Some parishioners have already expressed interest in stocking it, he said.
On Thursday, the pantry was filled with pears, cereal, canned items, including soups, crackers, brownie mix and cookies.
"I think people have used it as the food changed from last week," he said, looking inside the cabinet. "There's things that are missing."
He said those who visit the cemetery have told him the pantry is a good idea.
"It's here for the community," Kovalovich said.
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