Iron County Food Pantry remains open with curbside service

By CHARITY SMITH

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MONTREAL, Wis. - The Iron County Food Pantry remains open, having developed a system to allow their older volunteers to continue to service residents of Iron County in need of food throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

According to Mary Mattson, the office manager at Iron County Food Pantry, the health department was originally wanting to replace the volunteers at Iron County Food Panty with younger volunteers from the county's Health and Human Services Department, so as to limit the exposure of the older volunteers. However once they saw the system that the workers had developed with proper social distancing measures in place, they decided to let them continue their work.

"They were just concerned about our health because we are all over 70 and that's what they were saying, to be very careful," Mattson said. "They were just concerned that if one of us got sick, then we all would get sick."

The Iron County Food Pantry is now offering curbside service in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

Volunteers have placed a table by the street. When a car pulls up, the client informs them as to how many people they have in their family, volunteers then make a tote full of food for them, and volunteers then bring the food out and place it on table, where the client then gets out and puts the food in their car.

Curbside service is offered every Monday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

"I want to make sure that nobody goes hungry in Iron County," said Dorothy Walesewicz, director of the pantry. "If they need a ride, we can arrange that."

The Iron County Food Pantry services around 90 families each month but has seen an increase of five families this month.

"We are here to serve anybody in Iron County. If they need help, they just call," Mattson said.

For more information, call the pantry at 715-561-4450.