At 11 a.m. on a cold, rainy Friday in October, volunteers at the First United Methodist Church in Cortez worked diligently to prepare its final free lunch for the week.
Hope’s Kitchen has been around for 24 years now, and they serve anywhere from 100 to 150 lunches every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Chicken noodle soup was on the menu that day, and Pat Downey, the director of the kitchen and head chef, had four large pots of it cooking.
“We’ve been serving more and more people lately,” Downey said as he stirred. “It’s nothing to serve 150 people a day.”
He attributed the demand, in part, to more expensive groceries.
And it’s true: From 2019 to 2023, food prices in America rose 25%, in large part because of supply chain disruptions during the pandemic, according to the USDA.
At the other end of the church, near the door where they pass out to-go lunches, Marsha Siglin, a volunteer at both Grace’s and Hope’s Kitchen in Cortez for the past 15 years, was packing paper bags with food.
“We try to make it as nutritious as possible, and we do hot meals when we can,” Siglin said as she divvied up hard-boiled eggs, one per lunch.
That day, people got a “beautiful salad,” soup, bagged chicken and a doughnut, if they wanted it.
On days they don’t get treats donated from City Market, Walmart or Safeway – donations that are getting less and less frequent – Siglin said she’ll bake a cake or cookies.
Every other Thursday in years past, Walmart would donate two trucks full of food. Mostly it was a range of canned goods, from fruit to drinks to meat; now, they’re down to one truck.
“We don’t get as much as we used to,” Siglin said.
But they’re serving roughly 30% more people than before.
Across town, Grace’s Kitchen faces the same problem.
“Food insecurity keeps rising, and now it’s more challenged because we’re not receiving the donations we used to,” said the Rev. Douglas Rector at Grace’s Kitchen, which has served more than 230,000 meals since it opened in 1998.
Rector said the kitchen largely depends on donations to serve 100 to 150 free lunches on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
“We have a lot of generous people in our congregation and in the wider community too, and we are grateful for that,” Rector said.
But demand is rising, and so are costs to pay for meals.
By the end of 2023, Grace’s Kitchen had served 13,567 lunches. To make that happen, it spent $16,369.52 on food, with another $2,721.90 in takeout boxes.
At the end of August, it had already served 9,442 lunches, spent $22,781.57 on food and $4,113.22 in takeout materials; and there’s still four more months to account for.
“The main thing is, we’re not getting monetary or food donations that we used to get, and we are feeding more people than we used to,” Siglin said.
Eventually the sun came out, and the rainy Friday was rainy no more.
By noon, people of all ages were lined up outside Hope’s Kitchen at 515 N. Park St. in Cortez.
“The earlier people get here, the better the store donations to choose from,” Downey said.
Two long, rectangular tables were full of things like chocolate milk, all kinds of bread – thanks to a grant from the LOR Foundation – dips and fruits. There were some things people could take to cook at home, and there were nonperishables for people who don’t have a home to cook in.
“It feeds us, it keeps us healthy and a smile on our faces. It keeps families together, and there’s a sense of togetherness here, like we’re a family,” said Peterson Begay after he secured a lunch at Hope’s Kitchen.
As Siglin served people, she called them by their names and asked how they were doing, and whether they wanted a doughnut.
She said for those she doesn’t know, she encourages them to visit Grace’s Kitchen, too.
“We’re all feeding the same people, and a lot of them we’ve known for years and years,” said Siglin. “We have alternate days we feed the people, so we make sure to tell newcomers to come to both kitchens.”
The day The Journal visited Grace’s Kitchen, they had made pasta and had store donations set up on tables for people to choose from, just as Hope’s had.
“I love this place, it means more to me than anything,” said Cindy Stuckman, a volunteer at Grace’s for the past 27 years, as she folded plastic cutlery into napkins.
Stuckman equated the work as a gift to God, and others were there in service to the community.
“To me it’s amazing, coming from a place like California, and Flagstaff too,” said Terri Werckman, a volunteer at Grace’s Kitchen. “There’s not as much help there for people needing it; there’s a lot of help here in this small town.”
And there’s no limit to what people can get; no “one lunch per person” sort of thing.
“It’s a judgment call, and it’s not for us to say,” said Downey. “They could be getting food for people at home.”
Downey said they got a whole cart full of bread that day, so they sent some over to the Good Samaritan Center, a food pantry on Beech Street in Cortez.
“It’s more of a team effort now than it ever used to be. COVID really brought all that together,” Downey said.
Good Sam’s is set up like a market, where people can come in every two weeks and shop for groceries.
Like Grace’s and Hope’s Kitchen, it prides itself on nutritious options and sources food locally as much as they can, said Kirbi Foster, the executive director of Good Sam’s.
There are no requirements for people to come, Foster said.
“We have a hard time getting people to come here; there’s shame around it,” Foster said.
It’s also “hard to answer why there’s more people out here now than two years ago,” she said of the long line of people waiting to shop.
“Our numbers are triple now than at the height of the pandemic,” Foster said.
During COVID, there was a lot of funding available to meet needs, since “it was on everyone’s mind.” Now, that funding has dried up.
“It’s become invisible, it dropped off,” Foster said.
A huge storage room at the pantry that used to be filled wall to wall with food, diapers and water is empty now.
Good Sam’s, like the local kitchens, is seeing less funding and less donations, while serving more people.
Good Sam’s, Grace’s Kitchen and Hope’s Kitchen all get food donations from something called Care and Share Food Bank, which serves 29 counties throughout Southern Colorado.
“We are seeing more and more neighbors needing help,” said Adam Uhernik, a media relations specialist at Care and Share.
Uhernik attributed the hike in demand to inflation and rising costs in all sectors of life, not just food and groceries.
“When other costs are rising, people shrink their food budget to pay other bills,” Uhernik said.
Heading into the holiday season, these problems become more pronounced as people try and afford gifts, he said.
“But it’s not all doom and gloom,” said Foster. “There’s certainly beauty in these sorts of issues if you can find solidarity with people and love and care for one another. That beauty doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Foster noted how “People here give a lot, and care a lot about each other. We get to see a lot of good stuff.”
And whatever comes next, we’ll do it together, she said.
If you’re interested in getting involved, both kitchens and the food pantry is looking for volunteers.
To serve at Hope’s Kitchen, contact the director, Pat Downey, at (970) 529-3949. Call (970) 565-7865 or email office@stbarnabascortez.org to get involved at Grace’s Kitchen. Send Kirbi an email at director@goodsamscortez.org or call (970) 565-6424 to volunteer at Good Sam’s.
They’re also always excepting donations, whether it be cash or food.
“There’s an element of Cortez that knows all of this is going on and is glad to help,” said Downey. “There’s another side that wants to say that we don’t have a homeless problem and a drug problem here, and therefore we don’t need to pay attention to this. But it is happening.”
