Without the cases of food that Midcoast Maine Community Action distributes quarterly in Wiscasset, the food pantry at the Church of the Nazarene on Gardiner Road couldn’t serve as many families as it does, currently 43 families per week and growing as the need grows, the pantry’s coordinator Sharon Staples said.

The food picked up on the trips to the parking lot of the former Ames Supply building on Route 1 accounts for about half the pantry’s stock, Staples said.

“It’s our lifeblood. The pantry couldn’t survive without it,” said Wally Staples, the church’s pastor and Sharon Staples’ husband.

Rain poured on the pickup truck the Woolwich couple sat in Monday morning as they and other representatives of pantries from around Lincoln, Sagadahoc and northern Cumberland counties waited in the lot.

The supplies that Midcoast Maine Community Action (MMCA) relays to the 13 pantries comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Good Shepherd Food Bank stores it at its Auburn warehouse until the food goes on to Wiscasset, said Jen MacDonald, Good Shepherd’s field representative for southern Maine.

Monday’s distribution involved 2,276 cases holding a total of 56,124 pounds of items, from raisins and mixed vegetables to oat cereal and canned salmon, according to Gail Johnston, MMCA’s coordinator of temporary emergency food assistance.

“We’re helping a lot of people get food,” Johnston said. She was out in Monday’s cold rain checking over the long line of unloaded cases before the reloading onto pantry-bound vehicles began. Johnston’s husband Barry Johnston was volunteering nearby, cutting away plastic from cases of peanut butter.

A few vehicles behind the truck the Staples had brought, Westport Island’s Sam Soule waited to pick up cases for the food pantry at St. Philip’s Church in Wiscasset. He hadn’t expected to be volunteering Monday. But he agreed to when he got a call from the church Sunday night, so that other members could attend a funeral.

Helping with the food pickup was gratifying, Soule said. “It makes you feel warm.”

He expressed his thanks to Ames True Value, for sending a van to help carry the pantry’s supplies when it became clear the vehicles Soule and others brought would not be enough.

Ames True Value donates the use of the lot at the old store site for the food distributions, along with a forklift and an employee’s time, all of which are a tremendous help, Gail Johnston said.

Several volunteers, including a work crew of inmates from Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset, helped with Monday’s effort. Naomi Bonang, lieutenant of Two Bridges’ industries department, serves on MMCA’s board.

“This is an incredible organization that assists low income and ‘at-risk’ individuals throughout the Midcoast area,” Bonang states in an email to the Wiscasset Newspaper. “People out there are struggling and this organization is available to assist people with their basic needs.”

In addition to the quarterly food relay to the pantries, the Bath-based nonprofit helps connect people to housing, heating and other programs. For more information, visit www.midcoastmainecommunityaction.org or call 207 442-7963.