HAZEL GREEN – A local couple saw a need for a food pantry five years ago in response to those struggling to make ends meet during COVID times, and they’ve now grown to serving over 2,000 households across 34 counties in Kentucky.
Nicky and Eddie Stacy decided they wanted to start a food pantry that would serve everyone in the area, regardless of county lines or if they had income documentation to prove their “need.”
“I didn’t want anyone to feel judged,” Nicky told the SI. “You shouldn’t have to prove if you’re poor enough for it. We always say Jesus wouldn’t look in your fridge first – he’d just feed you.”
The Stacys worked with Habitat for Humanity and created the Hazel Green Food Project, an umbrella project under the Habitat for Humanity.
“It just skyrocketed,” Nicky said. “After word got out, all this stuff seemed to find us and we give out anything from household products, to beds, to food. Whatever is available to us, we give out.”
Nicky said she runs the food pantry while her husband works, then the two help build houses with the Cave Run Habitat for Humanity in their “free time,” while also having five kids!
She said they have a wonderful group of volunteers and they do a lot of community outreach projects, which also helps them to grow the food pantry.
Now, on giveaway days – usually the second and fourth Friday of every month – Nicky said they have two forklifts running at all times, restocking the pantry and making sure they can serve everyone in the line.
“We never turn anyone away,” Nicky said. “We don’t stop at a certain time or anything. We just go until we get to everyone in the line or until we are out of products. The boxes in the front of the line will look nothing like the boxes at the end of the line, but we’ll give away what we have.”
While the pantry is in Wolfe County, it’s about a mile from Magoffin and Morgan counties and two miles from Breathitt, making them a hub for the region.
Johnna Prater, who actually picks up boxes for her neighbors and told the SI about the Hazel Green Food Project, said, “I cannot tell you how much value that this wonderful project has helped the people in all of Kentucky, because you do not need to be from Morgan, Magoffin, or any surrounding county. You don’t have to have a set income. You don’t have to be a set age or have a certain amount of people in your family to receive from the Hazel Green Food Project. It is open to everyone who needs food and supplies, because they don’t just distribute food. They have all kinds of different supplies even furniture, bedding and appliances. They get different loads in a different stuff all the time and they are really a great asset, not just to our area, but for all of Kentucky.”
When the Magoffin County Senior Center reached out to them recently, asking for produce, Nicky said she called her cousin, Rodney Patrick, who came and they loaded up his truck and he delivered it to the senior center.
Marlene Howard, the director of the Senior Center, said in her column this week, “Our thanks go out to the Hazel Green Food Project and Rodney Patrick for delivering us a load of fresh produce. We were able to give this out to over 160 individuals. This helped them out. We are sorry we cannot deliver to clients. If it had not been brought to us, we wouldn’t have received any. It took all our staff to unload it from Mr. Patrick’s truck.”
Nicky said this is a common occurrence, calling in her cousin, Rodney, as well as Dallas Patrick and the Fritz Church of God, to help distribute items in Magoffin County.
“We’re very thankful for the Fritz Church of God,” Nicky said. “They make a big impact on Middle Fork, helping their neighbors. They come all the time and help.”
Speaking of partners, she said they have great partnerships with the Christian Appalachian Project, God’s Pantry Food Bank and The Farmlink Project.
“Last year we handed out over 3 million pounds of produce from The Farmlink Project,” Nicky said, noting that was where the produce given to the senior center was from.
She said their biggest priority is working with the schools to make sure kids do not go hungry, setting up a pantry at their local schools for kids to be able to shop for what they wanted and working closely with the teachers to see who needs help.
Nicky told the SI of the story of a teacher who had assigned her first-grade class to draw their kitchens and she was talking to one little girl and said, “Well, silly, you didn’t put any food in your fridge.” The little girl said, ‘There is no food in my fridge. We go to Mamaw’s house and eat at night and Mom doesn’t get hungry.”
After doing some digging the teacher found out the dad got COVID, then was laid off for missing work, and the grandmother was trying to help them make ends meet, but as was evident by the little girl’s drawing, it wasn’t working.
“We made sure that family had food at the end of that day,” Nicky said. “And that’s why we do what we do. We fought so hard for food stamps last October, when we had kids coming to school starving to death. They were eating what they could find or going to bed hungry and waiting for school. You never know the need of your neighbors.”
They work closely with their local schools in Wolfe County, but also send busloads of hygiene products and toys – whatever they need – to Magoffin County Schools, working with the family resource centers.
“We have a lot of really good teachers here and in Magoffin who reach out to us all the time,” Nicky said.
The Hazel Green Food Project is located at 1225 KY 205 N, Hazel Green, KY 41332, roughly one mile from exit 57 on the Mountain Parkway. Follow them on Facebook for updates on giveaway dates and times, or just get in line if you need to!
For those wanting to help the project, they are also always in need of more volunteers and donations, which both keep the food bank running. Checks can be made out to Hazel Green Food Project and mailed to 1225 KY 205 N Hazel Green, KY 41332. Please note that while they share the parking lot with the fire department, the food pantry is a different organization. They also have accounts on apps like Venmo, PayPal, and Cash App that people can donate through as well. People can also donate in person as long as it isn’t during a giveaway because they are not allowed to take donations while giving out product.
“We rely on donations and fundraising efforts to keep helping the people of Kentucky so if you can donate, we greatly appreciate it,” they shared on Facebook with the QR codes seen here for options to donate.
