Like a lot of others, I have been in this house “social distancing” from the rest of humanity for going on nine weeks! Using my pre-pandemic thoughts, I decided what I needed was a little shopping trip to get over my extreme cabin fever, so I drove to Walmart last Saturday. Big mistake on my part!

I had to wait in line outside the “approved” entrance- in a driving freezing artic vortex snow squall with the wind ripping into the bones of those of us in line. It took about twenty minutes before I was let into the store.

With the huge exception of food products, the store seemed well stocked. There is a lot of produce and still seems to be empty canned and dry goods shelves, and most all the freezer cases in every food category were nearly completely empty causing me to try to substitute shop.

While enjoying the time outside of the house I must admit the supply of food and meats at my local Pecks Market was much better than Walmart. So, as they say-shop local and you won't have to stand outside in a blizzard!

Last Friday, Johnny Pizzolato who is the President of our wonderful Farmers Market and I went over to St. Anthony's Church in Yulan and helped at the food pantry. The Board of the Barryville Farmers Market donated to the organization, A Single Bite that has been making prepared meals for distribution to various food bank sites and pantries.

The Market is underwriting these prepared meals to be distributed at St. Anthony's pantry. Johnny and I picked up the meals and helped place them in the pantry bags to be picked up by the families. Then Jim Hanson and Judge Tony LaRuffa distributed the bags with a drive thru low contact system. All this done was under the watchful eye of the marvelous Margie Granese who has coordinated the Church's pantry for the last nine years.

Rob Doherty, the Chair of the Sullivan County Legislature made a very generous donation of five cases of fresh eggs. Each case holds 30 dozen eggs and three cases will be donated to St. Anthony's and two will go to the emergency pantry at the Town Hall in Lumberland. The cases hold the eggs in trays and not in cartons of twelve.

As I posted on Facebook we need people to donate their empty egg cartons and there is a blue plastic bin set up at the front door of the Church's Community Center which is in the back of the parking lot for your donated egg cartons. Thank you for helping if you can!

I was happy to see that Clancy's Diner located at 3358 Route 97 at 55 in Barryville has reopened for take-out service on May 11th. Their new hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and as usual closed on Tuesdays. This highly rated diner will be operating out of their ice cream window in the front of the shop.

Menus for breakfast (breakfast sandwiches) lunch and dinner will be posted on Facebook every night and as always everything is made from scratch and it is the best of homecooked comfort food. If you aren't on Facebook, you can call them at (845) 557-0234.

Lockdown Tip: “The moment we are going through is turbulent, but it offers us the possibility, which is unique indeed, to fix what's wrong, to remove the superfluous, to find a more humane dimension… This is perhaps the most important lesson of this crisis”- Italian Fashion Designer Giorgio Armani