June 23, 2026

By Sara Millhouse

Faye Everett greets every single one of the 60-70 families who visit the Millington-Crumpton Food Pantry on Monday morning distribution days. “With spaghetti squash, you cut it in half, take the seeds out, put in a glass dish with about an inch of water, put it in the microwave for 12 minutes, pull it out and cut the strings loose,” she explains.

Everett, 78, brings a lifetime of knowledge to feeding her neighbors. With a “yes face” that invites confidence, she also brings to the pantry an open heart for building relationships. “A lot of them have my cell phone number,” Everett said. “I have one guy who texts me for gardening tips.”

Everett organizes the rotating group of about two dozen volunteers who make food distribution possible. “It’s definitely not a one-person job,” she said.

Millington and Crumpton are tiny, with less than 500 residents each, but people come from across Kent, Queen Anne’s and Cecil counties for Monday morning food distributions and pop-up pantries. People who come to the pantry include limited-income seniors, young families with kids, grandparents with grandchild custody, unhoused people and working-age adults who have lost jobs or have poor health, caregiving responsibilities or transportation limitations.

Milington-Crumpton is a TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program) pantry, which means it can distribute American-grown food free of charge. The USDA distributes this commodity food nationwide through local pantries to people who qualify for some kind of food assistance.

“That’s been cut by 30% this year,” Everett said.

With fewer food stamp benefits and diminished federal funding for food banks and community distribution, feeding America has gotten harder. “Everything is in flux right now,” Everett said. “Some days I feel like I’m juggling 10 or 12 balls at a time.”

As Millington-Crumpton Food Pantry coordinator, Everett does everything she can to collect and re-distribute food to those who need it the most. She drives well out of her way to buy $1-a-dozen eggs and cases of mayonnaise at cost. From a nearby butcher in Delaware, she collected about 4,000 pounds of deer meat donated by hunters through FHFH (Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry) this year.

We’ve been able to fill in,” she said. “It’s just the fresh produce I’m worried about.”

Last year, the pantry distributed more than eight tons of fresh, nutritious produce through the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program. LFPA functioned like TEFAP but locally, with food purchased by the USDA distributed to farmers’ neighbors, without eligibility requirements.

“People need healthy food,” Everett said. “The closer something is to being picked, it has more nutritional value. We had corn this past summer that had been picked that morning, and we got it by 9 o’clock.”

When people can’t spend much on food, they don’t buy expensive, low-calorie fruits and vegetables. When fresh food is available, however, people jump at the chance.

Two pallets of tomatoes got scooped up in less than an hour and a half at Millington-Crumpton Food Pantry. “People said they were some of the best-tasting tomatoes they ever had, and I know what farms they came from,” Everett said.

Now, however, the Trump administration has cut funding for LFPA, and Congress hasn’t intervened to continue the program. “It meant so much to people around here,” Everett said. “Hopefully funds can be found somewhere and they can re-instate it.”

Everett knows firsthand what fresh food means for Marylanders—and what steady markets mean for farmers. She and her husband had three greenhouses, a 10-acre garden and a retail business selling produce, bedding plants, flowers and almost 50 different varieties of herbs. It’s little wonder that she’s a local go-to for gardening tips.

With LFPA, resourceful food recipients could turn abundant summer harvests into spaghetti sauce and salsa. They could freeze corn and sweet potatoes. “Many of those who pick up this fresh produce grew up farm or farm-adjacent and know how to can or process it to last through the winter,” Everett said.

For those who don’t know how to prepare or preserve an item, Everett writes out simple, printed recipes. Sometimes she even brings in samples. “That really expands people’s ability to feed themselves,” Everett said.

Even without fresh produce through LFPA, though, Everett knows the importance of the pantry is for people’s physical and social well-being. Last Christmas, pantry users showed their gratitude by bringing in fruitcakes, salsa, a hand-knit hat and gloves and at least six batches of cookies. Throughout the year, people stop in to say “hello,” even if they don’t need food that particular week.

Everett will keep doing everything she can to get her neighbors the food they need. “It’s developing relationships with people,” she said. “They trust us, and we’re not going to break that trust.”