Foodbank gets helping hand from HyLife and Earl’s

Two truckloads of food arrived at South East Helping Hands, helping fill the 1,800 Christmas hampers heading out to families throughout the region.

HyLife brought 2,500 pounds of pork to Earl’s Meat Market in Steinbach, which turned them into 1,900 sausages. When put end to end, those links would be about 1,600 feet long or twice as tall as the Golden Gate Bridge, three times as long as the seventeenth hole at Pebble Beach or the length of about 23 semi’s with standard trailers.

Employees from the Steinbach-headquartered company also donated close to 1,200 food items. It was the workers who were the driving force behind HyLife Holiday Helpers, now in its third year of donating to food banks in Steinbach, Neepawa, Killarney, Kola, and Leroy, Saskatchewan.

“This piece is completely employee-driven,” said HyLife Senior Vice President of Infrastructure and Environmental Affairs Kevin Barkman of the non-perishables in the semi-trucks.

Barkman himself gave a bag of groceries, which he credited his wife for. He said donations came in big numbers since the first year, with different departments challenging each other.

HyLife used pork from its company-run farms and processed in Neepawa to make the sausages. Earl Funk, who owns Earl’s Meat Market and happens to be Steinbach’s mayor, said his butcher shop has been giving to the food bank every Christmas since it opened in 2005. His shop was also separating chicken and may soon be packaging donations of beef for the foodbank in the New Year.

“We have a gift, and that gift is to make food. And when people need, you need to use your gifts to take care of people,” said Funk, who with Barkman held sausage links in the shape of a heart.

For Funk, it is a matter of faith and following the teachings passed down to him from his father growing up gardening cucumbers.

His dad loved gardening, and Funk would sometimes help.

“It was my Saturday to help, and it was cucumber picking day,” started Funk.

“We washed them all and then we sorted them, and I was supposed to sort the longer, straighter ones about eight or so in a bag… There were the kind of curved ones, the crooked ones, and those were put into a different bag.”

The small ones were of course saved for the gherkins. But the young boy asked his dad why the straight and crooked were sorted separately. Funk told the lesson his father Cornie Funk taught him that day:

“The crooked ones, mom can always make those into relish or mustard pickles, or something else… He said the straight ones, those are our best ones. And he said we have a lot of people who live on the road that either don’t have enough, they are widows or they don’t have the means to have enough.”

“Those are our best, and we give those to those that need.”

Four schools sent their best kids to help pack those hampers. South East Helping Hands Chair Hank Klassen said they had to limit it to four because so many students wanted to help the food bank.

“And it’s very important we teach them the giving part,” emphasized Klassen, who has been running food banks in the Southeast for 40 years.

Klassen said the donations given will be sent throughout the region including Steinbach, Niverville, La Broquerie, Grunthal, Sprague, Piney and more.