CABOT — Ding-ding.
The sound of a ringing bell was nearly constant Monday afternoon at Barnhill Orchards in Lonoke County.
Every few minutes the sound announced the arrival of another car as it drove over the bell hose across the gravel driveway that encircles the small red building at the intersection of Arkansas 89 and Sandhill Road.
It’s early November and according to co-owner Ekko Barnhill — who runs the business with her brother, Rex — the number of visitors they had seen the last three days rivaled what they see in the peak of their growing season.
The expiration of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits over the weekend and the uncertainty of when they could return was the main draw.
The first day saw 75 people.
Sunday brought in 150.
Just after 2 p.m. Monday, the Barnhills had seen about 60.
In a 30-minute stretch, Ekko Barnhill, who was keeping track on a piece of paper inside, lost count of the number of cars that stopped at the building’s side door.
The reason for the parade of customers, many of them first-time visitors, was the boxes of free fruits and vegetables — apples, tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes and onions — sitting atop two tables and inside multiple boxes under them.
While the Barnhills specialize in growing foods like strawberries and blackberries, they grow some vegetables and purchase other produce wholesale.
“I had planted this (vegetable) crop so I can pay my help to plant my strawberries,” Rex Barnhill explained. “Of course, I planted too much.”
Initially, the Arkansas Food Bank was visiting twice a week to pick up loads of squash and cucumbers to take back to Little Rock for distribution.
The Barnhills decided to cut out the middle man.
“Then I got thinking about it here, just last Saturday, ‘Well, who’s taking care of the people around here” who have to go to Little Rock for their food, Rex said.
The Barnhills decided to begin distributing food directly to people who had suddenly lost their SNAP benefits. Each person can take four bags of food.
However, no one has to present proof that they’re on SNAP benefits.
“If it’s somebody that needs food, we’re going to give it to them,” Ekko Barnhill said. “Doesn’t matter, even if you don’t even have a card, or you’re not on any program, you’re still going to get stuff.”
Ekko added that she’s “really had an eye-opening experience of the people who come by and the stories that they tell me.”
Word of the Barnhills’ initiative spread like wildfire.
“Somebody said, ‘Yeah, we heard about it on the radio,'” Ekko recalled. “And I said, ‘No, don’t tell me that.’ I don’t mind getting a Facebook (message) or get a text or something. We’re just trying to do our little bit to help people in our community.”
At one point Ekko showed the screen of her smartphone, which was covered in an “endless” stream of Facebook and text notifications from people both inquiring about the food and simply praising the family for what they were doing.
Ding-ding.
An SUV pulled up early Monday afternoon with Marla McCoy and her neighbor, Angie McNease.
McCoy, 69, lives in Cabot right off Main Street.
“They’re blessed in this community,” McCoy said after her and McNease’s bags had been placed in her car.
“It’s the community that supports me,” Rex Barnhill countered.
McCoy said the possibility of not receiving SNAP benefits is a “rough” one.
“If we don’t get SNAP, that cuts in because that’s $60 I get, which is not very much,” McCoy said. “But I usually buy my meat with that. Then I’ve got an insurance card that has a little bit on it, and I can get some other stuff, like milk and bread and things like that.”
The cars pulling up to the side door of Barnhill Orchards on Monday afternoon weren’t just driven by people from Cabot and Jacksonville.
Ding-ding.
One ringing of the bell signaled the arrival of Tiffany Holcomb.
Holcomb had driven all the way from Heber Springs with her daughter at the prospect of free food.
She said her family had only started receiving SNAP benefits within the last two months before the money ran out Saturday. They had been homeless for half the year after her identity was stolen and “it took about half a year for my income tax to come in. Somebody wound up helping us out. Now everything else is being affected.”
Holcomb was also picking up food for her 86-year-old grandmother, who has been a SNAP recipient “for years.”
Holcomb and the other visitors to Barnhill Orchards likely didn’t know that the Trump administration had agreed Monday to pay out half of November’s SNAP benefits via a $5.5 billion contingency fund at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
According to the Washington Post, SNAP normally costs the federal government around $9 billion a month.
The program provides as much as $298 monthly for a single person to $1,756 for a family of eight.
When she was asked about Monday’s development, Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance CEO Sylvia Blain said, “of course, I believe partial benefits is better than no benefits, but I definitely have some concerns that our State Department of Human Services may not be able to roll that out as quickly.”
It’s something that had to be programmed and allocated.
Now the department will have to change what people have been approved for.
“I’m a little concerned about what that might look like when the rubber meets the road, the logistical process of getting that done,” Blain said.
According to Kate Jenkins, a spokesperson for the Arkansas Foodbank, its partner food pantries across the state saw increases of 10% to 20% in the number of people needing food.
“We know that Hope’s Closet in Cabot had a 50% increase, a lot of which are first-time visitors,” Jenkins said. “I got to attend the St. Mark Baptist food distribution on Saturday, and they handed a (Kroger) gift card out to a woman, and she immediately burst out into tears.
“So there’s been a lot of tears, there’s been a lot of thankfulness, but just a lot of scared people and a lot of uncertainty.”
Back at the Barnhill Orchard, they face the question of how long they can continue to give out food to those who need it.
“For being this late in the season, this is quite a bit of stuff that we have that we’re able to give out,” Ekko Barnhill said. “I’ll be going out tomorrow and getting some more stuff. … I’m not sure where the snowball is going to end. Hopefully when they open up the program again.
“But until then, we’re going to keep doing everything we can do to help them out, keep providing fresh produce.”
