By Krystle S. Morey

When local mail carriers set out on their regular routes Saturday, their loads will be a bit heavier than normal – cans of soup and boxes of pasta tend to weigh more than letters and postcards.
As part of the 25th annual National Association of Letter Carriers’ Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, local letter carriers will collect donations of non-perishable food items on May 13.
All post offices nationwide will collect food to donate to local food pantries.
The Granville Post Office will donate the items it collects to the Ecumenical Food Pantry at the Granville United Methodist Church, which provides meals to 150 to 180 people each month.
“Even though this is a national event, all of the food that is collected here, stays here,” said Granville Postmaster Karen Trufant.
Trufant encouraged all postal customers to participate because: “It helps local communities and families out.”
Granville village residents should leave food items on porches or near their mailboxes. Outside the village, donations should be left in mailboxes.
“They should put up the flag on their mailbox, as if they had outgoing mail,” Trufant said.
Because this is a national food drive, postal customers across the region can also bring food to their local post office.
“We’ll have a basket set up,” Trufant said, at the Granville Post Office at 41 Main St.
The Stamp Out Hunger food drive is the largest one-day food drive in America, according to the organization’s website. Nationally, the drive last year collected more than 80 million pounds of non-perishable food. Over the course of the 24-year history, the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive has collected well over one billion pounds of food.
Trufant said the Granville drive does very well each year.
“You don’t have to leave a whole lot,” Trufant said. “If everybody leaves one or two cans, we could fill the food pantry.”
The food drive’s timing is crucial. Food banks and pantries often receive the majority of their donations during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons. By springtime, many pantries are depleted, entering the summer low on supplies at a time when many school breakfast and lunch programs are not available to children in need.
For more information call the Granville Post Office at 518-642-1190.