The Big Love One Community pantry opened its new facility in May

The Big Love One Community pantry opened its new facility in May

The latest breaking updates, delivered straight to your email inbox.

The Big Love One Community pantry opened its new facility in May

Along an unassuming road in North Berwick lies the Big Love One Community food pantry, in a building that can be easily missed with the naked eye. Its owners say the incognito nature of the pantry is entirely the point.

“It gives people a lot of privacy,” said its owner and founder Sarah Dutch. “Food insecurity can be embarrassing for a lot of people, and this is just a way for people to come on this back road that we live on and get a little extra without being embarrassed.”

Dutch began the pantry, which lies on 220 Buffum Road in North Berwick, as a simple roadside stand in 2019 after noticing that she had extra goods laying around, and decided to lend a helping hand.

“We had a little roadside stand where we sold excess produce and eggs from our homestead,” Dutch said. “And then COVID struck and people were having trouble finding food. So we built a little bigger stand and added shelf-stable foods. And it just took off from there.”

The bigger stand turned into a full shed, which was built by Sarah’s husband Eric. The shed boasts four shelves that circumnavigate all four of its walls, stocked with essential food and household items such as toothbrushes, soap and diapers. Dutch says the pandemic and rising food prices have seen demand at the pantry go up.

“We have at least four visitors per day to the stand,” Dutch said. “We have a lot of older people that come, and I think with the cost of living, it's just harder to afford things to eat.”

The prices haven’t hit the pantry, however, as donations have allowed Dutch to continue to stock the shelves. She hopes to expand the pantry with a bigger facility in the future, but no matter how big love gets, she says it’ll remain an example of how anybody can plant a seed of kindness and watch it grow.

“It's really not hard to help people,” Dutch said. “We're just doing something locally, and we're really just doing something that everybody wants to do. We just have a little bit extra time and a little bit of extra space on our property to be able to do it.

Information on how to donate can be found here. Donations are also accepted in person at 220 Buffum Road in North Berwick.

Hearst Television participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.