The Gathering Table serves anywhere from 50-120, as-local-as-can-be, mostly organic, veggie-packed meals every Thursday night at the Cashiers Valley Community Center. The kitchen is musty, the refrigerator donated, and the clientele diverse. Tonight’s feast consists of salmon croquets, mashed potatoes, organic carrots, cabbage, lentil soup, southern white biscuits, and leftover pecan pie from a community church function.

Diners grab themselves a drink and sit around plastic tables listening to Jay Drummond’s volunteer bluegrass band while waiting for Chef Donna Few, farmer and Gathering Table founder, to fix their plates. Whatever ingredients are not purchased from the Manna foodbank network or donated by the Fishes and Loaves food pantry across the street, Donna and the other farmers in the Blue Ridge Farmers Co-op contribute to the meal.

Volunteers come to help but also to hang and eat. The energy’s always good and everyone enjoys themselves. (This week’s kitchen banter is about how “Yankees put sugar in everything they try to make southern!”) David Ward, dedicated Gathering Table dish washing volunteer, feels the Gathering Table is special. He says, “This is a small town. People are sometimes scared to go to the ‘soup kitchen’ because of their pride and the small town chitter chatter. We invite anyone and everyone to come eat with us, the rich and the poor, anyone who wants to just gather.”

David’s right. Cashiers is a vacation town with no middle class. People are either wealthy second home owners on vacation or they live paycheck to paycheck. The town is in the middle of Jackson County where today 20.4 percent of residents live below the poverty line while 29.9 percent of children under 18 in all of Western North Carolina are food insecure.

There is a disconnect between the people who support the town financially and those who actually work there. The Gathering Table not only brings attention to the hunger needs in the community but more importantly invites everyone to come and eat together. Donna calls The Gathering Table the “Church of Food.” The focus is on relationships built around quality food that’s served for free, not on necessarily serving “poor people.” People from all walks of life who typically would never cross paths converse and share life over deliciously whipped up veggie meals.

People who are hungry hear about the meal through church bulletins and Spanish and English fliers plastered around town. More mountain people join for the meal during winter since there are no crops in the coldest months and fewer vacationers come through Cashiers to support their local businesses. Those who aren’t so hungry hear about the meals through Facebook, other friends who have dined there, or The Gathering Table’s loud and proactive board members.

Last year when Donna started The Gathering Table, she faced opposition from several Cashiers stakeholders who frankly said there was no need for a soup kitchen. She decided to start it anyway, focusing on good food and inviting anyone and everyone to come eat. Fast forward a year, and today The Gathering Table receives donations and volunteer support from established community member, and people from all over the socioeconomic spectrum come out and dine on Thursday nights.

Soon The Gathering Table will start serving meals on Monday nights, too. Funny how bringing everyone to the table changes minds and opens eyes to the needs of others, dissipating opposition and leaving one town a little less hungry and a little more tight knit.

The food truck fleet began with a group of Christians at a Turlock church back in 1992 before food trucks were cool. They purchased a taco truck and made 50 sandwiches for their very first route. Fifty sandwiches turned out to be an underestimate, and they went to the grocery store mid-route for more supplies. By route’s end they had served over 250 sandwiches. Obviously the need was greater than citizens imagined.

Misty and Mary drive the Turlock route food truck five days a week. Mary parks, honks the horn (which sounds oddly similar to the Dukes of Hazzard horn) to announce the arrival of lunch, and begins to serve meals and groceries. Her route’s 11 daily stops include a men’s shelter, various parks, outside of a senior citizens facility, some neighborhoods, and the side of the road by some railroad tracks. Anyone can eat. No questions asked. If your birthday’s approaching, just let the truck know a few days in advance. They’ll try their best to find a donated cake to stick on the truck for you. There’s also a cabinet near the truck’s service window that opens from the outside stocked with bread so individuals and families can grab loaves to take home as needed.

En route at a stop light, a couple runs up to the truck and hands Miriam a warm box of pizza through the window. The couple eats from the food truck some weeks, but the times when they don’t need to and have extra funds, they surprise Misty and Miriam with a hot meal along the route to say “thank you!” Lines at the truck grow longer towards every month’s end and Misty and Miriam say that getting to know the clients is their favorite part of working the food truck. It makes their hearts happy to help when people say “If it weren’t for you I would have nothing to eat today.”

United Samaritan’s obtains meal ingredients and grocery bag contents from the food bank, grocery store donations, and local farm donations. One such farm is McKinley Family Farms nearby which runs a CSA, sells produce to local restaurants, and donates all of their overages to the food truck fleet. (If any of you greenhorns out there want to get some farm experience—wwoofing or interning at McKinley Family Farms wouldn’t be a bad idea). Three weeks ago the farm had an influx of eggplant and gave boxes and boxes full to United Samaritan’s.

There’s something very “come as you are” about a food truck, whether it’s soup kitchen style or the entrepreneurial restaurant kind. Food trucks meet people where they do life. A food truck soup kitchen just makes sense, and it’s certainly working for United Samaritan’s Foundation. There’s no dress code or standards of etiquette expected at a food truck. It’s just food. No questions asked (especially when it’s free!).