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Tasha Schuller knows the feeling of facing an empty dinner table. She and her husband, Jesse, are both on fixed incomes through Social Security, and their food stamps total $20 a month, she said. Their combined monthly income, she said, is $1,400. “We rely on here to make it month to month,” she said, gesturing at the scene unfolding Monday afternoon in the parking lot at St. John Lutheran Church and School in Eagle Point. Around her, busy volunteers with their hands full of canned goods or plastic bags overflowing with produce bustle between a refrigerated truck and the edge of the lot, dancing around shopping carts and cardboard boxes arranged so clients such as Schuller can navigate through. This is one of ACCESS’s 24 emergency food pantries in Jackson County. Schuller described even more cash-strapped times when her husband was in and out of the hospital with a traumatic brain injury after a motorcycle crash. She described worries about food and bills as “chaos.” The Schullers ate “a lot of ramen noodles just to get through, basically,” she said. To hear ACCESS staff or seasoned volunteers tell it, stories like the Schullers’ are common in the Rogue Valley. “The need is not going away,” said Philip Yates, who recently retired as the nonprofit’s nutritional services director for 27 years. Yates guided numerous food outreach programs, from the local pantries to the annual Food for Hope grocery-bag drive, which kicks off Wednesday and will run through Dec. 31. The organization is accepting nonperishable food and money donations. Monetary donations can be given online at accesshelps.org or through a check made payable to ACCESS, P.O. Box 4666, Medford, OR 97501. Mail Tribune and Ashland Daily Tidings subscribers can donate nonperishable food using the ACCESS bag inserted into Wednesday’s papers. ACCESS will accept any grocery bag or box with nonperishable food, however. See drop-box locations here . The Food for Hope drive, held every winter since 1984, is ACCESS’s biggest food collection of the year. To date, the drive has enabled the nonprofit to secure 4,335,948 pounds of food, which averages out to 123,884 pounds of food a year. Of the two donation options, monetary donations are typically more cost-effective, because ACCESS can purchase food through the Oregon Food Bank at significant discounts, said Rachael Ward, who is stepping into Yates’ old shoes as the new nutrition services director. ACCESS is able to purchase 5 pounds of food for every dollar, Ward said. Judy Gillette-Pelkey also attended Monday’s pantry at St. John Church. She said she comes only a few times a year, if her SNAP benefits won’t cover her family for the month. “That’s how it’s supposed to work,” she said. “You don’t just come in and grab what you can and use that all up. And then go and take your SNAP benefits and run to the grocery store and use that all up, and then you don’t have any groceries.” “I don’t have anybody that’s going to hand me any more money, so I have to make sure that this money, or this food, is going to last me ... and choose what I’m gonna need,” she said. Food pantry clients say each location operates a bit differently, but the volunteers treat them with respect and kindness. Some clients also serve at food pantries. At the Eagle Point location, some volunteers will get food together and take it to people nearby who can’t make it that day. If people are still waiting to come through when the pantry officially “closes” at 5:30 p.m., volunteers will stay late enough to see everyone through — they recently stayed to 7 p.m. “It’s a collective effort, a community effort,” said Gary Clark, who pastors at St. John Church. “To me, it’s about having efficient networks to do this,” Yates said. The nonprofit is expanding its volunteer and donor networks to allow more perishable food to be made available, Yates said. ACCESS has for the past few decades focused on offering fresh and organic foods to make sure clients are fed healthfully. The organization is hoping to raise $40,000 in this year’s drive and 20,000 pounds of food. ACCESS staff and volunteers seemed confident that donors will see they don’t have to give everything, just what they’re able — and those numbers will stack up, as they usually have. “The community has shown up over and over again,” Ward said. Reach Mail Tribune reporter Kaylee Tornay at [email protected] or 541-776-4497. Follow her on Twitter @ ka_tornay . Where to drop off food: You can drop off nonperishable food item donations at the following locations: Mail Tribune front office , 111 N. Fir St., Medford. All Jackson County fire stations All Umpqua Bank locations Sherm's Thunderbird , 2347 W. Main St., Medford. Ascension Lutheran 675 Black Oak Drive Hours: 8 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to noon Friday Medford Congregational-UCC 1801 East Jackson Lidgate Hall office in the back of the property Hours: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily Westminster Presbyterian 2000 Oakwood 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3 p.m. daily First Christian Church 1900 Crater Lake Ave. 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday