Linda Spring loads a grocery car with food for distribution at the Foothills Worship Center's food pantry in Johnstown. The pantry saw more than 80 people every day last week since the federal Supplemental Nutrition Program ran out of money in October.

Victoria Kovina takes a shopping cart of groceries from the Foothills Worship Center to feed her family of eight — nine if you count her 2-day-old grand- daughter.

Sandy Sacerio packs a bag with groceries at the Foothills Worship Center in Johnstown.

Sandy Secario holds open a typical bag of food at the Foothills Worship Center.

Linda Spring loads fresh grapes and carrots into bags for distribution at the Foothills Worship Center’s food pantry in Johnstown. It had fresh fruits and vegetables on Wednesday, but doesn’t always. Need at the pantry has more than doubled since the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ran out of money in October.

Pantry Director Janet Findlay and volunteer Linda Strong pack bags at Foothills Worship Center on Wednesday. Three people came in simultaneously seeking food.

The bottom shelf at the Foothills Worship Center's food pantry includes the optional items that it doesn't have to provide, but does when it can: chicken broth, gravy, cranberry sauce, gelatin and cooking oil.

Linda String, left, and Janet Findlay pack groceries at Foothills Worship Center in Johnstown.

Victoria Kovina loads her car with groceries from the Foothills Worship Center's food pantry on Wednesday. Besides the three-day supply for eight people, she got a cake the pantry had, and a tub of baby formula for her 2-day-old granddaughter.

Toni Marie Austin works as many double-shifts at Amazon as she can. She drives for Door Dash. Uber, too. She’s selling anything in her home she doesn’t immediately need.

And on Wednesday morning, she was in line at the Foothills Worship Center in Johnstown for a bag of groceries. To feed her, her three kids and the fiance waiting for surgery, she’ll get 23 choices of fruits and vegetables; most of it canned, but maybe she’ll get a few apples or a small box of fresh raspberries. The pantry has some grapes. The carrots look good this morning, but the corn is canned.

She’ll get 15 choices of proteins. Maybe a half-dozen eggs; peanut butter is handy. Someone will get a chuck steak, or maybe a pound of ground turkey. Somebody will get the package of frozen pig’s feet.

Austin will get some milk, the ultra-high-temperature pasteurized kind that doesn’t need refrigeration. And she’ll get some grains, maybe a loaf of bread, or some cereal or macaroni and cheese.

She doesn’t get a choice of those choices. She’ll need to find a way to make meals of whatever the volunteers stash in the bags as fast as they can while the food pantry faces twice the need that it saw just a month ago.

“The rent is high — $1,200 for a dinky four-bedroom,” she said, and she worries about the wear and tear on her car as she takes one of her kids to a special program in Albany each day. Snow tires might be nice.

She has heat, for now. “I’m still paying on last year’s bill,” Austin said. But she has food — for three days.

SNAP STOPS, RIPPLE STARTS

The Johnstown pantry, like many across the Greater Capital Region, watched need leap when the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ran out of money in October, a victim of the longest federal shutdown in history.

Even though the federal government reopened Wednesday, it takes time to reload EBT cards with benefits. Agencies that process Home Energy Assistance Program requests couldn’t even distribute the applications, much less process them. And for weeks, people who used SNAP benefits had to defer other bills and rely on other means to buy groceries. The ramifications will ripple for weeks, or longer.

Efforts to resume SNAP funding stalled at the Supreme........

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