The SpokeSman • TueSday, november 22, 2022 A9
Meals
Continued from A1
The volunteers bundled
against the freezing air worked
ceaselessly to load boxes of food
and ingredients into the long
line of cars and trucks, with
many of the drivers leaving
with smiles on their faces and a
thank-you light on their lips.
“I’ve always liked volunteer-
ing but there’s something about
the holidays,” said Lisa Stew-
art, a first-time volunteer with
NeighborImpact whose family
lives in Minnesota. “Not hav-
ing family is one thing, but not
having food is a whole other
thing.”
According to Stewart, the
last person to come through the
line had looked at her checking
account and found they didn’t
have enough money for food
— much less Thanksgiving. She
was shaking and crying and des-
perately needed it. Being able to
help her, Stewart said, made her
realize the impact.
“(It’s) simple but wonderful,”
she said.
Kara Haeussler, volunteer co-
ordination specialist for Neigh-
borImpact, said Central Oregon
has been facing extreme food
scarcity for a long time and, ac-
cording to a press release from
NeighborImpact, the organi-
zation has already distributed
2,400 Thanksgiving meals this
year.
Half of the meals were
funded through Safeway and
Albertsons Turkey Bucks pro-
gram while the other half were
nick rosenberger/Spokesman
Cars line up on Nov. 17 at Redmond High School to receive turkeys and other Thanksgiving food during NeighborImpact’s food distribution drive.
bought by the Oregon Food
Bank.
“With inflation greatly af-
fecting the cost of groceries, it’s
no surprise that many families
are struggling to get meals on
the table,” said Carly Sanders,
the NeighborImpact food bank
director, in the release. “This
distribution will enable families
to celebrate the holiday without
the barrier of a price tag.”
Garth Brown, who also coor-
dinates volunteers, said demand
for food is up about 20 percent
from last year and that they are
on pace to distribute four mil-
lion pounds of food this year.
About half of that food comes
in the form of produce and veg-
etables.
nick rosenberger/Spokesman
The Redmond community showed up in droves to the NeighborImpact
Thanksgiving food giveaway on Nov. 18 at Redmond High School.
The organization’s food bank,
he said, feeds approximately
52,000 people per month.
“(NeighborImpact is) a small
group of people and it’s a good
group of people,” he said.
“The holidays are the holi-
days,” said Charmaine Roberts,
who volunteered on Thursday.
“When times are tough, any-
thing you can do to brighten the
holidays is even more special.”
Roberts, a former paralegal
who has been volunteering with
NeighborImpact since January
2020, said her life philosophy is
to try to share resources, knowl-
edge and power with others and
do it in a way that protects peo-
ple’s dignity. NeighborImpact,
she said, fits perfectly into her
philosophy.
She’s stayed with the pro-
gram, she said, because it was
fun and it felt like she was do-
Continued from A1
Mayor
Continued from A1
The Redmond Area Parks
and Recreation District bond
narrowly passed with 12,179 in
favor of the bond to fund a new
rec center and 11,374 against.
The accompanying parks dis-
trict levy, however, failed with
14,019 people voting against it
and 9,298 voting in favor.
“I’m feeling pretty excited
about (the bond),” said Matt
Gilman, the chairman of the
parks district board of directors.
“It’ll let us focus on that oper-
ating levy and figuring out po-
tentially other ways to get that
funded.”
Next steps, Gilman said, will
likely involve talking with archi-
tects again and going through
government processes to find
contractors.
Both psilocybin measures,
which would prohibit the man-
ufacture of psilocybin products
and treatment facilities within
city limits, passed.
The manufacturing ban
passed with 8,458 votes in favor
of the ban and 6,526 against it.
Read and recycle
█
Reporter: nrosenberger@
redmondspokesman.com
“It’s just the way they process their
meats. They have a great history,
the right seasonings, compared to
a lot of the slaughterhouses.”
Smokehouse
Amanda Guthrie, manager of the
Redmond Smokehouse, said that this
history and family connections are
what often bring people back.
“It’s a very family-oriented business,”
she said.
In the backroom, she said, the Luna
family has been butchering the meat
for three generations while Guth-
rie herself got involved because her
mother worked at the shop.
In high school, Guthrie began work-
ing at the smokehouse part time to
make a little extra money and was in-
trigued by the marketing and prod-
uct side of the business and decided to
stick around.
While the original history of the
smokehouse is a little hazy, the business
was originally named the Redmond
Lockers & Custom Meat and was built
next to the train tracks to serve those
who worked the railroads and the sur-
rounding Redmond community.
Guthrie said the business eventually
passed from the Abbas family to the
Moores, who owned it until Justin Ellis
bought the business in 2019.
Runge said the Moores worked re-
ally hard to get the seasonings just right
and that she still shops at the smoke-
house because of the way the shop has
continued to make the meat.
“The only reason I go there all the
time is because they have absolutely the
best meat ever,” she said. “It’s just the
way they process (it). There’s no ques-
tion.”
Plus, she added, they’re just good
people and have a great crew.
ing something good — putting
good energy into the universe.
“It’s such a good program
and it’s such a needed program,”
Roberts said.
And, with many of the same
people coming through week
after week and month after
month, Roberts has come
close to many of those who
participate in the program.
She emphasized that while
some may be embarrassed,
there should be no shame in
needing help.
“It’s our duty to each other,”
she said. “Anything you can do
to help people still enjoy the
holiday dinner and not break
the bank is pretty cool.”
Additionally, NeighborIm-
pact is looking to soon break
ground on a new food distri-
bution warehouse that will be
about four times the size of the
current warehouse. Currently,
they can’t bring in all the food
they’re allotted because they
don’t have enough space for it.
According to Brown, the
fridge and freezer are too small
for the needs of the commu-
nity and staff are forced to work
harder than they need to with
the current warehouse.
The organization is looking
for donations for the new ware-
house, which is slotted to open
in approximately June 2024.
For those looking to get in-
volved this holiday season,
NeighborImpact has a list of
volunteer opportunities on its
website.
— Sharry Runge, Redmond Smokehouse
regular customer
nick rosenberger/Spokesman
Employees at the Redmond Smokehouse butcher meat on Nov. 16 as the holiday season begins to pick up steam.
“They’re very congenial and they
do what they say they’re going to do,”
Runge said.
Guthrie said she’s also seen a trend
of younger customers coming in to buy
the same handmade meats their grand-
parents would cook.
“We’re getting a younger genera-
tion where they’re like ‘this is what my
grandpa had. I want that taste. I want
that flavor, not what my parents were
making from the store,’” Guthrie said.
“They want that true old-fashioned
The treatment center ban also
passed with 7,869 votes in favor
of the ban and 6,896 against it.
Additionally, tallies were final-
ized in the race for House Dis-
trict 53 which covers the south-
ern half of Redmond. Democrat
Emerson Levy won the district
with 19,132 votes while Michael
Sipe, the Republican candidate,
received 18,720 votes.
“I am so grateful to the peo-
ple of Central Oregon for plac-
ing their faith in me,” Levy
taste.”
Guthrie said they don’t add any dyes
or anything to change the look of the
meats and that they cut their steaks
fresh every day which makes them
taste better
Runge said she recently picked up
her smoked turkey from the shop and
has been buying their turkeys for years.
Ellen Phillips, another customer, said
she goes to the store because they have
very good meat and buys her Thanks-
giving turkey from them every year as
wrote in an emailed press re-
lease. “The time people spent
with me sharing their values,
their hopes, their fears, and
their dreams, will have a last-
ing impact on me as I begin my
work representing this commu-
nity in Salem.”
Levy also acknowledged Sipe
and mentioned that while they
offered voters different visions
of the future, they both shared
a love for the community and a
passion for serving it.
Get great
service &
great rates.
Joe A Lochner Ins Acy Inc
Joe A Lochner, Agent
www.joelochner.com
Redmond, OR 97756
Bus: 541-548-6023
well.
When asked why the turkey was bet-
ter than other places, she had one re-
sponse: “it just is.”
“I like the store,” she said, “that’s all
there is to say.”
While most of the meats come from
local producers, the organic, non-
GMO and never frozen turkeys that fill
the Smokehouse’s cold storage every
Thanksgiving all come straight from
the Diestel Family Ranch in Sonoma,
California, and are smoked in house.
Levy will share responsibil-
ity for representing Redmond’s
interests with Republican Vikki
Breese-Iverson, who won the
“Every once in a while we do have to
outsource out of Oregon, but generally
when we do that it’s because of it being
better quality,” Guthrie said.
Guthrie said the turkeys usually sell
out every year because the families are
able to taste the difference between
their turkeys and others.
Additionally, the butcher shop is
split between cutting large cuts of meat
to sell in their small retail shop and do-
ing custom meat processing for farm-
ers and ranchers to sell at their own
businesses. Guthrie said this split is one
of the main reasons why the old-fash-
ioned business has stuck around for so
long.
Guthrie said they also have specialty
jerky or pepperoni flavors every week
but their cranberry walnut sausage
is the most popular as they head into
Thanksgiving. The meats can only be
bought at the smokehouse, she added.
The top sellers are likely their jerky
or pepperoni, Guthrie said, but their
steaks and freshly-cut meats are next
in line.
“Customers usually come back year
to year because of the quality that we
have brought to their holiday meals,”
she said.
█
Reporter:
nrosenberger@redmondspokesman.com
race for House District 59 that
covers the northern half of Red-
mond with 9,003 votes. Law-
rence Jones, the Democratic
candidate, received 4,644 votes
for House District 59.
█
Reporter:
nrosenberger@redmondspokesman.