People here have strong family ties and a fierce loyalty to neighbors and kin.
They tend to reject welfare and handouts but to stick together and do whatever they can to help out less fortunate neighbors. The cooperative came about more than 20 years ago, when lay persons and pastors of 17 area United Methodist Churches, recognizing that their congregations were too small to deliver emergency services individually, banded together to form a shared community-service organization. They started with basic emergency services, but soon expanded and started looking for ways to bolster self-sufficiency rather than merely handing out food and clothing. The cooperative seeks to both strengthen local churches and to provide community outreach services. The group has turned an abandoned church building into a cannery, using equipment scrounged, where gleaned produce will be put up in non-perishable form for wider distribution.