By Diana McFarland

News editor

Cars were lined up early in Smithfield Saturday morning in anticipation of a turkey dinner from Christian Outreach.

The non-profit consortium of churches received enough donations to purchase 425 turkeys from Walmart, as well as give out bags of onions, stuffing, gravy and sweet potatoes to its clients.

The turkeys weighed about 13-15 pounds each. {mprestriction ids=”1,2,3,4,5,6″}

Smithfield Foods donated 100 hams that will be saved for Christmas, said COP Vice President Pinky Hipp.

Students from Isle of Wight Academy dropped off 700 pounds of food, and students from Westside Elementary and Hardy Elementary schools were also scheduled to drop off items from their food drives this week.

Until recently, the shelves at COP were look looking a bit bare, said Hipp.

And then they went “from nothing to out of the wahzoo in one day,” she said.

COP volunteer Susy Bott’s letter to the editor about her Bunko group chipping in their extra change also generated a lot of donations, Hipp said.

Farm Fresh and Food Lion also made donations.

John Hargrave of Smithfield walked over to the COP headquarters on Grace Street to pick up his Thanksgiving basket. After suffering from two strokes, he said his mom will probably cook the turkey.

Bott warned that come January, the shelves will probably be bare again.

“We’re still screaming for food,” she said. {/mprestriction}