The following year, the newly widowed Ms. Harris found herself , at 66, taking in five siblings, ranging in age from 1 to 9, who needed a foster home. Three years later, the Department of Children’s Services began the process of finding permanent homes for the children . But every time Ms. Harris started to fill out the paperwork, she said, she began to cry.

“I kept them all that time, and Aiden was only 1 when I got him. So I couldn’t let that kid go! He became my baby,” said Ms. Harris, whom the children call “Mamaw.” “So I finally just told them that I’d have to adopt them.”

“Mamaw helped us out a lot, and I’m just thankful for it,” said one of the children, Sherry, 17.

In 2013, Ms. Harris was reaching for something in her minivan at the top of her steep driveway when it became stuck in neutral. The van dragged her about 45 feet downhill, trapping her. She broke several ribs, her neck and her back in three places.

Ms. Harris, who had been making a living selling insurance, was forced to stop working. She was in another accident a year later; a car struck hers as she was making a turn. She broke more ribs and vertebrae, she said, and was laid up for a full six months.

“I just couldn’t, after that — it took me a long time to get out of it,” Ms. Harris said. “It’s been a rough road.”

Ms. Harris and her family struggle to get by on her Social Security and disability benefits, and on the money she receives from the state when she takes in foster children. She hopes to return to work in the new year.

To keep her household afloat, Ms. Harris turned to the Good Shepherd Center in Madisonville, Tenn., just down the road from her home in Vonore. Good Shepherd is one of more than 550 nonprofits in 18 counties that receive food from Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee in nearby Maryville to help feed an estimated 160,000 food-insecure people in the region. Second Harvest is one of 200 food banks affiliated with Feeding America, a beneficiary agency of The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.