A Tradition is Born: Squash Extravaganza Lives Up to Its Name

By John Pederson October is squash season for many Minnesotan farmers. But for Jack Hedin of Featherstone Farm near Rushford, getting this year’s crop out of the ground was anything but business as usual. His harvest schedule included a concert, gourmet cooking from some of the state’s finest chefs, and a crowd of city-slickers eager to get their hands dirty learning what it really takes to put a steaming butternut squash on the dinner table. Hedin was the host of the first annual Squash Extravaganza, which took place in two sessions from September 15th – 20th at the Featherstone Farm near Winona, MN. Featherstone organized the event in collaboration with LFTN to celebrate the close-knit community of farmers, consumers and retailers that helped their farm — and small-scale organic farmers throughout the region — weather the devastating flooding in 2007.

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Postville: Iowa's Kosher Catastrophe

By Sara Nurmi In many American towns, plants and factories rely on immigrant labor to keep business and the economy running smoothly. Such is the case for a large kosher meat packing plant called Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa that was raided earlier this year. However, before the immigration raid took place, Morris Allen, a conservative Jewish Rabbi of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, MN made a visit to the plant. Rabbi Allen was disturbed with the working conditions he saw in the plant and was now faced with a contradiction: a worker must slaughter an animal according to the ethical laws of kashrut, yet at the same time he/she is underpaid and working in unfair conditions. He knew that something had to be done soon to protect the livelihoods of the workers.

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Honoring the Rice and the Land at White Earth

This September, LFTN partnered with the White Earth Land Recovery Project to bring co-op bulk buyers (from Seward Co-op and Bluff Country Co-op) to the White Earth Reservation to learn about WELRP's food programs, including their wild rice marketing business, Native Harvest. The small group was able to see the harvest and processing, and learned about the importance of wild rice to Anishinaabeg culture. LFTN board member Hilary Johnson brought back the story. It’s peaceful in the rice fields this gray, damp morning. Maybe because we’re not actually doing any ricing. Jeff Bellecourt, whom the White Earth Land Recovery Project invited to demonstrate ricing to the co-op visitors, is doing all the work. He’s poling the aluminum canoe through the thick wild rice as Erik (LFTN Director) and I pester him with questions. But he must think it’s peaceful too, because after growing up in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis and moving to the White Earth reservation as an adult, he says he can’t sleep through the night when he goes back to the city to visit. White Earth is quieter, he says, and his steady piloting and easy gab about wild rice illustrate an abiding affection and respect for the life up here, and for manoomin, the cultural and spiritual food of the Anishinaabeg.

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The Future of Trade: A Public Forum on the Local Impacts of Free Trade Agreements -- and Opportunities for Change

In the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, how can we turn around the economy for working people? Re-writing the nation's trade policy is a major part of the solution. Trade policy affects everything from jobs and wages, to food and farming, to the labor rights of workers in countries we trade with -- and the opportunity for progressive change is now stronger than it has been at any point over the past fifteen years. This free and open public forum will feature a panel discussion on the diverse impacts of trade and conversation on how to put trade in the spotlight in the days preceding elections.

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