Many Minnesota food shelves are stocked this fall with foods they rarely offered two decades ago: squash, peas, watermelon, strawberries. That has some food shelf directors wishing they could make it last into the winter.
MPR News From our outstate correspondents
By Julie Siple
Julie Siple is a reporter covering hunger and related issues for MPR News. Previously, she produced MPR’s Midday and Morning Edition and was a founding producer of In The Loop.
Prisoners at the Red Wing minimum-security prison plant vegetables often left to the serious gardener: kale, Swiss chard, purple carrots, chocolate-colored peppers. They spend hours poring over seed catalogs, steamy afternoons weeding. They donate the surplus to the local food shelf. The problem is, not everyone at the food shelf knows what to do with chard.
Leaders of Minnesota’s Republican Party are denouncing harassing phone calls and emails received by Rep. Mary Franson , R-Alexandria, in the wake of a video Franson released last week in which she seemed to compare food stamp recipients to animals. Franson later apologized and the video was removed, but the controversy continues.