Aitkin County Farmers Union Locally Grown Foods Banquet

The Locally Grown Foods Banquet was held at the Palisade Community Center in Palisade, MN on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2003 beginning at 6:30 p.m. As people arrived, they paid their $5 at the door. They were greeted by Farmers Union members and offered coffee or hot apple cider, and invited to visit with each other and to look at the materials we had placed on a table. We had a large table at one side of the room with a poster display showing all of the local food sources for the meal. Fact sheets on local food from the FoodRoutes network, our local food brochure, and materials from the Northeast Minnesota Sustainable Development Partnership were available on this table.

At 7:00 p.m., Palisade Local Farmers Union president John Grimsbo gave a welcome and mentioned the farmers who had donated the food. Jane Grimsbo Jewett spoke briefly about the Northeast Minnesota Sustainable Development Partnership, which supported the banquet and local food brochure as well as other local food projects in northeast Minnesota. Markell Vogt, Aitkin County Farmers Union president, gave a table grace.

Food was served buffet-style from a counter adjoining a large window opening into the kitchen. Guests were served their meat, and served themselves to potatoes, squash, cole slaw, and cranberries. Bread, butter, and honey bears were on the tables. Apple dessert was on small plates at each place. The tables were very attractive. We had covered them with white paper table covers, and placed evergreen branches and strings of red beads along the center of the tables. We used paper placemats from Farmers Union that showed the farmers' share of the retail price of various foods. The placemats were white with a red plate design in the middle, so the effect was very festive.

When people were mostly done eating, Markell Vogt introduced Minnesota Farmers Union president Doug Peterson. Markell mentioned in her introduction that we hoped that everyone enjoyed the food, and would consider getting locally-grown food for their special events in the future. Doug spoke about local food systems and the benefits of buying local for the consumers, the farmers, and the community. His speech was followed by a talk by Thom Petersen, who discussed Farmers Union work with the Minnesota Legislature. There was a lively discussion of country-of-origin labeling of food between Thom and several of the farmers in attendance. Senator Tom Saxhaug and Representative Loren Solberg both spoke briefly. Roger Vogt wrapped up the program by awarding doorprizes. He had several retail food items, and the person who guessed the closest on the farmer's share of the retail price won the item. That was an end to the program that everyone seemed to enjoy. Many guests stayed for awhile and talked in small groups.

Judging by the many compliments we received on the food, our success in getting a good group of people to attend, and the general good feeling of fellowship at the meal, the banquet was a smashing success.

How we did it:
Discussions about the banquet began in March 2003. The first serious planning session was held in mid-September. A steering committee of four volunteers handled the following activities:
* planned the menu
* wrote up the invitations
* put together the guest list
* addressed and stuffed envelopes
* made follow-up phone calls to invitees
* reserved the banquet location
* picked up the food

Other volunteer activities, before the banquet and the day of the banquet:
* set up tables and chairs
* decorated tables and set places
* prepared the food
* washed all dishes, before and after the banquet
* prepared a display showing all the local food sources
*greeted people as they came in to the banquet

By the day of the banquet, 82 volunteer hours had been put in on planning and preparations. An additional 110 volunteer hours were put in on the day of the banquet.

We used a fact sheet from the Land Stewardship Project that gave guidelines for planning local food banquets. We also had advice from Lynn Mader, who has been involved in planning local food banquets for the Pride of the Prairie project in western MN. Carroll Kukowski, head of the Aitkin Area Chamber of Commerce, also provided helpful advice as well as an address list for Aitkin County organizations.

One of our concerns was how many people to invite. We wanted to serve around 50 people. We were advised from one source that we would need to invite 100 people to get 30 to show up. Another source suggested that the percentage would be higher if we did follow-up calling. We decided to send out 50 invitations to people and allow them to bring one guest. We had only a handful of responses to the mailed invitations. Follow-up calls yielded 79 attendees, but then we had some no-shows so the attendance at the banquet was 61. This number includes the Farmers Union members who attended and helped with greeting and serving. We were very pleased to have in attendance the Minnesota Farmers Union president, Doug Peterson; and the MFU legislative director, Thom Petersen; Representative Loren Solberg, Senator Tom Saxhaug, all five of our Aitkin County Commissioners, the mayor of Palisade, Extension educator Jean Pitt, FSA agent Chuck Anderson, Ann Schwartz of the Aitkin Independent Age newspaper, Jon Grones of the Voyageur Press of McGregor, Laura and Eric Heglund of the NewsHopper, as well as many representatives of civic organizations within the county.

Another concern was insurance for this event. We found that we were covered under an umbrella policy held by the Minnesota Farmers Union organization.

What we did right:
* We invited people from all of the area newspapers. All of the papers followed up with articles about the banquet.
* We invited a broad cross-section of people. We had local government officials, legislators, members of civic clubs and senior citizens' groups, newspaper editors, and the farmers who supplied the food.
* We did follow-up calling to the people we invited.
* We announced that proceeds would be donated to local food shelves. (This announcement received a round of applause).
* We had excellent food; there were many compliments about the meal.

What we should have done:
* Put a packet of materials on each chair. We put our local food brochures at each place, but had other materials on a table for people to pick up. Very few people picked up the other materials.
* Have someone designated to take pictures. The newspaper people took photos, but we wound up without any of our own because we were all busy with the greeting and serving.
* We had a couple of glitches in the food preparation. We thought we had allowed plenty of time for roasting the potatoes in the oven, but it took much longer than we expected because the oven was so full of potatoes. We should have started them two hours earlier than we did, and held them warm in crockpots. As it was we had a mad scramble to pre-cook them in a microwave before finishing them up in the oven. On the other hand, we started the meat too soon and it fell apart when we tried to cut it. It all tasted good, though!

Would we do this again?
Well, it was an awful lot of work. Now that we know what we are doing, we could probably plan another meal in less time. We might try it on different terms, perhaps as a fundraiser that would be open to anyone rather than by invitation only. Developing, printing, and mailing invitations and doing the follow-up calls took a great deal of time.

What we would rather do is encourage and support people who are planning events of any kind involving food, to use some locally grown food. This is already starting to happen:

* Roger and Markell Vogt hold a meal every year for their seasonal farm help. This year, they purchased local beef and pork to serve to their employees, and had a local restaurant prepare the meal. They asked the restaurant owner to keep track of costs, and found that it cost only $ 0.08 per pound more for local pork and $ 0.25 per pound more for local beef, as compared to the costs from the restaurant's usual supplier.

* One of the people attending our banquet asked if we could help with the planning of a celebration at her church.

Thank you very much to the Northeast Minnesota Sustainable Development Partnership; without their support, none of this would have happened!

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