Program brings farm fresh produce to incarcerated youth in Bemidji

On the menu at the Northwestern Minnesota Juvenile Center in Bemidji: ham with fresh asparagus and rhubarb crisp, all made with fresh produce delivered directly from the farm. Forget what you think you know about the food served in correctional facilities; these youth are getting farm-to-table meals thanks to a Minnesota Department of Agriculture grant program designed for schools.

The juvenile facility includes a school, so kitchen supervisor Erica Fauchald thought, “Why not?” and applied for the $10,000 grant. She joined Appetites to talk about how it’s going and how she hopes to expand the program.

Click play on the audio player above to hear the conversation, or read a transcript of it below. Both have been edited for length.

Tell us what would have been on the menu before getting this grant and what you're serving now.

So usually we would have just served something that was more school-menu friendly, like pizza or something like that. But the farm-to-table grant has really opened up our menu choices.

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It’s the time of year for rhubarb and asparagus in your region. Tell us about some of the dishes you've made with it.

We've made rhubarb crisp, we've made rhubarb muffins, we've added rhubarb and apple together to create rhubarb apple cinnamon salad. We've done asparagus, both roasted and raw, and different types of salads. Asparagus is everywhere in northern Minnesota right now, so we've been able to add it to the menu three to four days a week.

How have the young people been responding?

The first day of a new item, they're always a little bit hesitant. But then they really get into it and they're like, “Oh, where's the asparagus today?”

In your mind, why is this farm-to-table program a good fit for juvenile corrections?

I truly believe our kids here deserve everything that any other kid might have access to in a normal school. If the high school up the road is getting farm-to-table produce, I truly believe that our kids deserve the exact same thing. They might have different circumstances that have bound them to this facility, but now that they're here, we are their home. So I want to take care of them the best way we can.

Tell me what examples you have of the link between nutrition and and behavior.

I think that the food that they eat affects every aspect of their lives and their bodies. Getting them the best nutrition really just changes the way they behave in a positive way. They're just nicer.

For you and the kitchen staff, tell us what it's like to have part of the meals more and more dependent on what you can get from local farmers.

So there are some challenges to that. We really have to just keep our salad bar open to whatever the farmers can bring us.

Also, it allows you to be a little more creative as a cook than some institutional kitchens do, I imagine.

Oh, 100 percent. I've been at the juvenile center for about five years, and within the last two years, we took over the kitchen and we no longer go with outside vended meals. It has just changed the game.

And how do you hope to expand this effort?

Our plan is to start going to the farmers market every single Saturday with the kids to get them to actually pick the produce and talk directly to the farmers. I'm hoping to do some berry picking this summer with the kids. Maybe if we pick up some local produce or we go and pick up meat from a local vendor, we could bring the kids with us so they could really get to see where their food comes from.