A harvest of crops and compassion

Despite drought, Minnesota farm families donate a portion of harvest to the poor

“They just get poorer and poorer,” said Aileen Tollefson of Fron Lutheran Church in Starbuck, Minn.

She’s talking about what happens to farmers in her community when there’s no rain or irrigation. When there is a meager harvest and not enough crop insurance. When there is debt.

Starbuck is near the epicenter of last summer’s Midwest drought, which was so harsh that the area was approved for federal disaster aid.

Not even the cleverest farmer can control the weather.

Marion and Bob McCrory are one of three couples who donated fields for Foods Resource Bank of Pope County, a Lutheran World Relief project that has brought the community together to grow crops and donate proceeds.

“He (God) and I are in partnership,” said Bob McCrory, a member of Glenwood [Minn.] Lutheran Church. “He’s got to suffer as much as I do when there’s no rain.”

Yet even as the skies were dry over Starbuck and Glenwood, the farmers figured out how to coax a crop out of dry earth. And they turned their fields into an intercontinental tempest of good will, which was started at least in part by Earl Hauge.

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