Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Table for one
Atlas Obscura
In March, when Linda Karlsson’s septuagenarian parents came to visit her in Ransäter, Sweden, she and her husband Rasmus Persson refused to let them inside. Instead, writes Anna Kang, they “placed a table in the meadow outside their home and served” food to the at-risk elders through a window. “As the couple watched Karlsson’s parents enjoy their meal, they decided this was something others might like to try: dining in their meadow without safety concerns. For Karlsson and Persson, that meant opening a restaurant for one — just one table and one chair, completely contact-free.”
With meat plants shut down, farmers face the prospect of euthanizing animals
FERN
The spread of Covid-19 has forced some meat-packing plants to close, while many others run at half speed. Nationwide, pork production has dropped by more than 20 percent over the last month, and industrial farmers find their barns filling up. Now, the “end for hundreds of thousands of pigs is likely to arrive in an orgy of waste that turns the stomachs of even the most pragmatic,” writes Elizabeth Royte.
How NYC’s giant food hub has (so far) beaten back coronavirus
Eater
While Covid-19 has forced the closure of meat plants and other food-processing facilities around the country, the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center in the Bronx, New York’s most important food hub and one of the world’s largest, has avoided a similar fate. “Owners moved quickly to silo their staffs into smaller teams that never crossed paths with each other, handed out thousands of face masks and gloves on a daily basis, and mounted hand sanitizer stations all over the facilities,” writes Gary He. “As a result, the cases are relatively contained despite many employees working in close proximity as part of the front line of the food supply chain.” None of the 152 businesses there have closed due to the virus.
Total Wine flip-flops on pay raise for ‘essential’ employees
BuzzFeed
Rep. David Trone, a Maryland Democratic, “has positioned himself as a protector of frontline workers during the coronavirus pandemic,” writes Katie J.M. Baker. “In mid-March, the company he co-founded and owns announced an important benefit for its own essential employees: a $2-an-hour pay raise. But a few weeks later, Trone’s multibillion-dollar company, Total Wine & More — the country’s largest privately owned wine, beer, and liquor retailer, with 206 stores in 24 states — reversed course.”
Scorched-rice echoes from Vietnam during coronavirus lockdown
The New York Times
“‘I’m sending you money to buy rice,’ my mom texted me in early March. She had gone to the West Coast to help my sister with her new baby and stayed when it became too risky to fly. As news of the coronavirus intensified, so did her fretting,” writes Lynn Jones Johnston. ‘I don’t need money,’ I texted back. ‘Also, I have plenty of rice.’ ‘No, you have an American amount of rice,’ she replied. ‘Go get the biggest bag you can find.’”