fbusch@nujournal.com

SLEEPY EYE — Seneca Foods Corporation bought the Sleepy Eye Del Monte vegetable plant for $2 million cash, according to the Certificate of Real Estate Value recorded in the Brown County Recorder’s Office May 5.

Any delinquent special assessments and taxes would be paid by the buyer, according to the document posted on a Minnesota Department of Revenue website, mndor.state.mn.us.

Sleepy Eye City Manager Bob Elston said no information about the future status of the plant has been received from Seneca yet.

“At this point, we don’t know anything more than we did a month ago,” Elston said. “People have called the company about what will happen to the plant. Phone calls have not been returned.”

Seneca sells products under its own brands including Seneca Farms, Libby’s, Aunt Nellie’s, Cherry Man and Green Valley.

After last fall’s corn harvest was complete, Del Monte announced it was closing its Sleepy Eye and Marion, Ill., plants as part of a restructuring plan for the company “to remain competitive in a rapidly changing marketplace.”

Del Monte said production will cease at the plants and employees would be laid off in stages as activities were completed.

The Sleepy Eye plant employed about 69 full-time employees and 294 seasonal employees. It produced the largest case quantities of peas and corn for the company.

More than 300 Sleepy Eye area growers produced peas and corn on more than 22,000 acres.

For decades, Del Monte donated several tons of corn for the free Sleepy Eye Buttered Corn Day feed on a Friday in August in Allison Park. The event drew huge numbers of people to enjoy buttered sweet corn, a corn eating contest in recent years. Other food was also sold at the feed.

Sleepy Eye city leaders recently said they hope to continue the corn feed which includes a 100-unit parade on Saturday afternoon, the day after the corn feed.

The New Ulm Journal Sunday, Sept. 7, 2019 Lifestyle page featured memories of working at the plant by a number of Sleepy Eye employees and a photo of the plant taken not long after it opened in the fall of 1929.

A three-story, 88 by 50 foot pea building was advertised as “absolutely fireproof” with brick, steel and concrete construction.

Former Del Monte employee Al Stimpert tested peas and corn samples for moisture levels, sorted cans and did plant clean up in the 1950s. He said the plan operated around the clock when lots of corn was picked.

In its early days, field work was done by horse-drawn machinery. Pea vines were loaded by pitchfork and sweet corn was picked by hand and hauled to the plant in horse-drawn wagons.

During World War II, a labor shortage made it necessary to hire local businessmen and foreign laborers including German Prisoners of War (POWs).

The Sleepy Eye plant received the War Food Administration’s Achievement A Award the highest federal government honor, for its excellence and cooperation with the war effort.

Sleepy Eye Del Monte human resources employee Gerald “Boomer” Plahn said housewives would drop everything and work at the plant in late summer when local students went back to school.