Stories indexed with the term ‘farms’

Ann Arbor Greenbelt Advisory Commission meeting (March 10, 2010): After hearing from Ann Arbor Township supervisor Mike Moran, and meeting in closed session with Mary Fales of the city attorney’s office, commissioners passed a resolution of support for the acquisition of development rights on the Braun and Gould properties in Ann Arbor Township.

These deals have been in the works for more than two years. The city has binding purchase agreements with the owners based on appraisals taken when land values were higher. New appraisals, required to get funds from a federal program, came in with much lower values. That means fewer-than-expected federal funds will be available, and the city would be required to come up with the difference.

Saying that Ann Arbor Township was their partner, Moran urged commissioners to support the purchase of development rights. He called the Braun farm a “poster child” for the township’s land preservation movement, and said it would be a significant error to reject the deal simply because of the new appraisals.

Later in the meeting, commissioners also got an update on committee work being done to help support small farms in the greenbelt. [Full Story]

The main topic of discussion for the Ann Arbor Greenbelt Advisory Commission’s November meeting could be distilled into this: How can the greenbelt program support the development of small farms, and ensure that farm properties remain farms, even when the property changes ownership?

It’s an unlikely resource that might actually be able to help answer those questions: the federal housing programs administered by the Office of Community Development, a joint county/city department.

Jennifer Hall, OCD housing program coordinator, attended the Nov. 4 meeting of the greenbelt group and floated some ideas for how federal funding might provide resources to retain land for the farming community.

The commission also heard from the managing organization of the greenbelt program, The Conservation Fund, about strategies for preserving small farms. [Full Story]

Marianne Rzepka

Five years ago, Alex Young spent his days trying to get Zingerman’s Roadhouse up and open. A long-time chef, Young signed on as manager and chef there, moving his family to a farm outside Dexter.

But on his one day off each week, he picked up a shovel and started his garden. Every week, he dug one row, laboriously turning up deep layers of soil, trading physical labor for the stress of embarking on the new business venture.

That spring, Young wore out the heavy sole of his boot from the edge of the shovel and had a dozen rows in his 75-by-75-foot garden.

“It was a stress reducer,” he says now, and he still sees the calming and even meditative side of growing food as that garden sprouted into Cornman Farms, a business that still is growing. [Full Story]

Bumper sticker on a car parked at Matthaei Botanical Gardens, site of Thursday's local food summit.

The Chronicle arrived midway through Thursday’s day-long Local Food Summit 2009, and found evidence of the morning’s work plastered all over the walls of the Matthaei Botanical Gardens conference room: Colorful sticky notes on butcher paper, categorized by topics like “Food policy/legislation,” “Resources for young/new farmers,” “Distribution,” “Heritage” and “Community Self Reliance.”

Each note listed a resource, idea or goal, and together represented hundreds of ways to strengthen and expand this region’s local food system. About 120 people had gathered to focus on that topic, and organizers hope the momentum from Thursday’s event will transform the way our community thinks about food, and in turn transform the health of residents and our local economy. [Full Story]

Peg Kohring of The Conservation Fund talks to members of the Ann Arbor Greenbelt Advisory Commission on Wednesday, as commissioners Gil Omenn and Peter Allen (far right) look on.

The Greenbelt Advisory Commission met Wednesday, spending about 45 minutes in their public meeting before going into a closed session to discuss land preservation proposals.

Field trip: The first major item on the agenda was a presentation by Peg Kohring, Midwest director of The Conservation Fund, which manages the city’s greenbelt program. She gave a brief talk about the Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy, describing it as a think-and-do tank focused on local land use and food systems. Kohring said that she, city staffer Ginny Trocchio and Susan Lackey of the Washtenaw Land Trust made a trip to northeast Ohio to take an up-close look at this organization, and glean ideas that might be applicable to the Ann Arbor area. [Full Story]