A map posted earlier this year on the Selma Cafe website aimed to address parking and traffic concerns in the neighborhood.

The group has also received notice that the nonprofit Food System Economic Partnership (FSEP) has decided to end its fiscal sponsorship of Selma Cafe, citing “significant violations” of the terms in a memorandum of understanding between the two entities. The FSEP board voted to make the move in late March.

But it’s the zoning violations that could force a dramatic change in Selma Cafe, which often draws more than 200 people to the home of co-founder Lisa Gottlieb, located near Eberwhite Elementary School. The letter, dated April 3 from city planning manager Wendy Rampson, notes that home occupations are allowed in residential areas, but with certain restrictions. The letter states that Selma Cafe violates those restrictions in three ways: (1) more people are involved in the operation than are allowed under city code; (2) more than the permitted 10 vehicle trips per day are generated; and (3) the need for parking is not being met.

Reached by phone on Friday, Gottlieb said she plans to hand-deliver a response to the city on Monday. She believes the parking, traffic and congestion issues are resolved, and she is actively pursuing two other locations as possible venues for the weekly breakfasts. She disagrees with the city’s interpretation of the code, noting that Selma Cafe is not a business and the people who work there are volunteers, not employees. Although she hopes to continue holding the breakfasts, she said at this point it’s unclear how things will play out and whether that will be possible.

Gottlieb noted that one neighbor had criticized Selma Cafe for bringing thousands of people to the neighborhood since they started in 2009. Although the neighbor had cited that as a negative thing, Gottlieb said to her it seemed “pretty incredible” that the effort had been able to engage so many people in raising money for the local foodshed, keeping money in the community and helping local farmers.

Regarding the issues raised by FSEP, Gottlieb explained that she had withdrawn funds from the FSEP-managed bank account to transfer into a new account created as Selma Cafe transitions to become an independent 501(c)3 nonprofit. She had not first informed FSEP of the withdrawal, as required under terms of the memorandum of understanding. Even if that had not occurred, she added, “the fact is they wanted to be done with us.”

Obtaining the nonprofit status is taking longer than anticipated, so Selma Cafe is seeking another fiscal sponsor. Until that happens, the funds for Selma that remain in the FSEP-managed account – which total about $40,000 – are frozen. If no new fiscal sponsor is found and Selma does not obtain its 501(c)3 designation by May 31, FSEP could take the Selma assets permanently, under terms of the MOU. If that happened, FSEP would need to allocate those funds “in any manner consistent with applicable tax and charitable trust laws and other obligations.”

Selma Cafe: Background

Selma Cafe today still reflects its origins as a homegrown venture, started by Lisa Gottlieb and Jeff McCabe in their home on Soule Boulevard, just down the street from Eberwhite Elementary. The breakfasts are prepared and served by a staff of volunteers, often featuring chefs from local restaurants and using locally-produced food. Recent chefs have included Keegan Rodgers of the People’s Food Co-op, Peter Roumanis of Vellum Restaurant, Rebecca Wauldron of Busch’s, and others from The Beet Box at Mark’s Carts, EAT, Sweet Heather Anne Cakes, and Tantre Farm.

The effort started when the couple – now separated – hosted a fundraising dinner for the nonprofit Growing Hope about five years ago. Because the tickets for that event were fairly high, they decided to hold something more informal as well, and hosted a fundraising breakfast called Diner for a Day, featuring the filmmaker Chris Bedford. The event drew about 160 people – enough to indicate an interest in people willing to support the local food economy.

They decided to keep it going as long as there were volunteers to support it, and eventually grew their volunteer pool to more than 500 people. The breakfasts are held on Friday mornings from 6:30-9:30 a.m. Diners pay voluntary contributions for their meals, raising money for microloans to build hoop houses for local farms, as well as other local food-related activities. The Selma Cafe website cites a broader mission as well, describing it this way:

A hub, a center, a heart of the many ongoing efforts to improve our lives through community building, free access to affordable, healthy foods and the fostering of right-livelihood in vocations with meaning and purpose.

A celebration of seasonal, local ingredients from the abundance of what our region has to offer.

An inclusive community, building the next stage of our local-foods infrastructure founded on the principals of openness, transparency and joy. We seek your help in building the tools and organizational structure to maintain these foundational principles.

A source of funding for building new local-foods infrastructure through loans for hoop houses, affiliations with other community non-profits, and support for the Tilian Farm Development Center.

Money contributed at the cafe also supports Farmer Fund, which was created to administer the microloan program. According to the cafe’s website, University Bank originates and services those loans.

Selma Cafe has been warmly received by many in the community. For example, when Gottlieb and McCabe made a presentation to the Ann Arbor greenbelt advisory commission’s Nov. 10, 2010 meeting, commissioner Dan Ezekiel praised their work and said he’d eaten there many times: “Your efforts and your activism are amazing.”

The breakfast salon is regularly featured in local, state and national publications and blogs. A recent example is from a March 25, 2013 post on Shareable.net:

I was lucky enough to share a table at the [local economics] forum with Lisa Gottlieb, a social worker and founder of Selma Cafe – a community breakfast that benefits local, sustainable farming efforts. Lisa invited me to the Selma Cafe and I squeezed it in one morning. Though Lisa was on her way to work when I got there, I shared a meal and lots of interesting conversation with some remarkable people, including a man who volunteers part-time in Haiti doing healthcare and other friendly folks interested in the concept of Ann Arbor as a sharing town.

City Code Violations

The popularity of Selma Cafe has also led to complaints from some neighbors, even in its early days. As The Chronicle reported in July of 2009, an anonymous letter – signed from “an Eberwhite Elementary School parent” – raised concerns about various possible city of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County code violations occurring at the home. The possible violations included operating a restaurant in a residential area without licensing and inspection. Those issues were resolved at the time to the satisfaction of city and county officials, but complaints have since re-emerged.

Specifically, the city’s planning staff have communicated with Gottlieb and local attorney Nick Roumel – a Selma volunteer and occasional chef – about complaints that the city has received. That culminated in a letter sent to Gottlieb on April 3 from planning manager Wendy Rampson. [.pdf of Rampson's letter] The letter references a discussion held with Gottlieb on March 11 that had raised the same issues that are outlined in the letter.

The letter states that home occupations are allowed in residential areas, but with certain restrictions. The city defines a home occupation in this way: “an accessory use of a nonresidential nature which is performed within a dwelling or within an accessory building, and conducted by members of the family residing in the dwelling and not more than one additional employee.”

The city contends that the operations of Selma Cafe – the weekly breakfasts as well as other activities that have been held there, including a happy hour and concerts – have violated Chapter 55 of the city code, in the section related to “use regulations” for home occupations. The relevant part of the code states:

(c) Home occupation, subject to the following performance standards:

1. Total floor area devoted to the home occupation in the principal or accessory building shall not exceed 25% of the gross floor area of the dwelling.
2. Outside appearance of premises shall have no visible evidence of the conduct of a home occupation.
3. No outdoor display of goods or outside storage of equipment or materials used in the home occupation shall be permitted.
4. No article or service shall be sold or offered for sale on the premises except those which are produced by such home occupation on the premises.
5. The nature of the home occupation shall not generate more than 10 business-related vehicle trips in any 1 day in the vicinity of the home occupation, and any need for parking generated by the conduct of such home occupation shall be provided offstreet in accordance with the offstreet parking requirements.
6. No equipment or process shall be used in such home occupation which creates noise, dust, vibration, glare, fumes, odors or electrical interference detectable to the normal senses beyond the property boundary.
7. The following are typical examples of uses which often can be conducted within the limits of these restrictions and thereby qualify as home occupations. Uses which may qualify as “home occupations” are not limited to those named in this paragraph (nor does the listing of a use in this paragraph automatically qualify it as a home occupation); accountant, architect, artist, author, consultant, dressmaking, individual stringed instrument instruction, individual tutoring, millinery, preserving and home cooking.
8. The following uses are not permitted as home occupations if conducted as a person’s principal occupation and the person’s dwelling is used as the principal place of business: vehicle repair or painting, dental office and medical office.

Selma Cafe violates the city’s Chapter 55 zoning code in three ways, according to Rampson: (1) more people are involved in the operation than are allowed under city code; (2) more than the permitted 10 vehicle trips per day are generated; and (3) the need for parking is not being met.

Rampson’s letter states:

To resolve this violation, you may discontinue your home occupation or make changes to bring it into compliance with the performance standards, which would substantially reduce the scale of the activity. Another way you may resolve the violation is to relocate these events to an appropriately-zoned location that allows for assembly use and/or a commercial kitchen.

I am in receipt of a letter from your attorney, Nicholas Roumel, and appreciate your interest in reducing the impact of SELMA Cafe’s activities on your neighbors. However, none of the methods suggested by Mr. Roumel to address the traffic and parking problem would bring the current operation into compliance with the ordinance, because traffic and parking is still being generated by the use, albeit in a more dispersed manner. I’d like to emphasize that the City has received numerous complaints from a variety of sources, including neighbors and parents of Eberwhite students, all of whom are concerned about the concentrated traffic and parking issues that result from SELMA Cafe’s operation.

Rampson asked for a response by Monday, April 15 that provides a schedule for discontinuing Selma Cafe or any other activity that doesn’t comply with the city’s home occupation standards.

In a phone interview with The Chronicle, Gottlieb said she plans to hand-deliver her response to Rampson on Monday.

Lisa Gottlieb, co-founder of the Selma Cafe, at the Nov. 10, 2010 meeting of the Ann Arbor greenbelt advisory commission. (Chronicle file photo)

Gottlieb said she first heard about these complaints in early March, though she wasn’t contacted directly by the neighbors. She characterized them as a handful of people who were primarily upset about the traffic, parking and congestion, as well as with a happy hour that was held as a fundraiser for the nonprofit Growing Hope. She said she immediately stopped all activities at her home – other than Selma Cafe – as soon as she heard about the neighbors’ concerns. Those events had included the happy hour, yoga sessions, some concerts by local musicians, and a Balkan dance party.

Gottlieb said the changes to parking – urging people who attend Selma to park outside of the immediate neighborhood – has eliminated that problem. Based on exchanges on the neighborhood’s listserv, she said, the general view is that issues stemming from parking, traffic and congestion at Selma are resolved. And since the Selma traffic and parking problem has been eliminated, she said, it’s now clear that the neighborhood has a serious problem with parents speeding through the streets on their way to drop off or pick up children at Eberwhite Elementary. Regardless of what happens with Selma, Gottlieb said she plans to work on addressing that problem.

Regarding the other issues cited by the city, Gottlieb indicated that she and Roumel disagree with the city staff about interpreting the code. For example, she said, Selma Cafe isn’t a home business, so the “not more than one additional employee” standard doesn’t really apply, since everyone there is a volunteer – including her.

Gottlieb likened the current situation to one that involved concerns raised by Washtenaw County public health officials a few years ago. Selma Cafe is unique and new, she said, and doesn’t necessarily fit within the strict understanding of existing regulations. Whenever something new like this emerges, she said, “it often meets with resistance.”

Because of its uniqueness, she said, there aren’t a lot of places that can accommodate the weekly event. She’s actively looking for another place, and is pursuing two possible alternative locations. She hopes to continue conducting Selma Cafe at her home in the meantime, but she’s not sure how things will play out and it’s unclear whether the breakfasts can continue there.

When asked whether she intends to advocate for changes in zoning so that this kind of event would be allowed, Gottlieb said she didn’t see that as her role, and that she didn’t have the energy to spare for such an effort. However, she said, the idea of changing the zoning is “worth a really thoughtful conversation” with city officials.

Responding to a query from The Chronicle, Rampson indicated that until she receives Gottlieb’s response, it’s premature to speculate on any further actions the city might take.

Relationship with FSEP

Separately, the board of the nonprofit Food System Economic Partnership (FSEP) has decided to terminate its relationship with Repasts Present & Future [Repasts/Selma] – the umbrella organization that operates Selma Cafe.

The original fiscal sponsor was Slow Food Huron Valley, a nonprofit that focuses on supporting local farmers and food artisans “who engage in sustainable agriculture and are committed to the viability of the land,” according to the SFHV website.

SFHV, a volunteer organization, got formally involved as a fiscal sponsor of Selma Cafe in 2009. SFHV’s participation was a way to address concerns raised by Washtenaw County public health officials that Selma Cafe was operating as a “food service establishment” but not complying with the 2005 U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s food code. Among other things, the code prohibits serving food to the public out of a home. The county had determined that if Repasts/Selma were a 501(c)3 nonprofit – or were affiliated with a nonprofit – then that would give them exemption from the definition of “food service establishment.”

As part of that sponsorship, Gottlieb joined SFHV’s leadership team and served as the nonprofit’s secretary. But the relationship lasted only about two years before SFHV transferred the sponsorship to FSEP in 2011. [Kim Bayer of SFHV is also on FSEP's board.] At that time, the bank balance was $12,799, according to documents related to the transfer. Those documents also indicated that in 2009 and 2010, Repasts/Selma had made loans to nine local farmers totaling about $62,800. The purpose of the loans – which ranged from $5,100 to $9,647 – was to build hoop houses. [.pdf of 2011 assets and liabilities]

Gottlieb said that SFHV had wanted more involvement with Selma Cafe than was realistic, including an expectation that Gottlieb would invest more of her own time attending SFHV leadership meetings. Given her full-time job and work organizing Selma Cafe, Gottlieb said it wasn’t possible to make more of a time commitment to SFHV. Gottlieb is a social worker for the Washtenaw County juvenile detention program.

From left: Jennifer Fike, finance manager of the Huron River Watershed Council, and Ginny Trocchio, who manages the city of Ann Arbor’s greenbelt and parkland acquisition programs. Trocchio also serves as chair of the board for the Food System Economic Partnership. Fike is FSEP’s former executive director. Fike attended the April 4, 2013 meeting of the greenbelt advisory commission, where this photo was taken, because of her interest in being appointed to the commission.

In April of 2011, FSEP took over as fiscal sponsor, with terms laid out in a detailed memorandum of understanding (MOU). [.pdf of April 2011 MOU] In a phone interview with The Chronicle, FSEP board chair Ginny Trocchio said the decision to get involved with Selma Cafe was based on FSEP’s mission – which is to support grassroots efforts related to the local food economy. Selma Cafe was a good fit in that regard, she said. FSEP did not provide financial support to Selma Cafe, but served as the “corporate home” for the group, and handled a range of fiduciary activities. Those activities included maintaining a bank account for Repasts/Selma and reporting Repasts/Selma’s financial information in FSEP’s tax documents.

In the spring of 2012, leaders of FSEP and Repasts/Selma could not come to agreement on terms for renewal of the MOU. Gottlieb told The Chronicle that FSEP wanted to add provisions that would allow FSEP to remove her as operations manager at any point, and that would give FSEP the right to distribute assets in the Repasts/Selma bank account, if the fiscal sponsorship were terminated. Gottlieb said those terms were unacceptable to her, and ultimately were deal-breakers for reaching a new agreement with FSEP.

In a letter dated June 11, 2012, Trocchio gave notice of the intent to terminate the MOU, and outlined a transition period during which Repasts/Selma would need to find an alternative fiscal sponsor or obtain its own 501(c)3 nonprofit status.

Although Repasts/Selma is in the process of seeking a 501(c)3 designation, that designation has not yet been secured.

Trocchio told The Chronicle that over the last few weeks, FSEP’s board became aware of certain issues – including the city’s notification of zoning violations – which prompted the board vote to end its fiscal sponsorship. FSEP notified Gottlieb in late March about its decision, and has given Repasts/Selma until May 31 to find another fiscal sponsor. Assets in the Repasts/Selma bank account – over $40,000, according to Trocchio – will not be released to Repasts/Selma until another fiscal sponsor is identified or until nonprofit status is secured. At that point, the assets will be transferred to the new fiscal sponsor, Trocchio said.

On Friday, March 29, FSEP posted this statement on its website:

By decision of the board of directors, as of March 27, 2013 the Food System Economic Partnership (FSEP) will no longer be acting as a non-profit fiscal sponsor for SELMA Café. Unfortunately, significant violations of the terms of our memorandum of understanding have made this termination necessary.

In addition, the scope of SELMA Cafe’s activities and programs have expanded beyond the original intent of the agreement, such that the two organizations’ missions are no longer closely aligned.

Dissolving the relationship between FSEP and SELMA Cafe will make it possible for both organizations to pursue their own programming independently, as each evolves and implements their core missions.

In accordance with our memorandum of understanding, FSEP will transfer the SELMA charitable donations to another accredited non-profit organization once it has been identified by SELMA Café and we wish SELMA well in obtaining their own 501(c)3 in the future.

Gottlieb said that she and Roumel have started the process of obtaining 501(c)3 status for Selma Cafe. That process included forming a board of directors. Co-founder Jeff McCabe, though no longer involved in day-to-day operations at Selma, serves as a board member. The group also now has an EIN (employer identification number) from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, but has not yet received approval for the 501(c)3. The process has taken longer than anticipated, she said.

Meanwhile, they are looking for another nonprofit that would act as a fiscal sponsor. Gottlieb said there is one nonprofit that might be willing to act in that capacity, but no agreement has been reached yet, although she said it “looks promising.”

Regarding the MOU violations mentioned by FSEP as the reason for terminating its agreement with Repasts/Selma, Gottlieb said that as part of the process of creating the new 501(c)3 for Selma, she and Roumel had set up a separate bank account for the operation. She’d been advised by Roumel that she could transfer funds from the FSEP account to the new account, and did so without first informing FSEP. At that point FSEP froze the remaining assets in the account, she said, without informing her.

Gottlieb said she now realizes that her transfer of funds without informing FSEP violated the MOU, but “the fact is they wanted to be done with us,” she said. Since the assets have been frozen, she said she hasn’t been reimbursed for the $600-$700 that she has expended from her personal checking account each week to pay for Selma-related expenses.

She noted that the May 31 deadline is the point at which FSEP could take the Repasts/Selma assets permanently, under terms of the MOU:

If no Successor is found, after a time deemed reasonable to accomplish these tasks, FSEP may allocate RPF’s assets and liabilities in any manner consistent with applicable tax and charitable trust laws and other obligations.

The Chronicle survives in part through regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of local government and civic affairs. If you’re already supporting The Chronicle, please encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle.

As over 50 people throw their fists into the air, the contest resembles a superhero’s meeting more than a pie competition. On Sunday, July 24, Slow Food Huron Valley (SFHV) hosted its 5th annual Pie Lovers Unite! event at the Ypsilanti Ladies Literary Club. Most participants easily fit the “pie lover” label, considering themselves connoisseurs of crusts and aficionados of fillings.

Cardboard cutouts of the five wards of the city of Ann Arbor – not arranged in their actual geographic proximity to each other. (Photo for art by the writer)

But consistent with The Chronicle’s appetite for all things government-related, we could not simply let them eat pie. Instead, we brought handmade cardboard cutouts of Ann Arbor’s five wards and asked a roomful of pie enthusiasts which ward most resembles a slice of pie.

Why?

At its July 5 meeting, the Ann Arbor city council discussed redrawing the boundaries for the city’s five wards. And the city charter states: “The five wards should each have the general character of a pieshaped segment of the city with the point of such segment lying near the center of the city …” That discussion revealed that at least one councilmember holds some reservations about whether the current wards really are pie-shaped wedges of the city.

Kim Bayer, the program coordinator of Pie Lovers Unite!, began the night’s festivities by articulating the event’s mission beyond eating pie: “To strengthen our region’s food system, build community food security, and preserve our culinary heritage.”

She continued, saying, “When something is made from love, you can taste it.”

After a quick thank-you to the owner of Mighty Good Coffee, David Meyer, for providing the event’s coffee, Bayer addressed the audience: “What do you remember from last year?”

The pie lovers shouted back in unison, “PIE!” Then came individual murmurings – “pie-kus,” as the event’s pie-themed version of the Japanese form of poetry is known. And a piece of advice: “Pace yourself” – the evening includes feasting on pie.

A sampling of the fifty-some pies submitted at Pie Lovers Unite! (Photo by Elizabeth Knight)

Before beginning the sacred annual ritual of pie-ku reading, Bayer posed one more question to the audience about pie making: “Any secrets?” No one skipped a beat – the most popular one-word reply was butter, followed jokingly by lard.

While most bakers during the evening seemed to calmly accept approaches to pie baking different from their own, one idea provoked collective annoyance. Never, ever use margarine.

Then came the treasured tradition of reading the pie-ku contest submissions. To formally submit a pie-ku, public recitation is mandatory. About 10 minutes’ worth of pie poetry followed. Each pie-ku was structured in the same way as the Japanese haiku: three lines, arranged around a set number of syllables (five/seven/five). A sampling: “Blueberries it is/other fruits try to compete/my tongue says no way.”

After everyone recited their pie-kus and entered them for a chance to win a pie-related prize, the “pie-tinerary” dictated the next event – pie walks.

Similar to cake walks, each pie walk promised one lucky winner a free Zingerman’s pie. Not content with just one pie walk, organizers offered multiple categories: one for people who baked pies, one for children under twelve, one for the teachers of pie-making, for pie-making kids, for grandparents, and one for flapping like a chicken. (This writer’s flapping led to a delicious peach pie from Zingerman’s.)

Pie lovers crowd around the main table as the pie eating begins. (Photo by Elizabeth Knight)

By the end of the pie walks, anticipation was building. The pre-feasting festivities could only curb an appetite for so long. So finally, when Bayer headed up to the microphone again, she gave us a much-anticipated announcement – that we could slowly make our way to the pie-laden tables in the next room.

A smorgasbord of pies appeared – everything from adventurous goat cheese with tomato to a classic very cherry.

After about half an hour of pie-filled bliss, the judges filed out to announce the winners. The event offered six categories: fruit, sweet (non-fruit), savory (the non-sweet treats like quiche and pancetta), crust, local, and kids.

But before announcing the winners, the judges outlined two very serious (and somewhat contradictory) philosophies.

First, the idea of being “true to the fruit,” as one judge said, is paramount to any pie-maker. Allow it to keep its texture, its flavor – in short, don’t complicate things. “Bells and whistles don’t impress us,” one judge commented.

But, as some other judges mentioned, originality and creativity are also key. Innovation in pie-making is always appreciated. With those two philosophies in mind, the judges announced the winners of the 2011 Pie Lovers Unite! event.

Pie lover Elizabeth Knight proudly presents her winnings from a pie walk. (Photo by Sarah Marshall)

First announced was the sweet non-fruit pie and the winner, as one judge put it, “was an awesome pie.” A buttermilk chess pie won the sweet non-fruit category.

Next up was the category for kid pie-makers. The judges called the entries “amazing,” and praised them for a precocious grasp of pie-making. The winning pie had “the perfect mixture of sweet and sour, crumbly and delicious” – a blueberry crumble. When the young pie-maker was asked about his inspiration for making the pie, he replied, “Blueberries.”

Crust was the next category, and the winner’s pie was “light and flakey” – a classic apple pie. Accepting his prize, the winner urged everyone to take crusts seriously, “Go with the crust category.” Then came the cardinal caution yet again: Do not skimp on the butter and never use margarine.

The savory category was for pies that could be eaten as meals, not desserts. A pancetta with caramelized onions won, and the judges commented on its “excellent flavor and smooth custard.”

The fruit category was up next, and it drew hushed voices and respect from the crowd. Similar to the “Best Movie” of the Oscars, the fruit pies are the most eagerly awaited. Of the 50 or so entries, Bayer estimated that 15 to 20 competed in the fruit category. The winning pie was “visually arresting,” and epitomized the judge’s philosophy of being true to the fruit. The winning pie “let the fruits be themselves.” A blueberry peaches pie took home the honor.

Last was the category dedicated to locavores, where the ingredients of each entry must be “local.” Only a handful of pies entered this category, but the judges stressed its importance: “I think it’s important to remember that essentially every ingredient in a pie can be found locally,” one judge urged. The winner was a crunch apple tart.

After the formal judging, the last award to be announced was a Peoples’ Choice Award. A wild black raspberry pie won the prize, and with that, the awards ceremony for the pies ended.

One last non-culinary prize remained – the winning pie-ku. Drawn from a hat was the following: “Crust shaped of fingers/Curved in and out, to and fro/Memories of Mom.”

A cutout of Ward 2, the ward voted the most pie-shaped, next to a piece of Zingerman's peach pie. Readers who are strict interpreters of the city charter will note a certain irony. (Photo for art by the writer)

Throughout the event, the pie chefs in attendance had a chance to tell us which Ann Arbor city ward they thought most resembled a pie-shaped wedge.

It may seem easy enough to point at a cardboard cutout of a ward and quickly announce a favorite in the pie-shaped ward contest. But most bakers scrutinized each choice.

Clarificational questions were asked: “Do you mean a slice of pie or a whole pie?” “Are you talking about the ward overall or does this include individual precincts?” And, a personal favorite from a confused passer-by, “What are you guys doing? Is this some sort of alien game? You’re so weird.” After much consideration, each pie-maker would point decidedly at one ward: “That one, definitely. Or at least that’s how my pie slices look.”

And the results were clear. Based on our polling, Ward 2 meets the city charter definition the best, while Ward 5 (which received zero votes) has a more questionable shape.

Editor’s note: The Chronicle is headquartered in Ward 5, which tallied zero votes in the poll. Note that the poll conducted on ward shape at the Pie Lovers Unite! event was unscientific and likely includes considerable margarine of error. On the Ann Arbor city council’s Aug. 4 agenda is a vote on the reapportionment of its wards. The staff-recommended tweaks on the Aug. 4 agenda are a little different from the changes presented on July 5. The specific changes have not been terribly controversial, but the timing was contested, and ultimately altered to be implemented after the November general election.

About the writer: Saline resident Hayley Byrnes is a Chronicle intern. The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of elections to public bodies like the Ann Arbor city council. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

Many participants in the March 2 Homegrown Food Summit wore buttons like these, supporting locally grown food. (Photos by the writer.)

It’s Girl Scout cookie season, and on Saturday – after swinging through the Ann Arbor Farmers Market – I encountered a Brownie and her dad set up at the corner of Main and Liberty, their table loaded with boxes of Thin Mints, Samoas, Tagalongs and an assortment of other cookies that I remember selling too, back in the day. I bought three boxes.

At $3.50 per box, the cookies aren’t outrageously priced – though the boxes seem to get smaller every year. But later, in doing a quick calculation of all the food I’d bought that day, I realized that in buying those cookies, I’d failed to meet a challenge I’d heard earlier in the week: Spend 10% of your food budget on locally produced food.

The “10% Washtenaw” challenge was issued at the Homegrown Local Food Summit, a day-long event on March 2 that drew over 200 people to the Dana Building on the University of Michigan campus. Many of the people at the summit already surpass that goal in a fairly dramatic way. The real challenge, organizers acknowledge, is how to convince the rest of us to do the same.

There’s reason to think they can – 2009 was a pretty good year for the local food movement. The March 2 summit was about twice as large as the first one, held just over a year ago at Matthaei Botanical Gardens. The Homegrown Festival in September drew far larger crowds than the first one held in 2008 – the more recent one was packed, with several thousand people attending.

Ann Arbor’s greenbelt program is starting to focus on supporting small farms, more restaurants are highlighting locally produced food, and community-building ventures like Friday Mornings @ SELMA, which raises money for hoop houses and other farming needs, are thriving.

The economic argument that local food activists make is powerful. They calculate that residents of Washtenaw County spend $1 billion annually on food, but less than 1% of that is spent on food grown locally. If, over the next decade, that amount increases to 10%, the dollars spent in this region could have a dramatic multiplier effect. Hundreds of small farms would be needed to meet demand, they argue, creating thousands of new jobs.

The 10% Washtenaw campaign is primarily aimed at individuals, but it’s clear that institutional change is needed as well to reach that goal

In that regard, organizers of the March 2 food summit were heartened by some of the connections being made during the day, and at a kickoff reception held the previous night at the Kerrytown restaurant eve. The events were attended by a few elected officials, some University of Michigan folks, farmers, restaurateurs, food entrepreneurs, nonprofits, members of faith-based initiatives and others who are keen to make some significant changes in how we get our food to the table locally.

Educational institutions hold perhaps the most promise, in terms of efficiently finding large customers for locally produced food. At UM, chef Nelson “Buzz” Cummings has been instrumental in pushing the university’s food system to incorporate more locally grown food into their supply chain – this video from July 2008 sheds some insight into that effort.

Kim Bayer, a leader in the nonprofit Slow Food Huron Valley and one of the summit’s organizers, said that making connections was one of the main goals of the March 2 event. It’s about finding common ground, she said, and understanding that it’s possible “to do more together than we can do alone.”

Policy Initiatives: Local and State

“Doing more together” involves state and local government as well. In Ann Arbor, local food sufficiency is one of 10 environmental indicators tracked by the city. The primary objective of that indicator is to “conserve, protect, and restore local agriculture and aquaculture resources.”

Matt Naud, the city’s environmental coordinator, attended last week’s local food summit, and said he was impressed by the efforts already underway by a wide range of groups and individuals.

Matt Naud, the city of Ann Arbor's environmental coordinator, during a break at the March 2 Homegrown Local Food Summit.

While noting that local food sufficiency is one of Ann Arbor’s environmental indicators, Naud also told me that it hasn’t been one that’s received a lot of attention. [Under the category of "What is the city doing?" on the food sufficiency website, two items are listed: the Ann Arbor Farmers Market and the Project Grow gardens, which the city previously helped fund.]

To track its efforts in achieving the local food sufficiency goal, the city looks at two measurements – the amount of greenbelt land preserved, and the diversity of farmers market vendors. By comparison, the “clean air” indicator tracks seven different measures, “clean water” has eight, and “efficient mobility” has 11.

Greenbelt land isn’t always connected to the production of food for the local market. But in the past year, the link between greenbelt land and local food sufficiency has been strengthened. The Greenbelt Advisory Commission, which oversees the city’s 30-year millage that funds the greenbelt, is putting more emphasis on small farms when it considers the purchase of development rights. The commission discussed these efforts at length at their November 2009 meeting.

At the state level, food activists are hopeful about legislation introduced earlier this year by state Rep. Pam Byrnes, who represents the 52nd District, covering the mostly rural western side of Washtenaw County. The bill [HB 5837], which was introduced in February, would make it easier for owners of certain “cottage food” businesses to operate from their homes, rather than requiring them to use commercially licensed kitchens, as is currently the case.

The challenge of finding affordable, available and acceptable-to-the-task kitchen space is critical to local food entrepreneurs – The Chronicle has reported on two ventures that had difficulty with this: Maite Zubia, who makes homemade cookies called Maitelates Alfajores, and Mary Wessel Walker, who recently renamed her Community Farm Kitchen business as Harvest Kitchen. If passed into law, the legislation could eliminate a barrier for start-up food businesses – or for the success of those that intentionally remain small.

Other state-level efforts are underway. At the March 2 summit, Jennifer Fike, executive director of the Ann Arbor-based Food System Economic Partnership, gave a report on the Michigan Good Food Summit, held last month in Lansing. That gathering focused on statewide initiatives for the food industry, from advocating for regulatory reform to encouraging the institutional purchasing of locally grown food.

Getting the Word Out

I covered last year’s food summit for The Ann Arbor Chronicle, and the most notable difference between this year and last – aside from the larger turnout – was the very specific call to action made to participants during the March 2 event.

Participants of the March 2 Homegrown Local Food Summit write letters to themselves about steps they'll take to support the local food network and the 10% Washtenaw campaign.

The 10% Washtenaw initiative was the cornerstone of the day. In the morning, participants broke into small groups to design marketing campaigns for it – the results are featured in video clips on the summit’s website.

At the end of the day, organizers gave each participant a piece of paper and envelope – they were asked to write letters to themselves, setting goals and making commitments to support the local food network. Those letters – put into self-addressed, sealed envelopes – were collected and will be mailed back to the writers in five months, as a reminder of their goals.

Five months from now, I’m guessing most people in the room will have chipped away at those goals, even the really ambitious ones.

And the rest of us? That will be a tougher sell. I had lunch recently with a friend who lives in the outskirts of Ann Arbor, and who noted that within her circle of friends – at church, at work, in the neighborhood, and socially – conversations about buying more local food just don’t happen. It’s not even on the radar.

I’ll admit to being a little intimidated by the 10% effort – modest though it is. But it’s conceivable that I could do it: Organizers were smart in making it both concrete and attainable, even for those of us who would need to change our habits to reach it.

I have tremendous admiration for people like Linda Diane Feldt, who attended the summit with a plastic jug full of maple sap that she’d tapped recently from trees in the neighborhood – she was passing out samples, and the clear, slightly sweet liquid tasted like pure spring. And for Lisa Gottlieb and Jeff McCabe, who helped organize the summit and who’ve turned Friday Mornings @ SELMA into a powerful community gathering, showing how a celebration of local food can be a rip-roaring good time, too.

And for the folks at Slow Food Huron Valley, who’ve been pushing these local food efforts for years. Their more ambitious goals include forming a farm incubator program and a community credit union specifically to finance local food-related ventures.

Meanwhile, I’ll try to be more thoughtful about my own food consumption, day by day. Thin Mints are available just once a year, and I like them. I’m going to keep buying them, even though they’re “manufactured,” according to the box, in Louisville, Kentucky.

But just a few blocks away from the Main Street Thin Mint stand, over at the Farmers Market, is where Maite Zubia sells her amazing cookies. And I’ve watched her make them right here in Ann Arbor. So for the rest of the year, it’ll be Maitelates Alfajores for me.

Deirdra Stockmann, left, and Gillian Ream take notes while participants of the Homegrown Local Food Summit describe different events and programs focused on locally produced food in this area.

The March 2 Homegrown Local Food Summit aimed to be a zero-waste event – participants were asked to bring their own dishware for the lunch, which was catered by A Knife's Work, using locally produced food. The two settings deemed "most creative" won a prize – soap from the Ann Arbor Farmers Market.

A detail from a much larger chart showing of local food connections throughout Washtenaw County.

The table was filled at the potluck for Slow Food Huron Valley, held at Hathaway's Hideaway on South Ashley. To make it a zero-waste event, people brought their own dishware. (Photos by the writer.)

When a room of people cheers for root vegetables – and later, for pie – there’s probably a theme at hand. On Thursday, the theme was locally grown food, fêted at a potluck hosted by Slow Food Huron Valley. The 30 or so people at Hathaway’s Hideaway on South Ashley heard an update on the nonprofit’s activities over the past year, and got a preview of what’s to come in 2010.

There was also plenty to eat and drink: Derby sandwiches (with pickles, bacon and mayo), parmigiano pumpkin soup with prosciutto, spinach walnut pesto, vegan “slop,” sweet potato pie – most of these and other dishes made from locally grown or produced food.

The connection between the meal and the mission of Slow Food Huron Valley was clear, as Bayer – a member of the group’s leadership team – told the diners: “Good food needs to be a basic human right.”

Summits, Sign-Ups

During the dinner, leaders of Slow Food Huron Valley (SFHV) promoted several upcoming events, including a follow-up to last year’s Local Food Summit. [See Chronicle coverage: "Local Food for Thought"] The January 2009 event, held at Matthaei Botanical Gardens, drew about 120 people, including farmers, restaurateurs, nonprofit leaders, educators and other local food activists. The goal was to strategize about how to strengthen this area’s food network.

The 2010 summit is tentatively slated for March 2, said Shannon Brines, a member of the SFHV leadership, and owner of Brines Farm in Dexter. This year, they’re hoping to hold the event on the University of Michigan central campus, at a venue that can accommodate a larger crowd. No specific site has yet been confirmed. Registration will begin later this month on the SFHV website, Brines said.

Kim Bayer, left, and Shannon Brines promoted upcoming events at the Slow Food Huron Valley nonprofit's Jan. 14 potluck.

Brines noted that the local food summit will follow two related events next month in Dearborn and Lansing. On Feb. 19, an urban farming conference will be held on the UM-Dearborn campus, with Robert Kenner – maker of the documentary film Food Inc. – as keynote speaker. And on Feb. 25, the Michigan Good Food Summit will be held in Lansing, with the aim of developing a statewide sustainable food system.

Among the other local-food events that were highlighted at Thursday’s gathering:

• This year’s Pie Lovers Unite! is set for Saturday, July 24 at the Ladies’ Literary Club in Ypsilanti. Last year’s PLU featured pie prizes (including for the category of “most unusual” pie), pie haikus, pie charts and more. Admission is a pie.
• The 2010 HomeGrown Festival will be held on Saturday, Sept. 11. The 2009 event was a “jaw-dropping success,” Bayer reported – several thousand people attended, coming to the Ann Arbor Farmers Market area for locally grown food, chef’s demonstrations, live music and kids activities.
• Another Local Harvest Cook-Off is being planned for Sunday, Nov. 7. Like last year, it will be a potluck featuring dishes made from local ingredients and judged by local chefs. The event is organized by Tantre Farm and Old Pine Farm, which operate two local community-supported agriculture programs, known as CSAs. The judges for the 2009 event were Alex Young of Zingerman’s Roadhouse, Natalie Marble of Ann Arbor Cooks, and Corbett Day of the Lenawee Intermediate School District.
• A fundraiser to send local representatives to the 2010 Terre Madre conference in Torino, Italy will be sometime in mid-June, at a yet-to-be-determined location. Held every two years, Terre Madre is an international slow food network aimed at sharing best practices among farmers and other activists. “It’s basically the Olympics of slow food,” Brines said. In 2008, SFHV raised enough money to pay of the airfare of five local representatives: Brines; Eve Aronoff, owner of eve The Restaurant in Kerrytown; Molly Notarianni, Ann Arbor’s market manager; Zingerman’s Deli chef Rodger Bowser; and Aubrey Thomason, a cheesemaker with Zingerman’s Creamery.

Several ongoing events were also mentioned, including a monthly food-centric book club – the upcoming book to be discussed is “Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom” by Sidney Mintz.

Brines, who sells produce at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, reported that 19 vendors showed up last Saturday, despite the weather, and he urged people to drop by.

Deirdra Stockmann told the group that SFHV started to get political this year, participating in the national “Time for Lunch” campaign. It’s an effort to lobby Congress to revamp the National School Lunch program, putting more of a focus on healthy, locally produced food.

Other initiatives highlighted during Thursday’s dinner include a new effort to involve teens in the local food movement, a call for people who might be interested in food entrepreneurship to get together and brainstorm business ideas, and a reminder to make reservations for the upcoming Ann Arbor Restaurant Week, which runs from Jan. 17-22. Also, volunteers are needed to help plan the 2010 HollerFest, held each year by the King family of Frog Holler Farm, long-time vendors at the local farmers market. Ken King died last year – the family was given SFHV’s first Local Food Action Hero award in September.

Sign-up sheets for people interested in volunteering or participating in these events were available at Thursday’s potluck. For more information, email SFHV at leadership@slowfoodhuronvalley.org. In addition, the nonprofit’s monthly leadership meetings are open to the public – the next one on Feb. 2 begins at 6:30 p.m. in the second floor of Zingerman’s Next Door, 422 Detroit St. in Ann Arbor.

Nametags from people who've attended Friday Mornings @SELMA await their return. The tags are stuck to cabinets in a laundry room/entryway. (Photo by the writer.)

The Chronicle recently reported an amicable resolution between local government officials and organizers of an event in an arguably unorthodox location: An art show in an industrial park.

Many of the same elements were a part of the saga of Friday Mornings @SELMA: An event in an unorthodox location, a spike of concern from local officials that raised the specter of shutting it down, compromise, and an ultimate resolution that satisfies regulatory issues while keeping this fundraising event alive.

“It’s always cool when the government does something that makes sense,” said Lisa Gottlieb, who runs Friday Mornings @SELMA with her husband, Jeff McCabe, and a corps of volunteers.

What exactly is Friday Mornings @SELMA? Why did the government get involved, and what did they do that “makes sense”? And how is all of this related to the local food movement? We tell the tale after the break.

“Local Foods Breakfast Salon”

On their website Repasts, Present & Future, Gottlieb and McCabe describe their venture as a “local foods breakfast salon, offering a gathering place of friends and community that imagine a new, growing, vital, regional food economy – every Friday morning on the Westside of Ann Arbor.” The acronym SELMA stands for Soule, Eberwhite, Lutz, Liberty, Madison Affiliation, a neighborhood group loosely bounded by those streets on Ann Arbor’s Old West Side. While neighbors are a large part of the Friday morning breakfasts, the gatherings in the past have included a broader mix of people as well – friends from outside the neighborhood, friends of friends, and people interested in the local food movement.

Gottlieb and McCabe are deeply engaged in supporting locally grown and produced food, and their breakfasts – originally called the SELMA Café – evolved from a fundraiser they held on Feb. 15 for filmmaker and food activist Chris Bedford, which raised about $2,500. The Chronicle heard about that fundraiser from McCabe at a Local Food Summit we covered in January.

The event for Bedford was held on a Sunday, and worked so well (and had enough leftovers) that Gottlieb and McCabe decided to hold another breakfast on the following Friday, Feb. 20 – McCabe’s birthday. Friends who attended encouraged the couple to make it a regular happening, and they did, with the goal of raising money to support hoop-house construction and other local food initiatives.

Each week features a different chef – over the months, chefs passing through SELMA have included Max Sussman, Janea Mikowski from Carson’s American Bistro, and Silvio Medoro of Silvio’s Organic Pizza, among others. The chefs generally prepare two menu choices: Most recently, Eve Aronoff of eve the restaurant made chilaquiles with salsa verde, and eggs scrambled with basil-walnut pesto and sausage. John Roos of Roos Roast provides the coffee, and the tea is from Arbor Teas – owners Jeremy and Aubrey Lopatin live around the corner.

The chefs use local ingredients as much as possible, and cook in the spacious kitchen at the home of Gottlieb and McCabe, just down the street from Eberwhite Elementary School on Soule Boulevard. Many weeks, well over 100 people come to eat, chat and donate money. To date, they’ve raised about $15,000, according to McCabe.

A Nuisance and Safety Hazard?

Despite its popularity, not everyone was enamored of the venture. In April, an anonymous letter – signed from “an Eberwhite Elementary School parent” and complaining about the Friday breakfasts – was sent to the Washtenaw County Environmental Health Division, Ann Arbor clerk Jackie Beaudry, and Eberwhite Elementary principal Deb Wagner. Specifically, the letter outlined what the writer believed were various possible city and county code violations occurring at the home. The issues related to the city dealt primarily with the fact that there were live chickens on the property with no permit, as required by Ann Arbor’s chicken ordinance. (That issue has since been resolved.)

But more critical questions – falling under the county’s jurisdiction – concerned whether or not the Friday gatherings meant that Gottlieb and McCabe were operating a restaurant in a residential area, without licensing and inspection.

That complaint began a series of exchanges between county officials and Gottlieb and McCabe, who enlisted local attorney Kurt Berggren to help sort things out. The county contended that the couple was operating a food service establishment – if that were the case, they’d be subject to the same regulations as a restaurant.

To address the complaint and make clear that it wasn’t a restaurant, Gottlieb and McCabe quickly changed the name from SELMA Café to Friday Mornings @SELMA, and after conversations with the county, they made several other modifications: They took down signs around their house related to the breakfasts, changed their website to indicate that the meals were private, invitation-only events, and stopped posting the hours they’d be serving food.

But county officials were still convinced that Gottlieb and McCabe were marketing to the general public. Gottlieb addressed that issue in a letter she sent to Kristen Schweighoefer, the county’s environmental health supervisor, in mid-June:

There is a distinct difference in definition between general public and community. The definition of community, in terms of our activities, is a group made up of our family and friends, and their family and friends, who are interested and involved in creating sustainable farming and gardening practices that support our local, healthy food economy while educating and encouraging long term positive changes to how we grow, prepare and eat food. This community comes together to work towards our mission, while sharing a meal together in the confines of a private party within our home.

Reached by phone this week, Schweighoefer said that if the county had determined that the operation was a food service establishment, then Gottlieb and McCabe would have been required to comply with the 2005 U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s food code. Among other things, the code prohibits serving food to the public out of your home. They would have needed to move the event into a licensed facility, Schweighoefer said, or to remodel their home to separate the kitchen from their living space.

Reaching Resolution: Slow Food Huron Valley

It didn’t come to that. On July 2, Gottlieb and Berggren met with county officials, including Schweighoefer, corporation counsel Curtis Hedger, and Dick Fleece, director of the county’s public health/environmental health department. Gottlieb described the conversation as thoughtful, and said the officials “wanted to make it work.” They initially suggested that Gottlieb and McCabe form a nonprofit 501(c)(3), which would give them exemption from the definition of “food service establishment.”

When Gottlieb said they didn’t want to invest that level of time and energy into setting up a formal organization, county officials countered by suggesting that an affiliation with an existing nonprofit would suffice.

In fact, many people involved in the local food movement are already regulars at the breakfasts. Kim Bayer, president of the nonprofit Slow Food Huron Valley, has been doing weekly podcasts from the event, interviewing people there – like chef Brandon Johns, and Sarah Smith of the Ypsilanti Farmers Market – about local food issues. So when Gottlieb and McCabe started thinking about which nonprofit would be a good fit for them, Slow Food Huron Valley came to mind.

Slow Food Huron Valley, which has about 70 members and a mailing list of around 400, has a mission that dovetails with Friday Mornings @SELMA. The nonprofit is interested in promoting community food security, Bayer told The Chronicle, and making sure that good, clean food is accessible to everyone. Gottlieb and McCabe are taking concrete actions toward that goal with their hoop houses project, she said.

As part of their relationship, Gottlieb has joined Slow Food’s leadership team, and will serve as the nonprofit’s secretary. The money raised from the weekly breakfasts will be deposited in Slow Food’s Bank of Ann Arbor account, which includes funds for other agricultural initiatives that support the group’s food security goals.

Bayer said that county officials did what they needed to do to follow the processes and regulations they have in place. But the context is larger, she said: Our nation’s food system is broken, and the larger population needs to be more aware of that.

The formal affiliation with Slow Food Huron Valley ended this saga. A letter dated July 24, 2009 from Kristen Schweighoefer, the county’s environmental health supervisor, states that because of that relationship, “this operation no longer meets the definition of food establishment. As such, Fridays at Selma is not subject to licensure by this department.”

The relevant exemption is this, excerpted from the Michigan Food Law of 2000, Section 289.1107:

(j) “Food establishment” means an operation where food is processed, packed, canned, preserved, frozen, fabricated, stored, prepared, served, sold, or offered for sale. Food establishment includes a food processing plant, a food service establishment, and a retail grocery. Food establishment does not include any of the following:

(i) A charitable, religious, fraternal, or other nonprofit organization operating a home-prepared baked goods sale or serving only home-prepared food in connection with its meetings or as part of a fund-raising event.

Schweighoefer said that county officials must enforce the law, but on a personal level they are supportive of the local food movement. Following the formal affiliation with Slow Food Huron Valley, she said, “the complaint is closed.”

Gottlieb praised the officials who worked to find a solution to this atypical situation. “The county was asked to step up and think differently about something, and they did,” she said. “That’s how government should work.”

What’s Next?

Saying they’re relieved to put this behind them, Gottlieb said they can now focus on what they’ve been trying to support all along: Local farmers and local food production.

Their hoop house project aims to build enclosures around the region that will allow farmers to grow produce year-round. Through a micro-loan program, farmers will be able to buy materials for the hoop house, which will be constructed by volunteers. On Aug. 1, they’ll be building a hoop house for Brother Nature Farm in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood. In the Ann Arbor area, an Aug. 15 hoop house-raising is set for Tomm Becker’s farm off of Joy Road, northwest of the city. (Becker also is production manager for Michigan State University’s Student Organic Farm, near East Lansing.)

And in September, a series of events will highlight local food. Slow Food Huron Valley will announce its Local Food Action Hero Awards on Sept. 3 at a screening of Chris Bedford‘s new film, “Coming Home: E.F. Schumacher and the Reinvention of the Local Economy” – the event includes an after-party at the Grange Kitchen and Bar, which is expected to open next month at the location of the former Bella Ciao on West Liberty. On Labor Day, Sept. 7, Slow Food is hosting a potluck at Mitchell Elementary, part of a national effort to support reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act and to urge Congress to fund healthy food in schools.

And on Sept. 12, the Homegrown Festival at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market features locally grown and produced food, as well as chef demonstrations, kids activities and live music.

Meanwhile, Gottlieb and McCabe will be continuing their weekly breakfasts – not in a restaurant, or bistro, or public eatery of any kind – but in their home. Because those are the rules.

Molly Notarianni, manager of the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, was one of about 40 people at Wednesday's Slow Food Huron Valley annual dinner, held at Hathaway's Hideaway.

At Hathaway’s Hideaway on Wednesday night it was all about the food, as members of Slow Food Huron Valley gathered for their annual dinner with a potluck feast made mostly from … yes, locally grown food.

Potato chowder, cabbage salad, wild rice with Michigan cherries and walnuts, pumpkin pie, foraged greengage plum jam bars, wine from nearby Lone Oak Vineyard Estate – plates were full and so was a long dining table decorated with holiday garlands.

It was a night to talk about the year’s accomplishments – and there were many.

Kristin “KT” Tomey, a member of the group’s leadership team, reviewed some of the events they’d sponsored in 2008: an outing to Snow’s Sugarbush, a maple syrup farm in Mason; a food & film festival during June at Chelsea Library; the second annual Pie Lovers Unite event at the Ladies Literary Club in Ypsilanti (admission was one pie, with awards going to “most tasty,” “most local ingredients” and “most unique,” among others); and Dinner in the Vineyard, a fundraiser to send five local delegates to the Terra Madre conference in Turin, Italy. The five were on hand to talk about their experiences at the conference: Shannon Brines of Brines Farms in Dexter; Eve Aronoff, owner of eve The Restaurant in Kerrytown; Molly Notarianni, Ann Arbor’s market manager; Zingerman’s Deli chef Rodger Bowser; and Aubrey Thomason, a cheesemaker with Zingerman’s Creamery.

Grace Singleton, managing partner of Zingerman’s Deli and a member of the Slow Food Huron Valley leadership team, talked about her trip to Slow Food Nation, a conference held in San Francisco over Labor Day weekend. The folks from Michigan organized a tasting of the state’s products: fruits, cheese, apple cider, beer and more. It was a sold-out event, she said, and “everyone left the tasting doing a fist pump for Michigan.”

Several local vendors were selling their wares at the dinner. Lisa Waud of Pot & Box had bouquets of fresh flowers at a table shared with Maite Zubia, who makes traditional South American cookies called alfajores. Tammy Coxen of Tammy’s Tastings was selling her chocolates, including some Mighty Good Truffles made with Mighty Good Coffee, a local business owned by David Myers, who was also at the event.

And with a look toward the future, Shannon Brines told the group that a local food summit is being planned for early next year, with details to come. (Brines also discussed this effort at an October meeting of the Public Market Advisory Commission, of which he’s a member. Check out The Chronicle report of that meeting here.)

Grace Singleton and Kim Bayer are on the leadership team for Slow Food Huron Valley. Singleton is managing partner for Zingerman's Deli. Bayer writes the Farmer's Marketer blog.

Eve Aronoff, owner of the restaurant Eve in Kerrytown, was one of five delegates sponsored by Slow Food Huron Valley at the 2008 Terre Madre conference in Turin, Italy.

Maite Zubia and Lisa Waud were selling their wares at Wednesday's dinner. Zubia makes traditional South American cookies called alfajores. Waud is owner of Pot & Box, selling fresh and potted flowers.

Joel Goldberg inspects a pouring of white wine – either from Michigan or Ohio – as Heidi Kabanuk, Vinology's wine director, brings out more offerings to be judged on Sunday evening. A similar wine judging took place the following night in Columbus, Ohio.

“Did you hear why the Michigan-Ohio State game might be canceled? Because Michigan can’t get past Toledo.”

David Creighton told the joke while sitting at a table in Vinology’s Bubble Room with Joel Goldberg and Claudia Tyagi, waiting to be served 30 glasses of wine. Each. Everyone laughed – and they weren’t even hammered.

In fact, despite the fact that plenty of people who are focused on the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry this weekend will be intent on getting hammered, the gathering at Vinology on Sunday evening had an entirely different goal: To highlight the quality of each states’ wines, in the setting of a friendly competition staged in Ann Arbor and Columbus.

Here’s some words about the event for you to savor before we reveal the winners, but if you read The Chronicle like you drink your wine – straight from the bottle in one long chug – scroll right down to the bottom.

Sunday’s event illustrates the power of personal networks. Andrew Hall, who’s involved with Slow Food Columbus, had originally envisioned a kind of anti-Beaujolais Nouveau campaign, intended to highlight Ohio wines at a time when this year’s Beaujolais hits the shelves – that happened on Thursday. He talked with Bear Braumoeller, an Ohio State professor and another Slow Fooder, who suggested linking it to the Michigan-OSU rivalry. Braumoeller contacted his friend Julie Weatherbee, who agreed to handle the logistics under the auspices of Slow Food Huron Valley in Ann Arbor. That included the task of finding a venue.

Julie Weatherbee, right, handled the logistics for Sunday's wine tasting in Ann Arbor. Next to Weatherbee is her husband, Bob Droppleman. Inspecting the contents of the glass is Shana Kimball, one of the three Gastronomical Three, which is a local blog with a focus on food. In the background, the judges do their work.

After a bit of a search, she ended up at Vinology, which donated their basement Bubble Room, as well as the services of Heidi Kabanuk, the restaurant’s wine director and private events manager. They also provided some of the Michigan wines at cost, baskets of their made-in-house crackers to cleanse the pallet, and a few plates of hors d’oeuvres for the judges and 20 or so other guests who attended.

Weatherbee was also tasked with finding judges. At about this same time, The Chronicle published a wine column by Goldberg, which Weatherbee saw. She contacted him and he agreed to enlist others he knew in the wine community. Goldberg, whose column will appear in The Chronicle on the first Saturday each month, is editor of the MichWine website. He pulled in David Creighton, who has worked in the wine industry for 35 years and is currently writing a wine column for The Ann Arbor News, and Claudia Tyagi, a wine consultant and member of the elite Court of Master Sommeliers. The fourth original judge – Chris Cook, who was this year’s chief judge of the Michigan Wine & Spirits Competition couldn’t make the event. Goldberg’s wife Sally, a former editor of a wine trade magazine in South Africa who arrived a few minutes after the tasting began, was drafted to act as the fourth judge, with a minimum of arm-twisting.

Claudia Tyagi, a member of the Court of Master Sommeliers and a judge for the Michigan-Ohio Wine Clash.

Wines were brought out in flights of two to six glasses per category, beginning with sparkling wines. Though all had served as judges many times before, they were first briefed by Hall about the peculiarities of this particular contest. Primarily, that included the fact that they were using a 20-point system rather than the more common 100-point scale, and they were asked not to use half points. (This caused a bit of mild consternation – the judges felt that the 20-point scale did not allow for nuance, especially without the half-point option, but they did not press the issue.)

Hall provided scoring sheets, which outlined the maximum number of points allowed in each of five categories: appearance, aroma/bouquet, taste/texture, aftertaste/finish and overall impression. Each glass was marked with a number written on a tag that was affixed to the stem of the glass – only after the judging was completely finished for the evening did they learn which wines had been served.

After this point, much of the evening went like this: Swirl, sniff, sip, spit. Repeat.

The spitting part happened discretely into a mug, then when the mug reached capacity, judges would pour the liquid into one of two buckets set on the floor.

The judges remarked that this competition was more solitary than most. Typically, judges are asked to score after reaching a consensus, and so spend much time talking with each other about the various qualities and characteristics of the wine. On Sunday, things were often quite quiet.

David Creighton, a wine expert who currently writes a column for The Ann Arbor News. None of the judges wore maize, blue or red.

That’s not to say there wasn’t lively banter from time to time. Here are some of the judges’ more descriptive comments from throughout the evening:

• “It tastes like soap – acidic soap.”
• “This actually hurts my teeth.”
• “Is it gold enough for you?”
• “This is everything I don’t like in a California Chardonnay – and I found it in a Michigan Chardonnay!”
• “The older vintages are sublime when the oak drops out. But this one hasn’t reached sublimity yet.”
• “That’s as bretty as they get.”
• “For a lot of wines, it’s like opening a musty closet – they need to get out and stretch.”

So for The Chronicle, it was quite a spectator sport. And since it was abundantly clear that we don’t know the first thing about wine, the judges were gracious enough to try to explain what they were seeing, smelling and tasting. Exchanges went something like this:

David Creighton, deftly swirling the wine in his glass: “Smell this.”

The Chronicle, sticking our nose into the glass and breathing deeply: “Mmmm.”

Creighton: “It’s sulfur.”

The Chronicle: “Er…is that bad?”

The correct answer is yes.

On Monday, a similar judging occurred in Columbus, after which Hall compiled the results. He hopes this becomes an annual event, with the goal of promoting wines in both states, increasing consumer demand and prompting more restaurants to add local wines to their offerings. It might also increase the availability of Michigan wines in Ohio, and vice versa. Currently, state laws require that wine be sold through distributors, who often don’t have the economic incentive to deal with small local wineries, Hall said, especially ones that are out-of-state.

And now, the results you’ve been waiting for – the winners of the Great Wine Clash of ’08. In this competition, at least, it was a pretty good year for Michigan:

• Sparkling Wine: Shady Lane Cellars Blanc de Blancs 2000 (MI)
• Aromatic White: Ferrante “Golden Bunches” Riesling 2007 (OH)
• White Wine: Black Star Farms “Arcturos” Chardonnay sur lie 2006 (MI)
• Pinot Noir: Black Star Farms “Arcturos” Pinot Noir 2006 (MI)
• Red Wine: Kinkead Ridge Revelation 2006 (OH)

One final note: The “Arcturos” Chardonnay sur lie was Goldberg’s pick, in his Nov. 1 Chronicle column, for the best bargain in the city, at $11. Read about his other finds here.

Guests at the Ohio vs. Michigan Wine Clash – many of them members of Slow Food Huron Valley – watch the judges do their thing.

Andrew Hall, who organized the Ohio vs. Michigan Wine Clash, and Heidi Kabanuk, Vinology's wine director, pour wine for the judges. Heidi reports that she can carry 12 wine glasses at a time.

Joel Goldberg, publisher of the MichWine website, recently began writing a monthly wine column for The Chronicle.

Heidi Kabanuk serves the judges another flight of white wines. A black spit bucket is sitting on the northeast corner of the table.