Homegrown Food Celebration Set for Friday

Representatives from area fresh food markets will be on hand — with items to sample and buy — at the Food, Glorious Food! fundraiser Friday at Silver Maples of Chelsea.

The celebration of locally produced food will open at 2:30 p.m. Representatives from Slow Food Huron Valley, Chelsea Community Kitchen, Chelsea Farmers Market, Lunasa Market, Bushel Basket Farmers Market and Back Forty Acres will be on hand to talk about the importance of local markets.

“ 'Local food' is really a shorthand way of saying that there’s something valuable about where we live,” said Kim Bayer of Slow Food Huron Valley, a nonprofit chapter of Slow Food USA. “The value of local food is that it makes us want to take care of the place where we live, makes us see it with new eyes.

“Local food is also a way of saying something about the kind of community where we want to live — a community that’s resilient, self-sufficient and inclusive. The value of local food is that it can become an avenue for creating a meaningful life and a worthwhile future — one where everyone has good food.”

Slow Food Huron Valley is dedicated to improving the local food system, strengthening community food security and preserving its culinary heritage, Bayer said.

“We help to organize large-scale events like the HomeGrown Festival and the Local Food Summit, but we also do smaller-scale potlucks, farm tours, movie screenings, meet-ups and more," she said.

This year, the all-volunteer organization hosted its fifth annual Pie Lovers Unite pie extravaganza in Ypsilanti, which featured more than 50 homemade pies; initiated a Great Lakes Heirloom Seed Trial focused on reclaiming and improving open-pollinated vegetables adapted to this region; and hosted the Michigan Good Food Film Festival, which organizers hope will become an annual event.

“I got involved in Slow Food Huron Valley because everybody eats, and food is something that binds us to each other and that helps us care for the place where we live,” Bayer said. “Slow Food has been a meaningful way for me to examine the values I’d like to live — and a way to connect the past and the present to a hopeful future.

“It’s also been inspiring and humbling to meet and get to know incredible people whose care and expertise brings us healthy food," she said. "We welcome people of any age to work with us to create a good food future for all.”

Bayer said there has been a tidal wave of interest in understanding how food reaches consumers.

“From rejecting factory-farmed meat to signing up for community-supported agriculture farm shares, there’s real energy and a national conversation going on that's changing our assumptions about our food,” she said. “I’d encourage everyone to get to know a farmer, a cheese maker or a bread maker. These people are often doing heroic work.”

Bernadette Malinoski, president of the Chelsea Community Kitchen board of directors and a volunteer staff member, is a native of southwest Pennsylvania, where she and her family would buy produce from roadside stands and truck stalls set up by fruit and vegetable vendors.

Since she moved to Michigan, she has enjoyed buying local produce at places such as the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, Ruhlig’s Farm Market, Chelsea Farmers Market and Bushel Basket Farmers Market on the grounds of Chelsea Community Hospital. Malinoski is also a member of the Chelsea Wellness Coalition's Eat Better Subcommittee.

“It’s most people’s experience that diets don’t work,” she said. “I’d like to get people thinking in terms of ‘live-its’ when it comes to their eating habits — that is, healthy behavior related to eating that is sustainable and viewed as a natural part of living rather than something one has to do.”