Selma Cafe co-founder Jeff McCabe grew up in Seattle with raspberry patches, rose gardens, wild mushrooms, rhododendrons and his fathers foot-deep garden beds of heavily composted soil.

With a background in engineering and construction, Jeff resonates with the Buckminster Fuller quote:”You can never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” After losing a long-held garden in the Zion Church – Project Grow site to development, Jeff has launched into a new wave of gardening, hoop-house building, meat curing, chicken raising, bread baking, cheese making, fund raising and general rabble rousing around all issues related to food sourcing and community building.

Jeff is the owner and operator of Nifty Hoops, a hoophouse design, manufacturing and installation company based in Ann Arbor. Jeff also co-founded the Tilian Farm Development Center. He served as a board member for the People’s Food Cooperative in Ann Arbor, as well as the steering committees for HomeGrown Festival and the Local Food Summit. Jeff volunteers for the non-profit Kiva.org to increase lending to small-scale sustainable farmers. In 2012, Jeff spoke on the Tedx U-M stage, which you can view HERE.

Jeff seeks nothing short of the transformation of our region into a world-class food tourism destination, with all the benefits this implies for the inhabitants of this fertile landscape.

(Photo credit: Myra Klarman)