The Slow Food USA Blog

Urban Bounty: Veggies, Fowl, Pork and Tumbleweaves

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“What the hay is an urban farmer?!” It’s a question both Farm City

author cum Oakland’s “Ghost Town Farm”(er) Novella Carpenter and myself have wrestled with, and heck, had to come to terms with. Even while the word – like locavore before it – seems to have finally been uploaded to the American lexicon, the term still perplexes a great many, which only goes to show how much more work we have to do collectively to turn the tide in favor of sustainable cities and foodbelts.

I remember my own days in Rochester, NY as an urban farmer growing on school grounds and on borrowed backyard land across the city when I’d be approached with the eternal question of “what are you doin’ over there?!” You can even imagine the looks of disbelief (and sometimes horror) when I’d tell a handsome gentleman in a bar that I was a farmer. They’d take one look at (cleaned-up) me and say “You?!”

Often times, when my kitchen floor was covered with dirt and produce awaiting delivery, my countertops lined with foul-smelling jars of moldy tomato pulp, and entire rows of Brussel’s sprouts thought to be collards were uprooted and sold on the street for crack money, I’d stop and say to myself: “I should keep a diary and turn this experience into a book.” Well, Novella beat me to it. So you can only imagine my great interest in reading this book about a trailblazing young woman with more chutzpah than most dudes workin’ the land and raising livestock in one of Oakland, CA’s less “tasteful” neighborhoods strewn with tumbleweaves (yes, discarded hair pieces that have become part of the landscape).

The book is organized not by the four seasons as one might expect of a farmer’s journal, but rather in three sections: Turkey, Rabbit, Pig. For each of three years on the farm detailed in the book, Novella Carpenter and beau gradually up the urban farming ante in the species that thrive on their squatted lot. At times there seems to be an inverse relationship to her level of sanity too – hogs in the inner city? Yes, the book is complete with stories of dumpster diving in the alleys behind Berkeley’s famed restaurants for pig feed and neighbors complaining of stench, and anxiety leading up to the eventual slaughter of the numerous residents of which she has become so fond. Novella is even a fan of Slow Food, and has taken to raising a few Ark of taste varieties of veggies and poultry.

There is a comedic element to the book, and the author does a wonderful job of depicting not just her tiny farm plot, but her farm’s place in the wider Oakland – and Bay area – community. Her neighborhood is not just a cast of characters in Charlotte’s Web, but also of the Vietnamese downstairs neighbors, the eccentric woman across the street hosting monthly speak-easies, the homeless man Bobby who has taken on the role of block security guard, Buddhist monks, and other colorful Oakland residents.

Admittedly, as this is the author’s first full-length book (she’s bee a contributor to Mother Jones, Saveur, sfgate.com and others), there are portions of the book which could be a bit tighter, the transitions and allusions a bit smoother, more organic – but overall a delightful read. You share in the delight of the author’s first taste of honey from her own porch apiary, and wallow in her sadness and anger when the lone surviving watermelon in the yard is snagged by neighborhood low-life.

It’s not a book I’d necessarily recommend to most vegans I know (there are parts of this book in which Novella not only waxes poetic about bacon, but details the slaughter of a rabbit and later even tastes a piece of pig brain), but as you read you quickly begin to realize that Novella Carpenter has only the deepest respect for the animals to which she tends. They are her (temporary) friends for whom she wants a painless death, and praise for the life that has been offered to sustain her.

Whatever you have to say about the book’s style in the end, one thing you can’t deny is that Novella Carpenter is makin’ urban farmin’ work. And for that she deserves respect. Let’s hope this book inspires some more city slickers out there.