Gardening in the Ghetto -- a Review of Farm City

Monday, June 8, 2009

If you liked Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, my guess is that you will love Novella Carpenter's new book, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer



Carpenter's writing is both gritty and funny and generally a pleasure to read. The book chronicles Carpenter's somewhat unintentional experience of creating a "squat garden" in the vacant lot next to her apartment building in Ghost Town, which is what she and the other residents call their rundown neighborhood located near downtown Oakland.

Photo of Novella Carpenter courtesy of Novella Carpenter via Ghost Town Farm blog

Carpenter starts out with vegetables but ends up with bees, goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits, geese, turkeys and even two pigs! Along the way, she and her boyfriend Billy befriend their new neighbors -- a motley crew including Bobby, a homeless man who sleeps in an abandoned car on their block, a woman named Lana ("it's 'anal' spelled backwards," Lana points out when she first meets them) who runs a speakeasy out of her apartment, and a temple-full of Vietnamese monks.

Photo of baby goat Eyore courtesy of Ghost Town Farm blog by Novella Carpenter
She also makes new friends including Willow, the pioneering urban farmer who started City Slicker Farms and local chef, Chris Lee who teaches her how to turn the two pigs she and Billy raise entirely on scraps from green bins throughout Chinatown and from food foraged from local dumpsters into delicious hand-cured meats.

Along with the journey from gardener to urban farmer, Novella takes us soul-searching on topics like the divisions between races, classes, and rural and urban dwellers, what it means to be a carnivore, and how raising your own animals for food changes that dynamic. All the while, she pours her heart into growing something green, beautiful and nourishing
that feeds not only her and Billy but their friends and neighbors in Ghost Town, as well.

Novella attended UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism where studied under Michael Pollan and her training as a journalist has not gone to waste. Her writing is excellent -- evocative, quirky, funny and brutally honest. My interest in her story never waned and I even found myself laughing aloud at times as I read.

Give Farm City a read -- I don't think you'll regret it. You can keep up with Novella's adventures at her blog -- Ghost Town Farm.

You might also like:

Review: The Dirty Life: a Memoir of Farming, Food & Love
Review: The Urban Farm Handbook
Finding Our Way Back To Food, An interview with Ann Vileisis, Author of Kitchen Literacy
For more delicious recipes, gardening ideas, foraging tips, and food-related inspiration "like" the Garden of Eating on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter and Pinterest.

1 comment:

maybelle's mom said...

lucky you; getting an advanced copy.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Gardening in the Ghetto -- a Review of Farm City

If you liked Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, my guess is that you will love Novella Carpenter's new book, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer



Carpenter's writing is both gritty and funny and generally a pleasure to read. The book chronicles Carpenter's somewhat unintentional experience of creating a "squat garden" in the vacant lot next to her apartment building in Ghost Town, which is what she and the other residents call their rundown neighborhood located near downtown Oakland.

Photo of Novella Carpenter courtesy of Novella Carpenter via Ghost Town Farm blog

Carpenter starts out with vegetables but ends up with bees, goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits, geese, turkeys and even two pigs! Along the way, she and her boyfriend Billy befriend their new neighbors -- a motley crew including Bobby, a homeless man who sleeps in an abandoned car on their block, a woman named Lana ("it's 'anal' spelled backwards," Lana points out when she first meets them) who runs a speakeasy out of her apartment, and a temple-full of Vietnamese monks.

Photo of baby goat Eyore courtesy of Ghost Town Farm blog by Novella Carpenter
She also makes new friends including Willow, the pioneering urban farmer who started City Slicker Farms and local chef, Chris Lee who teaches her how to turn the two pigs she and Billy raise entirely on scraps from green bins throughout Chinatown and from food foraged from local dumpsters into delicious hand-cured meats.

Along with the journey from gardener to urban farmer, Novella takes us soul-searching on topics like the divisions between races, classes, and rural and urban dwellers, what it means to be a carnivore, and how raising your own animals for food changes that dynamic. All the while, she pours her heart into growing something green, beautiful and nourishing
that feeds not only her and Billy but their friends and neighbors in Ghost Town, as well.

Novella attended UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism where studied under Michael Pollan and her training as a journalist has not gone to waste. Her writing is excellent -- evocative, quirky, funny and brutally honest. My interest in her story never waned and I even found myself laughing aloud at times as I read.

Give Farm City a read -- I don't think you'll regret it. You can keep up with Novella's adventures at her blog -- Ghost Town Farm.

You might also like:

Review: The Dirty Life: a Memoir of Farming, Food & Love
Review: The Urban Farm Handbook
Finding Our Way Back To Food, An interview with Ann Vileisis, Author of Kitchen Literacy
For more delicious recipes, gardening ideas, foraging tips, and food-related inspiration "like" the Garden of Eating on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter and Pinterest.

1 comment:

maybelle's mom said...

lucky you; getting an advanced copy.