Farm City: the Education of an Urban Farmer

Think living in the city means you need to grocery shop to get food? Think again. Novella Carpenter took her apartment near downtown Oakland and the vacant, overgrown lot next door and became an urban farmer. She recollects the tales and trials of life on the farm in Farm City: education of an urban farmer. Over the course of the book she finds community within her rough and tumble neighborhood through a series of up and downs ranging from a home grown and slaughtered Turkey for Thanksgiving, to the theft of her prized, under ripe watermelon, all intertwined with stories from her mother’s days on a farm in Idaho, and history facts on the plants and animals that cycle through her deck and squatter lot.

            Readers that have enjoyed The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for a Year, and Urban Farm Handbook: City Slicker Resources for Growing, Raising, Sourcing, Trading, and Preparing What You Eat should be able to find a good few days read in Farm City as it offers information on Carpenter’s trials, errors, and successes.

            Every word from Carpenter’s pen reads as though she were just telling the story face to face. Here she relays the time she discovered that slugs were destroying her treasured watermelon vines: “I know there were more slugs – bigger slugs, the mothers and fathers of these babies… later in the day, as the sun set, I drank a strong cup of tea and strapped on my head lamp. Prepared for hand-to-hand combat, I went slug hunting.” She attacks each challenge with similar gusto and humor, handing each tale to the reader with equal parts enthusiasm, pride and concern, though not without a fair share of self mockery, sarcasm, and heart felt reflection.

Life in GhostTown, Carpenter’s neighborhood, in Oakland is comparable to the Wild West with gun fights and a sense of general lawlessness, despite the frequent scream of sirens. On her dead end 28^th Street, (the 2-8) she adds a little farm living to the mix of already colorful characters. Bobby lived on a farm in Arkansas and offers advice about slaughtering her pigs, while trying to avoid getting the car he lives in towed away. Lana (anal spelled backwards as she introduces herself) loves animals and helps with the set up the garden. It is with these people and others that Carpenter shares her bounty, hardships, and stories. At times I sat wondering if I really cared about the historical significance of the turkey, and why this information was being fed to be, but in the end I remained thankful for the information and the interesting way the community reacted to her growing homestead.

            At the start of her urban farming adventure she has a tally on her fridge that reads “4 chickens, 30,000 bees [approximately], 59 flies, 2 monkeys [me and my boyfriend Bill]” and over the course of the book she acquires several more chickens (for meat this time), ducks, geese, turkey, rabbits, and the biggest project of all, the pigs. The book is split into growing stages of the farm: Turkey, Rabbit, and Pig respectively. Each of these also explore the history of the animals as well as relate back to stories that her mother repeatedly tells, a trait that she understands the more she works on her little farm.

Novella Carpenter’s roots go back to a farm in Idaho. As the daughter of two hippies determined to live off the land, she was raised with that self-sustaining lifestyle and it stayed with her to this day. She and her boyfriend Bill still live in Oakland in a homestead referred to as GhostTown Farm. She runs a blog about the goings on and interacting with other inventive urban farmers and has co-written other works such as The Essential Urban Farmer and Don't Jump! The Northwest Winter Blues Survival Guide. She received a Degree from in English at the University of Washington Seattle, an attended the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She had already appeared in Mother Jones, salon.com and the San Francisco Chronicle’s website SFgate.com before starting her blog about GhostTown.

Whether you enjoy the idea of a woman farming in Oakland, want to learn farm history facts to impress your friends at parties (there’s always that one person right?) or want to grow your own farm and don’t know where to start, Carpenter’s Farm City has the seeds and sunshine you need. It is a warm reflection on community, childhood, family, and good old hard work. All in all, if you are looking for in depth, step by step instructions on running a farm, there are many other books to look for at your local library. However, for a broader scope, or a hobby, this book is just enough to get even the biggest city folks to consider growing tomatoes on their balconies.