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    Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer
    Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer
    Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer
    Audiobook9 hours

    Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

    Written by Novella Carpenter

    Narrated by Karen White

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Novella Carpenter loves cities-the culture, the crowds, the energy. At the same time, she can't shake the fact that she is the daughter of two back-to-the-land hippies who taught her to love nature and eat vegetables. Ambivalent about repeating her parents' disastrous mistakes, yet drawn to the idea of backyard self-sufficiency, Carpenter decided that it might be possible to have it both ways: a homegrown vegetable plot as well as museums, bars, concerts, and a twenty-four-hour convenience mart mere minutes away. Especially when she moved to a ramshackle house in inner-city Oakland and discovered a weed-choked, garbage-strewn abandoned lot next door. She closed her eyes and pictured heirloom tomatoes, a beehive, and a chicken coop.

    What started out as a few egg-laying chickens led to turkeys, geese, and ducks. Soon, some rabbits joined the fun, then two 300-pound pigs. And no, these charming and eccentric animals weren't pets; she was a farmer, not a zookeeper. Novella was raising these animals for dinner. Novella Carpenter's corner of downtown Oakland is populated by unforgettable characters. Lana (anal spelled backward, she reminds us) runs a speakeasy across the street and refuses to hurt even a fly, let alone condone raising turkeys for Thanksgiving. Bobby, the homeless man who collects cars and car parts just outside the farm, is an invaluable neighborhood concierge. The turkeys, Harold and Maude, tend to escape on a daily basis to cavort with the prostitutes hanging around just off the highway nearby. Every day on this strange and beautiful farm, urban meets rural in the most surprising ways.

    For anyone who has ever grown herbs on their windowsill or tomatoes on their fire escape, or who has obsessed over the offerings at the local farmers' market, Carpenter's story will capture your heart. And if you've ever considered leaving it all behind to become a farmer outside the city limits or looked at the abandoned lot next door with a gleam in your eye, consider this both a cautionary tale and a full-throated call to action. Farm City is an unforgettably charming memoir, full of hilarious moments, fascinating farmers' tips, and a great deal of heart. It is also a moving meditation on urban life versus the natural world and what we have given up to live the way we do.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJul 23, 2009
    ISBN9781400182985
    Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

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    Reviews for Farm City

    4/5

    32 ratings23 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is the story of Novella Carpenter, daughter of former hippies, who now moves to Oakland, California, with her boyfriend Bill where the two of them start an urban farm on an undeveloped lot in a run-down section of town. What starts off as a small urban farm of only produce soon evolves into one with animals, beginning easily enough with chicks, ducks, geese, and turkeys. However, this farm later evolves into one complete with its own bees, rabbits, and, finally, two Duroc pigs. Novella's adventures in raising her animals among a motley assortment of neighbors is quite funny, often laugh-out-loud so. When it came time to kill her animals, though, I became a bit squeamish. Nevertheless, Novella treated it as simply what a farmer does. Things did not go very when it came time for her pigs to be slaughtered, but you'll learn why...and probably be as angry as I was,...when you read about it in this book. All told, this is a entertaining book to read for anyone interested in the greening of America and the back-to-the-land movement.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Read for book club.A memoir of a few years in Novella Carpenter's life, during which she kept bees, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, pigs, ducks and geese (and grew fruit and vegetables) on a vacant plot next to her apartment building (and in her apartment itself). I was never quite sure whose land she was squatting on - there were her African landlords, the developer Jack Chan... Anyway, until the pigs got too smelly, her neighbours seemed to tolerate the animals.I found this book fairly readable for the most part, although the last quarter, devoted mainly to curing pork, bored me and I skimmed it. Since it was a more or less month by month account, the only thing really driving the narrative was the lifecycle of the animals, which was perhaps why I didn't find it a page turner. My main problems with the memoir were a result of the character of Novella herself (I would give her credit for being consistently herself, but I didn't like her) and the fact that I never felt I had a handle on her life as a whole. What exactly were her other jobs? How much time did she have to spare to being a "farmer"? She had some odd attitudes to e.g. restaurant kitchens ("I expected to get groped..."), the police, people who keep their houses clean, and also a puzzling tendency to say "shined" when she meant "shone".I also worried for the animals, which she didn't seem to be terribly good at looking after - they were always being killed by predators or wandering into traffic. Then there was the entirely pointless decision to live off the produce of her garden for a month, something she decided to do on a whim and which clearly was very bad for her health, but which she seemed to feel was terribly important... Ultimately she made me feel that people should not be allowed to have urban farms, which I don't think was her intention!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I was totally sucked into finishing this, made me want to raise animals at home, for a minute.
    • 4/5
      Bloom where you're planted, even if it's in downtown Oakland surrounded by the ghetto. I loved the spunk of renting their apartment because of the huge lot next door, finding lumber for raised beds in the ubiquitous local garbage piles, and scavenging slops for the pigs amongst the dumpsters of Chinatown in the wee hours of the night. Now that is an enterprising way to put a garden together. Talk about DIY, re-purposing and finding uses for what others overlook. Talk about how to stretch out the tiny paycheck from a crappy job! Novella Carpenter, I make a glorious gesture sweeping off my imaginary hat to you.This was so much more fun to read about than, say, the tale of a manicured lady who hires all the labor done and gets her tasteful landscaping on the Garden Tour.Although I am an omnivore, I myself would probably be too squeamish for killing meat animals I'd raised myself. I know better. I would start out giving names and scratches and end up with pets instead of dinner. So I really have to give points for being able to carry through with the project. Loved the humor, loved her story, loved hearing about the neighbors and how she befriended the restaurant chef and learned the old-school ways of making pig carcass into salami and prosciutto. Now I want to start a squat garden on a vacant lot and invite all the neighbors to play Community Garden with me.
    • 4/5
      I was totally sucked into finishing this, made me want to raise animals at home, for a minute.
    • 4/5
      I love books like this. It really makes me wish I lived in a ghetto by an abandoned lot so that I could plant a garden and raise pigs. Living in a city myself, I am well aware of the massive food waste that happens on a daily basis. Pigs just make sense. By the end of the book my mouth was watering at the thought of my own home-made, home-grown bacon. Geez I want to be a midwestern housewife so bad!
    • 4/5
      Going far beyond the window sill selection of herbs, Novella Carpenter describes the trails, tribulations, and rewards of her appropriately deemed "urban farm", located in the ghetto of Oakland, which includes fowl, rodents, and mammals intended for the dinner table. The livestock in addition to her myriad of vegetables and fruits and beehive. Carpenter ultimately teaches that urban farming can nourish the body and soul of the individual, as well as that of the community.
    • 4/5
      If you're a city slicker entertaining fantasies of becoming a gentleman farmer one day, this book should be very close to the top of your reading list. It's an honest, thoughtful, interesting and funny account of a young couple struggling to become nutritionally self-sufficient in the slums of Oakland using a deck, a small townhome's yard and a squatter's garden set up on a vacant building lot. Even if you don't have agrarian tendencies, it is a great illustration of how one woman with not much more than a strong will and a little luck can a corner of the world others have forgotten or neglected. I'd recommend this book to just about everyone.
    • 5/5
      An absolutely awesome read about the trials and triumphs of farming and gardening in the city, written by a true blue farmer, Novella Carpenter. She not only walks the talk, but writes about it so gorgeously that it is really hard to put this book down. Carpenter is refreshingly down to earth about farming and gardening; she's practical about it, and by sharing her experiences she passes on practical information to those interested in urban farming. But even if you're not on the path to food self-sufficiency, you will find this book to be an incredibly entertaining read written by a talented storyteller.
    • 4/5
      Kindle. Loved this book. Not for the vegetarians in our midst. Makes me realize why I'm still not one. Took me back to my childhood. Lovely chickens, pigs, cows, sheep in the background. Fun to play with. Great to eat. This book is a great read for those who garden in the city. But this book focuses on the next steps: chickens, then geese and turkeys, then bunnies (moving into mammal territory now), and then pigs. Some of this reminds me of one of my favorite cooking books, Heat. Vegetables--and yes, meat--can bring you to meditations on life. As a child, I personally participated in killing the Sunday chicken. Loved little cute lambs and calves--and ate them next winter. I'm definitely into the mantra: eat less meat, more veges, be kind to your pets. But there is still a farmer inside me. The old school, Idaho kind.
    • 3/5
      Eh. I didn't like it, which reflects more on my preferred reading than on the book. It's more or less slice-of-life, which I find usually boring. It wasn't an adventure, because it came to no climax or conclusion; it wasn't a how-to, because it didn't go into enough detail. There were interesting bits, but most of it was annoying - she mocked her "trustafarian" friend for jumping from one thing to another, but she was doing much the same. She kept saying "now I'm a real urban farmer!" - when she got bees, when she ate the turkey, when she killed rabbits (and why it took her so long to ask her mother about methods...sheesh), when she lived off her garden (and I spotted the problem with carbs before she did - new potatoes aren't very starchy anyway) - over and over. She kept saying she'd achieved her goal and then setting a new bar for the same goal. I found her mostly annoying - ok, somewhat admirable, for sticking with the notion despite being utterly unready for the tasks she set herself, but still annoying. And it really doesn't end...just kind of dribbles off with her assurance that despite (probably, really this time, maybe) losing the space she wrote about, she'll have a farm wherever she ends up. Hmmmph.
    • 4/5
      My local library asked me to do a presentation on eating local in March when they are featuring this book so I figured it would be good to read it. This is the story of a women living in Oakland who becomes an "urban farmer" raising veggies, fruit, bees, and animals. Sort of a ghetto version of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle . . . but a lot more about the meat which was hard for me to read. Have to admire this woman's spunk though!
    • 4/5
      An entertaining book about a young woman's effort at a backyard urban farm in the ghetto of Oakland. She also tells of a bevy of quirky and very diverse neighbors (one homeless, homed, different nationalities & ideologies) that nonetheless form a community. Interesting literary references and details about the more difficult & gory aspects of farming.
    • 3/5
      This was maybe not mind-blowing, but it was certainly entertaining. Heavy on the raising and slaughter of animals.
    • 5/5
      Delightful! The author is so funny. What a fun and educational book. You won't find a more colorful cast of characters, and I believe the book may be nonfiction. The author and husband move from Seattle to Oakland, CA into a raggedy old downtrodden neighborhood. Novella gets beehives and uses an empty lot, with permission, to make a community garden. The neighbors are priceless! Soon Novella graduates to chickens, then rabbits, then pigs. It's a hilarious ride. All this in a small space in a city, where life is gritty and varied. The beautiful thing is that many different cultures get along and thrive here in harmony. The book has heart. Don't miss this one!

    • 4/5
      The subject matter was actually quite fascinating. The way that Ms. Carpenter and her partner manage to not only grow a garden but raise farm animals in the middle of Oakland is quite the adventure. Her account of raising hogs for slaughter was crazy! The work they put in to scavenge slop for their pigs and chickens sounds exhausting - the food may be "free" but they pay for it in man hours and muscles strained. The author's contemplations on community, on the virtue of garden grown vegetables, the curiosity of bee habits and chicken personalities - they are all interesting. What the book lacks is a more clear narrative thread. Instead it felt a bit like isolated events stuck together. Still, there is much to be gleaned.
    • 4/5
      If you'll be disturbed by descriptions of humanely slaughtered animals, this book isn't for you.I found this to be charming, educational, and funny. I lost sleep on more than one night to read "just one more chapter."
    • 4/5
      Charming, funny memoir of Novella as she lives on a "farm" in downtown Oakland, CA. Starts w/bees, poultry, bunnies, pigs. Learns a lot about gardening & herself.
    • 2/5
      Rather slow and uninteresting in parts. Took me quite awhile to get through it.
    • 5/5
      Excellent book and a great read for anyone concerned with the future of some of our struggling cities. Every revitilization committee should have to read this book!
    • 4/5
      When Novella Carpenter and boyfriend Bill move from Seattle to Oakland, they choose their apartment for its cast of eccentric neighbors and the empty lot behind the building. In short order, Novella has taken over the lot, not only with a garden of heirloom vegetables, but chickens, bees, and even pigs. Because she is essentially squatting on another’s property, she is very generous about allowing strangers to partake of the fruits of her labor, while waiting for bulldozers to clear her space for condominiums. Being in the heart of what she describes as “the ghetto”, her neighbors all turn a blind eye to her more-than-likely illegal activities because everyone there is doing something they shouldn’t be. She fits right in.Farm City is not, however, a simple tale of a girl and a garden. Carpenter eloquently makes a case for raising your own food. Her inclusion of meat birds and pigs in her urban farm allows her to reconcile her consumption of meat and her need to harvest such food respectfully. Her dependence on those with more experience uncovers a wealth of diversity among her neighborhood and growing circle of friends. Farm city is an inspiration on many levels.
    • 4/5
      I tip my cap to Ms. Carpenter for what she's done, both in word and deed. This was an entertaining and inspiring read, made even more apropos by being set one or two neighborhoods south of where I live.
    • 5/5
      This book is a lot of fun to read this summer or any summer for that matter. Novella Carpenter and her husband decide on an apartment in urban Oakland based on the fact that the lot next door is abandoned. She had done some urban farming and beekeeping previously in Seattle, but this one will become much larger. The book is broken into 3 parts: turkey, rabbit, pig. This will give you an idea of what is to come. Novella begins to squat garden in the lot with various plants and she soon gets a chicken coop. She has bees on the back porch on the second story apartment. I had expected more details about her gardening choices, but she really gets into the neighborhood and what life in urban cities is really like. I just loved the stories about her encounter with the local street kids and the drug dealers and so on. I also appreciated that she made the decisions to have various "farm" animals and raise them just so she can eat the meat. She actually butchers all of it! I've passed my copy off to my husband and he is enjoying it as much as I did. I look forward to her next book....