Farm City

I've just finished the very well-written memoir Farm City by Novella Carpenter. My last post about this book (about my omnivore status) only touched on one major theme from this book. The story of Carpenter's years living in an Oakland ghetto and having a "squatter's garden" in an empty lot is compelling on many levels. She explores our relationship to the food we eat, our relationship to our parents and our family heritages, and the social dynamics of inner-city life and how our society does or does not care for people.

Reading the book, I could easily imagine being friends with Carpenter. She is the child of hippies who were back-to-the-landers for awhile (mine wished they were), she grew up in a small town near where I live now, she talks favorably of the college that I and my husband attended, and she lived for awhile in the Seattle neighborhood that I spent my early childhood in. Yes, we have many things in common, and a similar outlook on politics and life. However, I can only marvel at some of the experiments in urban farming she embarked upon:

• She raised bees so close to her apartment that there were always bees inside stinging people
• She slaughtered birds and rabbits in her city backyard
• She followed what she called "the 100 yard diet" for a month and only ate out of her own yard
• She raised two pigs by dumpster diving for food scraps all over the city
• She got a chef to teach her how to make salumi from her own pig meat

And all of this is recounted in a very nice writing style by a woman who has a likeable ability to self-observe and reflect on her own behaviors and motivations. A great read!

Here, someone had ignored convention and planted this fruiting plum tree. Maybe he had been hungry. Maybe the tree reminded him of home. Maybe he had imagined plum dumplings or plum jam. Whatever his motives, he watered the tree, didn't cut it down, let it flourish and fruit for all these years. Based on its size it must have been forty years old. Whoever planted it could never have predicted my existence - a crazy, starved, foraging locavore. The past was feeding me today, and I was grateful.