Novella Carpenter

I went to the book reading for Farm City. The book is about the urban farm. The talk was quite interesting. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the talk. Novella lives in Oakland, CA aka the ghetto. She started planting a garden on some land she was squatting on. Then she eventually started raising chickens, pigs, and bunnies. She was growing a lot of her own food and providing a lot of her own meat. I found her quite funny because she is really crass and honest about her thoughts. Her stories were funny and really strange. She said because feed was so expensive she started dumpster diving for leftover food. This provided most of her feed. Eventually she bought some pigs to give them the really gross stuff that she and her boyfriend would find. The pigs loved the slop and grew quite fat. She also started raising goats as an animal she didn't have to kill and could use them for milk. Overall, I thought she was very interesting. I have my own personal desires to grow my own food and even small livestock. I am not sure if I will be in the country or in the city when this happens but I look forward to finding out. Urban farming is on the rise apparently so I will not look like a complete weirdo.