Most urban farmers confine their agricultural efforts
to vegetables, fruit, and the occasional egg-laying chicken. But on her
small plot in Oakland, California, Novella Carpenter has raised bees,
goats, rabbits, geese, and turkey, among other fauna.
A graduate of the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where she studied with Michael Pollan, Carpenter now writes about urban farming and sustainable-food production for various publications, including her blog, Ghost Town Farm. Her memoir, Farm City, is due out this summer from Penguin Press.
Why did you want to start a farm in the city, rather than moving to a rural area?
I think people have a lot of nostalgia and yearning for these pastoral places, but my parents did that — they were back-to-the-land hippies in the 1970s — and it quickly became clear to me that city people moving to the country is kind of a horrible idea.
