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Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer [Hardcover]

Novella Carpenter (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
List Price: $25.95
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Hardcover, Bargain Price $10.38   $6.99 $6.15
Hardcover, June 11, 2009 $17.13   $5.00 $2.77
Paperback $10.88   $8.70 $6.30
Audio, CD, Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged $18.99   $15.03 $11.00
Audible Audio Edition, Unabridged $18.37 or $7.49 with new Audible.com membership

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Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer + The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre! + The Urban Homestead (Expanded & Revised Edition): Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (Process Self-reliance Series)
Price For All Three: $42.23

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this utterly enchanting book, food writer Carpenter chronicles with grace and generosity her experiences as an urban farmer. With her boyfriend BillÖs help, her squatterÖs vegetable garden in one of the worst parts of the Bay Area evolved into further adventures in bee and poultry keeping in the desire for such staples as home-harvested honey, eggs and home-raised meat. The built-in difficulties also required dealing with the expected noise and mess as well as interference both human and animal. When one turkey survived to see, so to speak, its way to the Thanksgiving table, the success spurred Carpenter to rabbitry and a monthlong plan to eat from her own garden. Consistently drawing on her Idaho ranch roots and determined even in the face of bodily danger, her ambitions led to ownership and care of a brace of pigs straight out of E.B. White. She chronicles the animalsÖ slaughter with grace and sensitivity, their cooking and consumption with a gastronomeÖs passion, and elegantly folds in riches like urban farming history. Her way with narrative and details, like the oddly poetic names of chicken and watermelon breeds, gives her memoir an Annie Dillard lyricism, but itÖs the juxtaposition of the farming life with inner-city grit that elevates it to the realm of the magical. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

[Audio Review] Highways roared in the distance. Gunshots could be heard a few blocks away. And a homeless man slept in an abandoned car down the street. Among these modern-day urban scenes, author Novella Carpenter put down roots literally turning a vacant lot in Oakland, California, into a working mini-farm, complete with vegetables, herbs, chickens, ducks, and bees. Karen White reads these lively accounts of missteps and delicious victories, including recipes, with the author's intelligence, humor, and devotion to the American ideal of hard work and self-sufficiency. Farming is about food, and food is always about people. Carpenter's encounters with third-world neighbors, block parties, and the boy who came to buy a rabbit are beguiling and inspiring. B.P. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine --AudioFile --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (June 11, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1594202214
  • ISBN-13: 978-1594202216
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #129,162 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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More About the Author

Novella Carpenter
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Customer Reviews

60 Reviews
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4.5 out of 5 stars (60 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing read, July 4, 2009
By Christine Lee Zilka (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer (Hardcover)
Farm City is an awesome read, written by Novella Carpenter, whose book I rank up with Bill Buford's wonderful Heat, with the spirit of Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. And I love the voice-Novella the narrator often wonders why people open up to her and accept her so readily (among others, Chris Lee of Eccolo, who teaches her how to prepare pork from her pigs); the voice of the narrator (straightforward, funny, unblinking to the point of childlike wonder, compassionate) is hers, and as a reader I found myself liking her so very much.

I mean, she describes her community in the ghetto with compassion and humor (describing the "tumbleweeds" as "tumbleweaves").

I've been meaning to buy the book at one of our local stores, at one of Novella's book tour readings, but my availability did not intersect with her schedule. And so I ordered the book off Amazon-but for as long as I waited to buy her tome, I wasted no time in cracking it open and settling in for what turned out to be an absorbing, delightful, educational reading of a book that drips with optimism and moxie in a world that has in recent months, gone dark and brooding.

Novella has a farm. She has a farm on an abandoned lot in a part of Oakland nicknamed "Ghost Town," near the freeway and BART tracks. I've visited her farm and was astonished on my first visit to discover an oasis in a part of town that is not a destination site for many-most people drive past it on the freeway, ride past it on BART, there are very few grocery stores, and abandoned lots are many. Like the Valley of Ashes in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. But on her street corner, behind a chain link fence, is a lot full of green vegetables and myriad fruits, with a quiet symphony of animal noises.

The farm is serious work, with its share of tragedy: some of her birds die at the mercy of wild neighborhood dogs. Because the abandoned lot on which she squats and plants the garden is purposely unlocked, sometimes others come by and harvest things without permission. (This, she takes in stride-it's not "her" land and she willingly shares the harvest). A farm, rural or urban, is not a perfect fairytale. Nature is unpredictable-but rewarding and complex, too.

When Novella's animals are slaughtered (by her or, rarely, by a third party), it is not a heartless act but a very complex one; sad, respectful, awful, spiritual, and ultimately, pragmatic.

When she buys pigs at auction, unsure of what "Barrow" or "Gilt" might mean, she asks a boy, "Does G mean `girl'?" The way she describes the boy's reaction, "He looked at me as if he might fall over from the sheer power of my enormous idiocy. Then he nodded, so stunned by my stupidity he couldn't speak," is so full of humility and frank humor that I was bowled over as a reader. I laughed out loud. (lol to you). Most writers in the foodie/food realm are so pompous and full of themselves, that I was truly delighted and charmed by Novella here.

I'm always interested in novel structure, and I took a quick look at how Novella structured Farm City: Rabbit, Turkey, Pig. (Those who read her blog know she has added goats to her farm in recent years).

The book is written, more or less, chronologically-because Novella really did start with rabbits, moving on to turkeys, and then pigs. But I still found the livestock-centric structure interesting and effective because yes, to a farmer life and time revolves around the livestock at hand.

The book is on Oprah's list of 25 books to read this summer, and deservedly so.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Well worth the cost of a shiny new hardcover, June 23, 2009
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer (Hardcover)
Imagine raising a pig or two in the gritty ghetto on dumpster food then having it turn out to be a project of master world class artisanal salumi making handed down by a few thousand years in Tuscany and transfered to America. Not bad work Novella. Not to mention it is a sweet recognition now when I see the sopressetta and pancettas at the store and know what they really mean and what they came from. It also explains the cost.

Novella's inspiring hard to believe adventures are really grounded in her thoughtful research and willingness to try new things, being imaginative and skilled is what it takes to create the ultimate luxury of self sufficiency on a dime, thrown in with the fact that she is a book collecting explorer of cuisine.

In this book you get the full contrast of Novella. From her inner city life filled with profanity, drug busts and homelessness framed against delicate peach blossoms and honey bees that drift delicately over to the Bhuddist monastery located on her street. It's an eye opener for those contrasts alone so that we may remember our smallest fortunes are all around us.

I hope this author continues with writing in her sharing way (sharing as a farmer shares).
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars ANIMAL farming...just FYI, March 3, 2010
By kj (Maryland) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   
This review is from: Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer (Hardcover)
This isn't a bad book, but it's not quite what I thought it would be. While the author, Novella, does discuss vegetable gardening, the focus really becomes the ANIMALS she raises on the small empty lot behind her rented apartment in the run-down city of Oakland, CA. That's all fine and dandy, but since she's raising them for food, it's a little...depressing?

Now I am a 'mostly vegetarian,' so there's that factor. And I get the whole 'I raised the animals myself so they had a better life prior to dying' deal. But a lot of times I feel like people are just trying to convince themselves in that case. And still, Novella is looking at bunnies and ducks and pigs and thinking how cute they are and how happy they are and how DELICIOUS they will be all in the same breath. I get that meat comes from somewhere and blah blah blah, but it's kinda disturbing to me. I read the passages where she kills the animals and I'm fine with it, but it still just seems gross.

I don't think I could be friends with Novella, even though I DO admire what she does and think it's really cool. She's got that kind of self-righteous thing going on that you probably have to have to raise 200 pound pigs in a small city lot. And she kind of admits it and all, but in a way that makes me think we would never get along. Which is fine. Just saying.

So anyway - it's a good book for what it is, but I thought I was going to be reading more about veggie gardening and general garden experiences - the animal raising, dreaming about eating of, and butchering takes up probably 90% of the book. The veggies (and beehive, even) are really incidental.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Stick to the Vegetables
How many things annoyed me about this book and the author? Well, I found the book amusing and Carpenter admirable during the time she was growing her vegetable garden. Read more
Published 5 days ago by A reader from California

5.0 out of 5 stars I just like 'er, ya know?
In a world of preachy, stunt-laden food writing, it's unbelievably refreshing to find someone walking the talk. This isn't a book-deal lifestyle. Read more
Published 10 days ago by Brina Burke

5.0 out of 5 stars Real, dirty farm life in roughest Oakland
What a great book! I loved every page, I laughed out loud numerous times, and I knew just what Novella Carpenter meant about the rage and frustration of a possum laying waste to... Read more
Published 14 days ago by Laura Cohan

4.0 out of 5 stars A surprisingly satisfying ending...
I'm rating this book more highly than I had first intended, because it grew on me as it went on. For those few reviewers who quit within the first few chapters, it is truly a... Read more
Published 15 days ago by DSPOverseas

5.0 out of 5 stars Hurray for Novella!
Both shocking and inspiring by turns, Novella had me from hello. She's an excellent writer, hard working, think outside the box, natural woman, who wants to experience life more... Read more
Published 23 days ago by Jane Eden

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny, charming book.
This was a lighthearted story of a girl who started a farm in her city neighborhood -- which is exactly what I'm doing right now. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Rebekah E. S. Kuk

1.0 out of 5 stars Is this book a fake?
Is Novella Carpenter a fake? I started reading her book "Farm City" and put it down after about 30 pages--there were noticeable factual errors, so I began wondering if the entire... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Linda

5.0 out of 5 stars Lyrical and practical
Love this book, farming in the city as a backdrop to a beautifully written story of Oakland in all its fascinating grittiness.
Published 1 month ago by Judith A. King

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but could've had more depth
I enjoyed Novella's book and found myself dreaming of doing what she does (at least on the gardening and egg-laying chickens front!). Read more
Published 2 months ago by Bojana Duke

5.0 out of 5 stars Very well written, engaging
I rarely have the time to read a book in one sitting, but I read this book in a day. It is fascinating on so many levels: the descriptions of what the author did, the interesting... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Jade Rubick

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