Food Read: Farm City

If you, like me, are a city dweller who sometimes has pastoral visions of yourself as farmer, raising organic greens and tending to free range chickens, please consider Farm City to be a definite must-read. Oakland local hero Novella Carpenter's memoir manages to be at once both inspiring and grounding. Am I interested in digging through dumpsters of rotting restaurant waste to feed urban pigs who, among other things, also enjoy letting themselves out to roam the neighborhood at will? Not exactly. But would I consider backyard beekeeping? Well, that might be more within reach (if I had a backyard...but that is another issue).

Personally, this lively tome was all I needed to bring me back to earth in remembering the realities of growing food. Namely, that along with warm sun, fresh air, and fertile earth, organic farming also involves a lot of, well, poop. And garbage. And manual labor (and time, and money, and...shall I go on?). You get the picture. It IS fascinating, though, to read about how Carpenter embraced all of those things, along with some more unique challenges, such as a neighborhood riddled with violence and poverty, to create her own personal farm on a pirated lot next to her rented home in Oakland. And it is motivating. Surely, if Novella can persevere through the myriad obstacles she encounters to create a full-blown farm, complete with animals, in the middle of Oakland, I can spend a little more time and money at the Farmers' Market, plant a few more herbs on the deck, and, when the time comes, dive head-first back into the squashland of the winter CSA.

The bonus in this book is a fabulous section at the end with a detailed description of Novella lovingly forming one of her pigs into various salumi under the guidance of Chris Lee of Chez Panisse fame. While the rest of the book may appeal to one's hippie-of-the-new-millennium side, the salumi section is simply pure foodie heaven. It will leave you looking for your own cured meat guru - or at least a Charcuterie Board at your favorite neighborhood cafe.