Alum Novella Carpenter Brings Urban Farming to the J-School
A few blocks away from busy I-980 in West Oakland, Berkeley J-School graduate, Novella Carpenter (MJ '07), is squatting. Or rather, her goats, rabbits, turkeys and tomatoes are squatting.
Carpenter turned a plot of abandoned urban wasteland that she does not own into a farm—which she chronicled in her recently released memoir, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. A critic at The New York Times described her book as "easily the funniest, weirdest, most perversely provocative gardening book I’ve ever read.” Carpenter spoke about her experiences at the Graduate School of Journalism on September 16, as part of the school’s speaker series.
The journalist-farmer’s experiment in city food production started with a garden and honeybees, then escalated to chickens and turkeys, rabbits, pigs and goats. She said the Internet has made urban farming easier, because now you can order baby chicks online and have them delivered to your doorstep. The challenge is not falling in love with them.
“The moment I open that box, I remind myself: these are for dinner,” said Carpenter.
She spoke of dumpster diving around the Bay Area and picking up half-eaten hamburgers to feed the ever-hungry pigs. She also told of making friends with some unlikely characters—an Italian salami-maker, and a Yemeni liquor store owner and goat slaughterer—who helped her turn the farm animals into delicious food.
At least once, said Carpenter, all carnivores should experience (or at least observe) the killing and processing of their food. Her own experience changed the way she viewed eating meat.
“It felt like this deep connection with my food that I had never had before,” Carpenter said.
Prior to the talk, students mingled in the courtyard, sipping Sierra Nevada Pale Ale with one hand, and munching on leafy-topped carrots from Carpenter’s GhostTown Farm with the other.
Carpenter urged students to be true to their passions when thinking about jobs for the future.
She said, “If you do what you love and you stick with it, eventually someone gives a crap.” —Jill Replogle