• Farm City

  • The Education of an Urban Farmer
  • By: Novella Carpenter
  • Narrated by: Karen White
  • Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (385 ratings)

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Farm City  By  cover art

Farm City

By: Novella Carpenter
Narrated by: Karen White
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Editorial reviews

When Novella Carpenter and her boyfriend decide to move to an apartment at the end of a street in a rough neighborhood in Oakland, California, they base their choice on the large and vacant lot next door. Already experienced with raising chickens, gardening, and keeping bees, Carpenter wants to take on a larger challenge: creating an urban farm. Farm City is a memoir chronicling her development of the vacant lot, the acquisition of livestock, and the rich and diverse characters that populate her new neighborhood.

Carpenter's voice comes through Karen White's narration as having matter-of-fact sensibility, dotted throughout the book with dry humor and a healthy sense of irony. Carpenter is constantly planning to take the operations of her farm a step further than the season before, starting with raising ducks and turkeys in addition to her chickens; but as much as she plans, something unexpected is always around the corner. White's narration at once reflects Carpenter's excitement and frustration at setbacks, as every project turns out to be something slightly other than what she bargained for.

As the narrative of Farm City unfolds, Carpenter routinely reflects on herself in relation to the tradition of farming, and it is clear she sees herself in line with both the people of the past who farmed out of necessity and writers and scholars who have written about man's connection with earth as an intellectual exercise. Instead of trying to obtain a novel and unique experience, Carpenter wants to see herself as part of a very human tradition, and White's voice commands authority when she quotes the people who have inspired Carpenter. As Carpenter describes her rationale for deciding to raise livestock for meat and the daunting task of butchering the animals herself; White is unflinching. She conveys a confidence that what may seem brutal about killing her livestock has been a mere fact of life for human beings up until recent decades, and her candid descriptions and frank tone force the listener to wonder why it's the idea of having one's own farm that seems strange, and not the fact that so few of us has any connection at all with what we eat every day. Erin Ikeler

Publisher's summary

Novella Carpenter loves cities - the culture, the crowds, the energy. At the same time, she can't shake the fact that she is the daughter of two back-to-the-land hippies who taught her to love nature and eat vegetables.

Ambivalent about repeating her parents' disastrous mistakes, yet drawn to the idea of backyard self-sufficiency, Carpenter decided that it might be possible to have it both ways: a homegrown vegetable plot as well as museums, bars, concerts, and a 24-hour convenience mart mere minutes away - especially when she moved to a ramshackle house in inner-city Oakland and discovered a weed-choked, garbage-strewn abandoned lot next door. She closed her eyes and pictured heirloom tomatoes, a beehive, and a chicken coop. What started out as a few egg-laying chickens led to turkeys, geese, and ducks. Soon, some rabbits joined the fun, then two 300-pound pigs. And no, these charming and eccentric animals weren't pets; she was a farmer, not a zookeeper. Novella was raising these animals for dinner.

Novella Carpenter's corner of downtown Oakland is populated by unforgettable characters. Lana (anal spelled backward, she reminds us) runs a speakeasy across the street and refuses to hurt even a fly, let alone condone raising turkeys for Thanksgiving. Bobby, the homeless man who collects cars and car parts just outside the farm, is an invaluable neighborhood concierge. The turkeys, Harold and Maude, tend to escape on a daily basis to cavort with the prostitutes hanging around just off the highway nearby.

Every day on this strange and beautiful farm, urban meets rural in the most surprising ways. For anyone who has ever grown herbs on their windowsill or tomatoes on their fire escape, or who has obsessed over the offerings at the local farmers' market, Carpenter's story will capture your heart.

©2009 Novella Carpenter (P)2009 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Utterly enchanting.... The juxtaposition of the farming life with inner-city grit...elevates it to the realm of the magical." ( Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about Farm City

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