Reread this book because I felt like it. Well really when I looked back at what I wrote about it after reading it the first time, I wanted that feeling again. And I did love it again.
Farm City is all about Novella Carpenter’s urban farming experience in Oakland. Her and her partner moved there and started a garden in the backyard of their building even tho it was owned by someone else. They had vegetables, chickens, bees, all that. The book is split in three parts: turkey, rabbit, pig. The livestock is really the main point of her story–what it means to raise your own food. To respect the process and understand how much work really goes into eating.
That’s something that the book makes you conscious of outside of reading too. Now you have a meal and it’s hard not to think about how many people and/or animals it took to get it in front of you. How much food pigs need to eat every day, the day to day smells and noises and contraptions, the curious kids. I think that was my favorite part this time around–when a few boys who were spending a summer day walking around finding something to do stop at her house and see the rabbits and want to pet them and hold them and kiss them. I know those kinds of kids who are so bored and so loving. So great.
Best line is about her relationship: “Bill and I met on an elevator, fell in love because of cats, and lasted because of bees” (Carpenter 33).
-Rachel Wagner
I have a copy of this book available here. And you can click here to see other food books.