Agrarian farmer and poet Wendell Berry’s oft repeated phrase, “Eating is an agriculture act” comes to mind this week, especially as I like many others consider where best to spend my money in a precarious economy. Organic stonefruit say for eating out of hand? Yes, when I can afford it. And for canning? Maybe we think twice (as I just did) and go for locally grown Heirloom fruit but potentially sprayed at some point during its lifetime, bought by the case direct from the farmer. There are certainly more than just dollars to consider and the conversation about growing food, eating well, and rehashing the agriculture system is not new, but has finally landed on the plate of the president, or rather First lady Michelle, who has taken it up with a shovel and plow. Good for her, is what I say, and though for many of us it does come back to the choices we make and the money that we have, others aren’t as lucky. Think the heart of blighted cities where liquor stores and fast food joints line the neighborhoods, where many of the kids and young adults have never seen a farm animal, think that milk comes from a plastic jug, and vegetables come in cans. A whole other story– 

On that note, last week I went to hear urban farmer and first time author, Novella Carpenter in conversation with Michael Pollan, our own demigod of eating as political action, and at a church no less, part of the Berkeley City Arts and Letters programming. Her book is Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer and people were out in droves to hear her read from it.  Novella’s parents farmed in rural Idaho so she knew a little about the challenges going in, and despite avoiding that life for many years and holding the belief that rural living is lonely living, she said, she found herself drawn to the work none the less. So, she moved to a forgotten part of Oakland that she refers to as Ghost Town on her blog, boyfriend in tow, and took over an abandon lot next door, eventually filling it with chickens, pigs, ducks, 3 goats, rabbits, bees and tons of vegetables. She calls herself a subsistent farmer. She also, somewhere during it all, attended UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism hence her debut with Pollan (no small thing), who praised her and her book.

She was as she said more than once–and seems to still be–poor, barely making it like the rest of the neighborhood (See her article Dirt Poor Farmer). From my own desktop, how I look at it she was doubly in trouble–trying to make it as a farmer and a freelance journalist. At one point she has to give a way one of her beloved goats because she can’t pay for it’s disbudding (Hedwig, sadly had to go), and at the end of the day, has to wonder the profitability of it all. Chickens are cheap, yes, and they provide eggs on a daily basis, but a pig is another story–it’s a pig and eats a lot–though after killing it you do have a lot of meat (and a lot of parties), but you also become fat, she tells us. “You are what you eat,” after all, she decides, laughing. But seriously, she assures us that the prosciutto, alas, was worth the wait (18 months).

Novella, on this occasion, as I imagine she is most days, even in the stench of pigdom, was a riot, a hands-on farm girl with a refreshing urban edge, wearing a checkered shirt, dark blue jeans and boots. Her reading and talk was no less fresh, littered with off humor–calling the rubbing of fat into a pig hind as sexy–and dishing profanities worthy of a sailor. The hard facts of farming (unsubsidized) and growing your own food  in Oaktown seemed at times even more perilous than what you would experience elsewhere–dumpster diving for pig food, raised eyebrows from neighbors, the echo of gun fire–but pressed its reality regardless. One doesn’t know whether to laugh out loud, suggest she’s absolutely crazy, offer her a better paying job, or just applaud her for at least trying. Perhaps all of the above. I have yet to actually read her book myself, and doubt it will send me to the shadows of this here town for a similar trial, but don’t doubt it will inspire and be a darn, good story. 

Back to my pots of herbs, tomatoes and cucumbers. My chard and lettuce in old wine boxes, my Meyer lemon tree–just about all I can handle, an act all the same, and one that I can do relatively easy and on the cheap. And though I did live on a farm once (not mine), it aint easy. I remember my friend’s kids getting up early to feed the animals before school, the daily tending to them afterwards, the long hours in the vegetable garden, the endless projects needing to be done. I also remember those sweet afternoons lying lazy under a plum tree, the kids running through the fields, the bountiful table at harvest time, and as Novella discovers, many shared meals with friends.