Farm City The Education Of An Urban Farmer is a memoir by Novella Carpenter in which she learns how to become an urban farmer. With the help of her boyfriend Bill, neighbors from the 28th Street in Oakland, California, and a few urban farmers she meets along the way Carpenter inflates her small garden into a small farm. Novella describes in great detail the paths that lead her from one adventure to the next and the obstacles she faces along the way. Carpenter’s depiction of her squatter’s vegetable garden in the ghetto, to the feeling of respect for the time that was required to raise her pigs kept the pages turning. Her character is inspiring and makes you ready to start your own farm. If you enjoyed the book Blood, Bones & Butter or …show more content…
even Julie & Julia then this is a must read. Carpenter’s enthusiasm for making her farm a success is inspiring. With her words she gives hope and meaning to those wanting to grow their own food, even if it’s just a planter box on a window seal. She is articulate and rough all in the same sentence. Her can do attitude is contagious and her willingness to learn as well as teach draws others in. The book inserts comedy, drama, and an idealistic way of life for a city farmer. Novella clearly knows how to keep her readers interested in her farm and ready for more. Her story is full of the possibilities one can accomplish if the determination is there. She leaves no stone unturned in her details of planting her garden or of the killing of her animals, making you feel a passion in her from the beginning to the end. Other than personal experience she obtained growing up with her hippie parents, she relies on a manifold of books and the help of a few professionals from one trade or another to shape the way she farms. The book chronically logs her development into this urban farmer over several years. It begins with the journey from Seattle to California, where her and Bill find an apartment with a vacant lot in their back yard that sealed the deal. Next, setting up her vegetable garden in the vacant lot and becoming a squatter. Her last step in becoming a farmer is the animals she raises. She begins her farm with bees to pollinate her garden. A box of day old chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys are shipped to her. Then comes the rabbits, and ends with two pigs. Her biggest story is the raising of each animal, how one animal leads to the next, and how much difference the time and work is for each animal. Novella comes across as a strong and determined woman who is more than willing to get her hands dirty.
Her first sentence “I have a farm on a dead-end street in the ghetto” (3) lures you in right from the opening. But it’s her ability to describe in detail the color and taste of her first homegrown turkey that had my mouth watering and ready to raise my very own turkey. Her attention to details of the way the fathers look on her turkey to the smell of the bag of entrails from her pigs gives you the feeling of being part of the experience. Having grown up on a farm I feel the rage she talks about when she tells of the possum killing one of her ducks and the goose. But, also the joy in having a hand in raising an animal from a youngling, to full grown and ready to eat. Her talk of rabbits hit home the most for me. I raised rabbits, one year to serve them at my mother’s wedding. But when she describes the pig’s auction and Bill’s enthusiasm to get not only one, but two pigs I too am there with them standing at the gate watching the …show more content…
excitement. At one point Novella is determined to feed herself for one month from only food she has on her farm or foods from other farmers that she can trade for. Her details from the cravings to the headaches she experiences during this time makes you feel sorry for her. But her determination pays off and she is overwhelmed by her accomplishment. She also takes pride in her farm when she is able to provide nourishment her friends with her first turkey at Thanksgiving and again when she feeds her neighborhood several times from the meet of her pigs. She doesn’t sell her produce, but becomes a farmer for hire when others request vegetables from her and give her seeds to plant. Novella encounters a few other cultures along her path; some she takes part in and others she doesn’t.
Once she is instructed on how to eat oysters and balut; a fertilized duck egg, during a birthday celebration of a Vietnamese family member in the neighborhood. While she was able to enjoy the oysters that had been offered to her with no problem she was unable to eat the duck embryo and instead buried it in her garden. Another time she realizes during a visit with her sister, brother-in-law, and new niece that she had picked up slang form the community. By the end of the book even though she was not an animal activist, she does have much respect for her animals and wants their deaths to be humane and is offended when one does not respect the gift of
life. Overall I found the book captivating and full of a multitude of mini stories. Her descriptions are her most moving element. I would recommend this book to any casual read and will myself reread the book in the future and maybe start my own farm because of the book. The book itself is full of other books she used along her expedition that would be helpful in becoming a farmer. The memoir is a tribute to foodways in the experience of planting, growing, and taking care of food, to the ability to nourish ones friends and family. It talks of other cultures and the also shows the multiple of people involved in having a farm. The memoir is an easy read and full of true life events. Throughout the book she builds relationships and makes her presents known to the community, her farm animals are sometimes killed by other neighborhood animals or predators, she almost gets mugged, and in the end she is resolved to know her squatter vegetable garden will one day be bulldozed down to build condos. However, through it all it makes her stronger and even more determined that no matter where she goes, she will always have a garden and her animals.
Joy Williams, the author of “The Farm” was born and raised in Portland, Maine. She attended and graduated from Marietta College and from there went on to earn a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Iowa. In recognition of her writing, she was the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story in 2016. Growing up, she was the daughter of a minister and as such, she often incorporated a religious theme in her novels, essays, and short stories. Similar to Jesus, Williams’ style was to present her stories in the form of parables in the hope of getting an important message across to her readers.
First, the story takes place in the 1900s on Tol and Miss Minnie’s farm. They have crops, gardens, and livestock, and are avid in what they do (Half-Pint of Old Darling 124).
Further, throughout the book, Sadie and Bessie continuously reminds the reader of the strong influence family life had on their entire lives. Their father and mother were college educated and their father was the first black Episcopal priest and vice principal at St. Augustine Co...
...e on her part. Throughout the story, the Mother is portrayed as the dominant figure, which resembled the amount of say that the father and children had on matters. Together, the Father, James, and David strived to maintain equality by helping with the chickens and taking care of Scott; however, despite the effort that they had put in, the Mother refused to be persuaded that Scott was of any value and therefore she felt that selling him would be most beneficial. The Mother’s persona is unsympathetic as she lacks respect and a heart towards her family members. Since the Mother never showed equality, her character had unraveled into the creation of a negative atmosphere in which her family is now cemented in. For the Father, David and James, it is only now the memories of Scott that will hold their bond together.
By using the stream of consciousness technique, Porter establishes Granny Weatherall's background. The occasional glimpse into the main character's past reveals the demanding responsibilities of a young widow. She reflects on how digging post holes, riding country roads in the winter, and sitting up nights with sick horses, negroes, and children, changed her from the bride her late husband had known. Furthermore, the technique challenges the reader to draw conclusions from the vague references of death of her husband, John, and her daughter, Hapsy. Granny Weatherall imagines seeing John again, pondering on how her children a...
Labrie, Janet M. "The Depiction of Women's Field Work in Rural Fiction." Agricultural History 67 (Spring 1993): 119-33. JSTOR. Web. 15 Mar. 2012.
Our first introduction to these competing sets of values begins when we meet Sylvia. She is a young girl from a crowded manufacturing town who has recently come to stay with her grandmother on a farm. We see Sylvia's move from the industrial world to a rural one as a beneficial change for the girl, especially from the passage, "Everybody said that it was a good change for a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town, but, as for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she never had been alive at the all before she came to live at the farm"(133). The new values that are central to Sylvia's feelings of life are her opportunities to plays games with the cow. Most visibly, Sylvia becomes so alive in the rural world that she begins to think compassionately about her neighbor's geraniums (133). We begin to see that Sylvia values are strikingly different from the industrial and materialistic notions of controlling nature. Additionally, Sylvia is alive in nature because she learns to respect the natural forces of this l...
In The Village, I have found that all six of the common patterns of dystopian literature are present. For clarification, dystopia is an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or degraded society. It is the opposite of utopia which is an ideal place or state. The characteristics and patterns of dystopian literature are all shown in this movie. The movie shows, with help from the themes and characters in The Village, a town attempting to appear innocent to nature and humankind but failing. Or an attempt at a utopian society that turns to dystopia. The six themes of dystopian literature are as follows: First, an attempt at perfection. Second, rules and boundaries established to maintain the society’s
... the novel. Ranging from clothes, to birds, to the “pigeon house”, each symbol and setting provides the reader with insight into Edna’s personality, thoughts, and awakening.
Ada's story resumes. The novel follows her adjustment to a life of labor in harmony with nature. Ada's friendship with Ruby blossoms as she begins to identify with the natural world. The female protagonist lays down roots at the farm and recalls memories of Inman and her father. Occasionally, she finds herself touched by events surrounding the war. A group of pilgrims forced into exile by Federal soldiers seeks shelter for a day at the farm. Ada recalls Blount, a soldier she met at a party in Charleston who later died in battle.
Her theme has often been the dilemmas of the adolescent girl coming to terms with family and a small town. Her more recent work has addressed the problems of middle age, of women alone, and of the elderly. The characteristic of her style is the search for some revelatory gesture by which an event is illuminated and given personal significance. (The Canadian Encyclopedia Plus 1995)
She shows us that there is no hope for the poor without understanding. Parker is successful in getting her point across with her use of connotative language and her ability to create images. She has done a good job. of attacking the reader and getting him or her to listen to what she has to say. Even though she attacks the audience she does it in an appropriate way whereas she does not come across as offensive.
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
...her own home. It is so hard to imagine what life was like for her and her family, but the way the book was written definitely helped to understand and create a mental picture of what she lived through each day.
...her and sister seem to enjoy the delicacy of snail meat while Eulalie is plainly disgusted by the sight of it and refers to the snails as “horrid creatures.” Ato’s mother is quite mortified that Eulalie’s taboos are also Ato’s taboos instead of the other way round. Even when the relatives think Eulalie is barren, they try to “treat” her condition the African way and this greatly annoys Eulalie. Another thing is that the family members cannot even call her name correctly and prefer to use names like “Hurere”.