A tweeter called her "the queen of urban farming" but American author Novella Carpenter was more relaxed than regal addressing an audience of ALES students, stakeholders and members of the public last month.
Despite her wisecracking approach to running a backyard farm in an Oakland ghetto- "it's learning by making big mistakes"- she dispensed sage insights into urban agriculture.
Her keynote was the last event in the ALES Common Reading Program. During the two-month initiative, more than 300 students, faculty, staff and alumni read her book Farm City, the Education of an Urban Farmer, which chronicles raising vegetables, bees, poultry and eventually pigs and goats on a derelict lot. Participants also convened for a book club talk and for a local panel of professional urban farmers for more discussion on food security, sustainability and nutrition, while 10 undergrads entered an essay contest. In total, about 100 ALES members attended events.
Carpenter's address primarily identified urban farming tactics to avoid and to cultivate.
Raising heritage turkeys, however yummy the meat, was "a colossal mistake," she said. "I calculated that each of my turkeys cost $100 to raise."
Voracious pigs are also bad investments for a micro-farm, she said, even though she fed hers by dumpster diving, letting them feast on discarded fish guts and on the castoffs from Chinese restaurants. Soon her two porkers were eating more fully than she and her partner were, on nine buckets of food a day including season's-end peaches.
But raising pigs taught her an important tenet of urban farming: cities have an abundant waste stream that growers can re-purpose. From restaurants Carpenter rescued slightly icky greens, stale baguettes and even spit-roasted chickens with only their breasts removed, to feed her animals. Water, every urban farmer's worry, is also plentiful in waste, she said. She collects grey water in an old washing machine, filters it with bio soap and then waters her fruit trees with it.
Cities are kind to bee farmers, too, said Carpenter, with flowers growing on many different cycles within flying distance. In the country, a bee colony can deplete the single nearby field and then must be moved.
Katherine Zwicker, the ALES student engagement coordinator, said she received very positive feedback from the students who participated in the Common Reading program.
"Students mentioned the exceptional quality of conversation at each of the events," she said, adding they appreciated interacting with faculty members outside the classroom as well as community members actively engaged in the food movement.
"It was that interdisciplinary engagement that made this program really worthwhile," said Zwicker.
Despite her wisecracking approach to running a backyard farm in an Oakland ghetto- "it's learning by making big mistakes"- she dispensed sage insights into urban agriculture.
Her keynote was the last event in the ALES Common Reading Program. During the two-month initiative, more than 300 students, faculty, staff and alumni read her book Farm City, the Education of an Urban Farmer, which chronicles raising vegetables, bees, poultry and eventually pigs and goats on a derelict lot. Participants also convened for a book club talk and for a local panel of professional urban farmers for more discussion on food security, sustainability and nutrition, while 10 undergrads entered an essay contest. In total, about 100 ALES members attended events.
Carpenter's address primarily identified urban farming tactics to avoid and to cultivate.
Raising heritage turkeys, however yummy the meat, was "a colossal mistake," she said. "I calculated that each of my turkeys cost $100 to raise."
Voracious pigs are also bad investments for a micro-farm, she said, even though she fed hers by dumpster diving, letting them feast on discarded fish guts and on the castoffs from Chinese restaurants. Soon her two porkers were eating more fully than she and her partner were, on nine buckets of food a day including season's-end peaches.
But raising pigs taught her an important tenet of urban farming: cities have an abundant waste stream that growers can re-purpose. From restaurants Carpenter rescued slightly icky greens, stale baguettes and even spit-roasted chickens with only their breasts removed, to feed her animals. Water, every urban farmer's worry, is also plentiful in waste, she said. She collects grey water in an old washing machine, filters it with bio soap and then waters her fruit trees with it.
Cities are kind to bee farmers, too, said Carpenter, with flowers growing on many different cycles within flying distance. In the country, a bee colony can deplete the single nearby field and then must be moved.
Katherine Zwicker, the ALES student engagement coordinator, said she received very positive feedback from the students who participated in the Common Reading program.
"Students mentioned the exceptional quality of conversation at each of the events," she said, adding they appreciated interacting with faculty members outside the classroom as well as community members actively engaged in the food movement.
"It was that interdisciplinary engagement that made this program really worthwhile," said Zwicker.