Novella Carpenter - The Essential Urban Farmer

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE ESSENTIAL URBAN FARMER

NOVELLA CARPENTER is the author of the bestselling Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. She lives and farms in Oakland with her partner Billy, one cat, three ducks, five rabbits, two goats, and fifty thousand honeybees.

WILLOW ROSENTHAL is the founder of City Slicker Farms in Oakland, California, and teaches adults and children about urban gardening and consults with various groups to implement urban farming strategies. She lives in North Berkeley with her husband where they tend a very small veggie garden of their own.

ALSO BY NOVELLA CARPENTER

Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published in Penguin Books 2011

Copyright Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal, 2011

All rights reserved

Photographs: Sophia Wang

Hand drawn illustrations: Bronwyn Barry

Computer generated illustrations: Arianna Rosenthal

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Carpenter, Novella, 1972

The essential urban farmer / Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-101-55932-1

1. Urban agriculture. I. Rosenthal, Willow. II. Title.

S494.5.U72C36 2012

635.977dc23

2011039313

Designed by Sabrina Bowers

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Version_3

Dedicated to fellow urban farmers, past, present, and future.

Please note that illustrations throughout are not necessarily to scale.

W illow and I first bonded over urban farming. We were both growing vegetables, beekeeping, and raising chickens and ducks in the middle of the city of Oakland, California. When we met, at the turn of the century, I had recently started GhostTown Farm, one-tenth of an acre farm on squatted land near downtown. Willow had founded City Slicker Farms a few years before, as a nonprofit urban farming organization devoted to making affordable, urban-grown organic produce available to low-income residents in West Oakland. This is the book that we wished we had when we first started out, a how-to manual that speaks directly to farmers trying to grow food and raise animals in the city.

We became passionate about urban farming for a variety of reasons. One is the way urban agriculture connects urban people to the food they are eating. The lettuce someone seeds, waters, and then harvests for dinner makes the freshest, most delicious salad they have ever had. Backyard chicken eggs are a revelation, partially because they are so fresh and partially because you raised the hen who laid this special gift. We realized that many city folks dont think they can produce their own food, and so they miss out on these connections. By growing even a little food in the city, these experiences become accessible.

Speaking of accessibility, urban farming is a way for people of all income levels to eat fresh, local, organic food. I knew that I didnt have enough money to buy organic produce or meat, and so I decided to raise it myself. An average urban backyard (25 feet by 40 feet), if cultivated intensively, has the potential to grow all of the fruits and vegetables for one person. Growing edibles in the cityeven on a deck or small backyardmakes economic sense for people who have more time than money. Due to low incomes and lack of access to grocery stores, urban people fail to get the healthy nutrition they need. A few packets of seeds costing less than twenty dollars can produce enough vegetables for a years worth of eating. If government regulations were changed and financial support given, many of the fruits and vegetables consumed in a city could be grown within the city itself, through a combination of backyard gardening, community gardening, school gardens, commercial gardens, and increasing urban agriculture on currently unused municipal land. This would mean everyone would have access to healthy organic food!

I say organic because this is the farming method that we encourage everyone to use. Organic means that you dont use chemically synthesized fertilizers or pesticidestwo things that your neighbors in the city do not need to be exposed to. Other aspects of organic farming that we encourage, and explain in this book, are: building soil fertility through crop rotation; proper application of compost and green manures; and controlling weeds and pests by mulching, picking by hand, or using natural sprays or mixtures.

Rural organic farms do not necessarily follow practices that are sustainable for the earth, animals, or human beings. Growing in the city also means that you can go a bit beyond organic by growing a variety of crops on one site (instead of growing a single crop [monoculture]), using water efficiently, integrating livestock, and using city wastes to create a more closed-loop nutrient system. This avoids the use of factory-made fertilizers, using fossil fuels for operating farm machinery, or shipping produce and inputsand, unlike commercial farms, ensures fair and safe labor practices.

Another method of urban farming is intensive farming, which enables growers to achieve high food yields in small spaces. Crops are spaced as tightly as possible and soil fertility is continuously built to support their growth. To achieve the highest yields possible while also maintaining the overall health of the plants and animals, we focus on the soil; because of this, the crops will thrive.

We have taken principles from intensive farming (sometimes called French intensive), biodynamic farming, permaculture, and edible landscaping, rolled them up in a ball and called it urban farming. As you begin to build your urban farm, youll no doubt encounter other useful methods and ideas. There is no perfect way: raising food is a constantly changing dialogue between you the farmer and the landscape, animals, community members, and political and social circumstances.