Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
She could always start over and use raised beds instead of planting in the
ground.  That's what I will likely do (someday)
  

    
yeah, when i read that about the WH lawn, my 1st reaction was 'hunh? you
mean she wasnt gardening in raised beds, anyway? EVERYONE i know pretty
much gardens in raisded beds, because of who knows what with thier
existing (urban) soil'.
whether or not urban gardening is taught at princeton, one has to be pretty
savvy about sustainable ag/toxics in general to even understand how
horrible most green lawns are, in terms of toxic gunk (i.e. chemlawn),
never mind the use of sewer sludge.

most people see pretty green lawn and dont think, for example, of what went
in to making it that way...
  

    
It's not "chock full of lead," it's way below the EPA action level.
  

    
Below the EPA's 400 PPM action level, but just below Minneapolis' 100 PPM.
Well over the Netherlands' 40 PPM.

However, this might be a non-story. From an NYT article in May:

If soil is found to have high levels of lead, experts advise covering it
with sod. Those who want to grow flowers or edible crops can either replace
the contaminated soil or alkalinize it by adding lime or organic matter such
as compost. Soil with a pH level above 7 binds with lead, making it less
likely to be absorbed by plants and the human body if the dirt is
inadvertently inhaled or ingested.

The White House is mixing lime and compost into the soil for its kitchen
garden, which according to a National Parks Service analysis has 93 p.p.m.
of lead — an amount above background levels but not considered hazardous
to children or adults by the E.P.A.’s standards.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/garden/14lead.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all



I'm still going to politely decline the chard next time I pop by 1600 PA.
  

    
Oh, that's a shame. Hope the lime works.
  

    
It's become a national teaching opportunity.  A lot more people
probably know now that soil toxins are a significant factor and that
alkalinity mitigates the effect.  (That has further implications since
different crops will thrive than in an acidic soil, right?) 

I wanted to ask about, and comment on, another older trend of
non-profit community farms and gardens. Since perhaps the days of the
Whole Earth Catalogue, there have been urban farmera who put together
community food gardens with some kind of a donated labor model. 

Here's an example of one in San Francisco. (By the way, they have an
open house in a few hours today, the first Sunday of the month.)
http://www.alemanyfarm.org/  They have had some foundation money
subsidy, and I wonder how the economic downturn will hit these guys and
other programs like this just when the numbers of hungry people are
rising.  I'm also curious if Novella or anyone else knows how
widespread these urban community gardens are in, in the USA or
elsewhere.  And do contemporary private urban farmers get training or
consultation from, or give consultation to and help the community
programs?

Here's an Oakland example http://www.cityslickerfarms.org/ They say
they are farming 100+ vacant lots and selling produce on a sliding
scale so anyone can afford it.

Is this a local, national or international phenomenon on the community
farm side as well as the individual farmer side?
  

    
We've been having some of this in Idaho where the farmers will even
rent land from homeowners in return for a share of the produce.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/newsupdates/story/752365.html

And here's an article about Milwaukee:

http://www.idahostatesman.com/1300/story/817749.html
  

    
Here's one from Salon:

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/07/04/city_gardening/index.html
  

    
Novella's down with City Slicker Farms, I think. She mentions them
a few times in Farm City.

we interrupt this garden talk for an important announcement:

THE OVUM HAS LANDED

which is to say, one of our chickens laid her (and, by extension, our)
first egg today. It's a bit small, but aside from that it's a perfect
egg.

We're not sure who laid it, but we think the leghorn is responsible.
Both chickens are doing the squatting thing they do when they need
some rooster lovin', and I have been instructed to simulate smoove
rooster moves by grabbing their behinds when I am in the garden.

I believe this makes me the cock of the walk.
  

    

Congratulations, pa!
  

    
Frighteningly, we photographed it like it was a newborn. Perhaps more
frighteningly, I have been pondering how to cook our little bundle of
joy throughout the day.
  

    
My friends who started chickens last year used the first egg in pancakes,
which they shared with each other.

There's a great article in the NY Times toay about a guy named Will Allen,
who has a highly compact and highly productive inner city farm. I can
see Novella starting off with an urban lot of her own, getting a greenhouse,
using her master scavenging skills for the compost...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/magazine/05allen-t.html
  

    
Allen was quoted in the CNN article on urban farms posted earlier in
this topic. Sounds like he's the big dog of urban farmers. 

And completely unrelated to his urban accomplishments -- that is one
muscular 60 year old, judging from the photo accompanying the NYT
article. 
  

    
howdy! 
alas, lead in the soil is the bane of an urban farmer's existence.
it's tough to get out, though massive quantities of compost will bind
the lead and mitigate the problem. the other thing michelle should
remember is lead doesn't go into fruits of plants. that is, you can eat
a tomato growing in lead soil with no problem. it's the leaves that
will contain lead. raised beds with a root barrier will do the trick,
too. man, michelle must be bummed! 
i read the will allen piece--he's so great, such an inspiration. i did
get jealous of his greenhouses, but i'm in california for christ's
sake! that poor guy has a major winter to deal with. 
urban community gardening is huge. every major city has some form of
community gardens. seattle has p-patch, the boston commons is one of
the oldest in the nation, new orleans has parkway partners, etc. but
it's not as big as the allotment gardens in london or the big gardens
in vancouver bc where huge tracts of land are devoted to urban farming.
in an interesting twist, some people came to my reading in sebastopol
and said they had been in amsterdaam and ate at a resto that had two
pigs living out back, fed entirely on scraps! cool.
  

    
Now that the book is out and appearing to be achieving a lot of
success, where do you expect to go from here, both as an author and as
a farmer?
  

    
And who should play you in the movie? 
  

    
Oh, good question, especially with Julie and Julia coming out. :)
  

    
One of the NYT reviewers was reminded of Julie and Julia by Novella's
book. While I loved The Julie/Julia Project blog, I think a Farm City
movie would be more my speed. 

BTW, here's a video of Novella and Michael Pollan discussing the
ethics of slaughtering your own food from their talk for Berkeley Arts
and Letters. People who object to the term "edible pets" might want to
skip the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvN7Gz6esH0

The ethics of loving the animals you eat resonates for me. My farmer
friends in the Alps are very caring of their animals, particularly the
pigs who don't get to stick around long. Their daughter brushed and
stroked them every day after cleaning their pen, and when I asked her
how she could be so affectionate with them, she said she just wanted
them to have the best life possible under the circumstances.

The best possible attitude an omnivore can have, IMHO.
  

    

As I read the book, being a person with a pet rabbit, I mapped it
to my experiences with  - well, quite frankly - having to "kill" my
pets when they were very ill. I feel terrible having to tell someone
to inject a lethal drug into a sweet animal. However, in looking at
it carefully, I realize that the animal only had one really bad day.

I was reading about how the observation was made that the hogs had
a kind of meat that showed, basically, no stress. As an omnivore who
loves animals, I wish all of our animals that we ate had only one
bad day.

Alas, most of the animals I eat probably had a really crappy life and that
bothers me.
  

    
I remember taking my ducks to the processor, which was a family-run
operation; Mom and Dad and a couple of teenage kids were in the shed,
and younger kids were doing things like collecting my ducks and taking
them in. One of them spread out a duck's wings and was stroking the
plumage in admiration. A minute later, they were stripping it off. The
transition from live animal to meat is very swift.
  

    
howdy again! 
the film, the film--someone is talking to someone about it but i can't
imagine it. there's not really a plot line, is there? chris lee and i
joked that they would make it into a romantic comedy where chris and i
fall in love while rubbing a pig leg. very hot.
i've been seeing lots of vegans and vegetarians at my readings and
none of them are mad at me (which is surprising to me) but i think the
message that i have is that we would all eat a lot less meat if we knew
more about what eating meat means: that an animal had to be fed and
raised, and then killed (a bad day, yes indeedy), then cleaned and
processed. it's an elaborate process that we take for granted when we
order chicken on everything. i find myself ordering more fish and
vegetarian things these days. 
been passing out copies of the book to people who appear in farm city
today. ran into "bobby" and gave him a copy, and just dropped another
off with mosed, the liquor store owner. lana read the book and liked it
but felt like i made her sound weird (earth to lana: you are weird).
and my mom said it was strange to read about her life in a book but she
liked it. it's tough to put something out there, esp something that
will affect the ones you love. all in all it has been a good
experience. 
thanks for reading and posting and continuing the discussion! 
  

    
>>> i think the message that i have is that we would all eat a lot
less meat if we knew more about what eating meat means: that an animal
had to be fed and raised, and then killed (a bad day, yes indeedy),
then cleaned and processed. <<<

Back when the majority of Americans lived on farms and raised and
slaughtered their own meat, meat consumption was less than it is now,
yes -- but chiefly for economic reasons, not because of squeamishness. 
  

    
When I was young, my family had friends on a ranch in Northern CA.
Upon my first visit there, I was shocked that they could transition
from caring to killing with nonchalance, but now that I know what goes
on in CAFOs, I realize their coldness was actually kindness.

Thanks to everyone for this conversation. We're beginning a new
discussion today, but feel free to continue here as long as you like.
  

    
Thanks, Novella and other participants!
  

    
I just got email from Slow Foods about a San Francisco event that
could be cool, this Sunday  - 
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/71943

Screening of a new movie called Mad City Chickens.

"Mad City Chickens is a story about chickens in the city, or more
appropriately, a set of several stories. As close to universal as a
food source can be, chickens and their eggs were once a regular element
of many a family's lives in the U.S., and remain so throughout the
world. That way of life largely disappeared in this country, though,
due to the rise of industrial farming, but is slowly returning to many
cities as people rediscover the experience of keeping the birds in
their backyards."