Novella Carpenter, MJ ’07, will present a slideshow about her rag-tag farm in the middle of downtown Oakland which is the setting for her memoir Farm City: the Education of an Urban Farmer.

Her story of farming on land she doesn’t own inspired the New York Times to call it: “easily the funniest, weirdest, most perversely provocative gardening book I’ve ever read. I couldn’t put it down.” In addition to reading from her book and showing slides of her farm where she has raised vegetables and fruit; turkeys, bees, rabbits, chickens, ducks, geese, pigs and now goats, Novella will discuss the history of urban farming in America, the state of the movement today, and what we can learn from urban farmers around the world.