pigs in Oakland…huh.

Some friends gave me Novella Carpenter’s book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. As a fellow Oaklander with a tiny garden who is always thinking about getting chickens, they thought I would be interested. I am. The book is about a women in Oakland who lives in the heart of the city and tends to a large garden and raises animals for meat.

The book is inspiring because it shows you can figure out a way to do just about anything if you want to. Novella loves the sustainable part of a farmer’s life but not the solitude so she figured out a way to have a small farm in a city.  She raises two large pigs that she feeds from dumpsters  and gardens on a vacant lot next door. She is able to do all this because she lives in one of the more economically depressed sections of Oakland and there are so many bigger problems then a couple pigs walking down the street.

Watch a video of an interview with her or poke around her website and get inspired too. What is that thing you have always wanted to do but only see the roadblocks? Perhaps it is time to dust off those old dreams.