East Bay Cohousing - Berkeley/Oakland/Emeryville/SF

April 7, 2010 7:30 PM - 100 attended

Farm City: Novella Carpenter on farming in cities (UC Berkeley)

This location is shown only to members

Agrariana and the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF)present an evening with urban agriculturists on Wednesday, April 7 at 7:30pm. Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer will be joined by Nathan McClintock, doctoral candidate in geography at UC Berkeley and member of the Oakland Food Policy Council, to discuss the past, present, and future of farming in cities and the trials of agricultural production in urban places.

We have had a lot of East Bay Cohousing folks expressing interest in urban farming and permaculture as part of their ideal sustainable community living situations, with gardens that are more than ornamental, providing a significant percentage of members' diets. Here's a chance to hear a local expert/author on the topic, right here in Oakland. Some of us may trek to this event after the EBCOHO New Member Orientation across the street from campus at the Brower Center earlier Wednesday evening. Also, CAFF has offices right below us in the Brower Center.

Image: community garden taking shape on a recent addition to Temescal Creek Cohousing (N. Oakland)

Novella Carpenter loves cities-the culture, the crowds, the energy. At the same time, she can't shake the fact that she is the daughter of two back-to-the-land hippies who taught her to love nature and eat vegetables. When Carpenter moved to a ramshackle house in inner city Oakland and discovered a weed-choked, garbage-strewn abandoned lot next door, she decided that it might be possible to have it both ways: a homegrown vegetable plot as well as museums, bars, and concerts mere minutes away. She closed her eyes and pictured heirloom tomatoes, a beehive, and a chicken coop.

Chickens at Mariposa Grove Cohousing (Oakland,CA)

Every day on this strange and beautiful farm, urban meets rural in the most surprising ways. What started out as a few egg-laying chickens led to geese, ducks, and two turkeys, Harold and Maude, who tend to escape on a daily basis to cavort with the prostitutes hanging around just off the highway nearby. When rabbits and two three-hundred-pound pigs were added to the mix of livestock and crops they were fed from the dumpsters of the cities finest restaurants. And no, these charming and eccentric animals weren't pets; she was a farmer, not a zookeeper. Novella was raising these animals for dinner.

Permaculture-principled deep-beds garden (with bees) at Mariposa Grove

For anyone who has ever grown herbs on their windowsill, tomatoes on their fire escape, or obsessed over the offerings at the local farmers' market, Carpenter's story will capture your heart. And if you've ever considered leaving it all behind to become a farmer outside the city limits, or looked at the abandoned lot next door with a gleam in your eye, Farm City is both a cautionary tale and a full-throated call to action.

Note: seating not guaranteed -- arrive early! The event organizers are encouraging folks to RSVP via FaceBook here.

You must be a member to post a comment. Join or login.

100 attended

4.001 (1 ratings)

Rivian Berlin

Novella squats on the empty lot she farms at 28th and Telegraph in Oakland near where she also lives. When the owners discovered her ga rden, they thought it was okay and she could farm there until they sell it for development. She also dumpster dives at places such as Trader Joes, and various restaurants for food for her animals. Too much food waste. She suggests coop models of farming including raising chickens, etc. so you don't need land personally to farm. She also said that urban agriculture needs funding from the federal gov't which provides funding for commercial agriculture. Barbara Lee has a bill in Congress to do this. The representative of the Oakland Food Policy Council ,who shared the event with Novella, found that of the 2600 empty land sites owned by the City of Oakland, 495, totaling 1200 acres, could supply 5 - 10% of Oakland food needs. These sites would be demonatrations projects to teach people how not to use pesticides, and to use native plants.
Oren&Deb
Jewish EcoVillage founder, Paid EBCOHO member through 3/2/10

Berkeley, CA

Founded Oct 22, 2003

Read more about us…

Future Neighbors and Cohousers
1,525
Group reviews
108
Upcoming Meetups
6
Past Meetups
559
Our calendar
Optional supporter dues

$100.00 /yr; $250 for groups/sponsors
Follow us

We're about:

· · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Organizers:

Optional supporter dues

$100.00 /yr; $250 for groups/sponsors

This covers: Supporting members get event discounts, Cohousing Coaching, a book, introduction

Payment is accepted using:

Amazon Payments
Cash or check - “at meetings, tours, workshops and other events that we put on (but not at our partner events that we sometimes cross-post here).”

Your organizer will refund you if:

Your organizer closes their Meetup Group
Your organizer removes or bans you from their Meetup Group

Close this

Imagine lively people-scaled communities dotting the San Francisco Bay Area - places co-created by their residents for raising kids, for retirement, for growing food or simply living well by sharing more. The Bay Area already has ecovillages, and cohousing neighborhoods, resident-owned housing cooperatives, and group houses -- real world places where we can live more sustainably through a more cooperative way of life. You can have both privacy and community when you know your neighbors on purpose, in day-to-day relationships based on common vision and values.

East Bay Cohousing (EBCOHO) is a Bay Area-wide MeetUp. We connect a wide variety of kindred spirits and resources. We support individuals wanting to learn more, forming groups looking to create community together, and members of existing communities. We are mostly in the East Bay and San Francisco; others are from the North and South Bay, Los Angeles, Nevada, and other parts of the US and Mexico.

There are over two dozen cohousing communities in the greater Bay Area, (more cohousing in Oakland than any other U.S. city). There are also dozens of other emerging and long-established intentional communities. EBCOHO members have recently bought or rented homes in cohousing neighborhoods and cooperatively owned apartment buildings in Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland , Pleasant Hill, Grass Valley, Santa Rosa, and Nevada City. We have members living in Swan's Market Cohousing, Triple Point, Temescal Commons, Berkeley Cohousing, Parker Street Coop, Berkeley Town House, Addison Court Coop and established forming groups like East Lake Cohousing (formerly North Oakland Cohousing).

Extra bonus for 2012: The National Cohousing Conference is coming to town in June!

We host EBCOHO events for members, and link you to other events featuring a global network of friends and allies: pioneers in cooperative culture and sustainable communities: urban farmers, affordable housing developers, green builders, and creative visionaries in the movements for more open, user-friendly and collaborative technologies, economies, and governments. There's a global reinvention of communiies going on - both on the ground and online -- and the Bay Area is one of the world's epicenters.

EBCOHO has more events than our MeetUp-based home page can show fully, so please click on our Calendar to see more. Join for free to get involved! There's no charge for basic membership, but supporting members get discounts on some events, including socials, and workshops, cohousing books, and Cohousing Coaching.

Join us for an orientation, for social events, discussion, talks with exciting speakers, and hands-on workshops to learn the tools for developing good group relationships, and the real estate development process.. Find others who share your vision for supportive neighbors. Do it for yourself, for your family, for your parents, do it for the Earth! Make 2012 the year to deepen YOUR community connections.