'Farm City,' Rat Prosciutto and an Urban Rooftop Farm

by Alex Van Buren, Posted Jul 17th 2009 @ 5:00PM

Prosciutto from Big Boy the pig. Photo: Rebecca Winters.

"What happened to the rats on your property?" someone asks urban farmer Novella Carpenter.

"I have a theory that my pigs ate the rats," Carpenter says. Realizing that her audience has been munching on slices of said pig's hindquarters, she laughed. "So enjoy some delicious prosciutto!"

Farmers are reputed to have a tough streak. They step over piles of excrement, battle gargantuan hogs and, of course, have to earn a living. Carpenter, author of "Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer," seems no exception. She lives in the city, not the country, "so I can get Chinese food at 2 a.m."

The two 300-pound hogs she raised in what she calls the Oakland, Calif., "ghetto," also enjoyed Chinese takeout. She read about her adventures in urban farming on a Brooklyn, N.Y., rooftop adjacent to a 6,000-foot, 30-crop rooftop farm built by Goode Green and tended by farmers Annie Novak and Ben Flanner.

Dumpster diving, fish guts and the cost of rooftop farming, after the jump.

Novella Carpenter reading on a Brooklyn rooftop. Photo: Rebecca Winters.

Novak and Flanner are part of the burgeoning trend of young urban farmers. Novak specializes in the agricultural field and works for the New York Botanical Garden. When Goode Green decided to build the $60,000 environmentally sound roof, Flanner and Novak agreed to tend it as long as they would be allowed to sell the vegetables they raised. (Neighboring restaurants like Marlow & Sons buy much of their produce.)

As the audience ate canapés featuring veggies from the garden -- lettuce, herbed goat cheese and cucumber on bread -- Carpenter spoke of the grislier aspect of farming. She has raised chickens, rabbits, goats, turkeys and swine. Having to step over the pigs' excrement every day was wearying, and they are not tender creatures: Carpented admitted that although killing some of her animals was difficult, eating those pigs was not, and she'll never raise them again. She and her boyfriend would scour for the pigs' food themselves in the streets of the Bay area and out of the dumpsters of restaurants.

The farm and the view. Photo: Alex Van Buren.

"It spiraled into total madness," she says. "Their huge appetite becomes part of your brain." She and her boyfriend, Bill, walked by a McDonald's and he grabbed a burger from a trashcan. Passersby shrieked, "Disgusting!"

The pigs, unlike her goats, which she says she's smitten with, began to "nibble" her as they grew fond of her and the fish guts, Chinese doughnuts and other scraps she brought them. The nibbles turned more urgent as they grew older. Carpenter grew leery when an older Southern neighbor declared, "You go into a pig pen with a cut, they'll eatcha alive!"

With the exception of the giant swine, Carpenter has killed every animal she's raised, which she sees as being part of being a conscientious carnivore. She had help from a Yemeni neighbor in slaughtering one of her beloved goats. He came over in traditional garb and his wife sang while he cut its throat.

Of course, this raising-then-killing sounds wearying, and it was. "For a while, killing everything, I felt like the witch in 'Hansel and Gretel,'" Carpenter says. She's bought a mama goat to remedy this problem, at least for a while. "I was ready for a long-term relationship."

Regardless of the unsavory topic, the audience seemed to relish the tales of guts and glory. This journalist went back for seconds of the savory, salty prosciutto -- rat-infused or not.

Filed Under: Farming, Food News, Books
Tags: brooklyn, event, farm city, FarmCity, gardening, novella carpenter, NovellaCarpenter, pigs, prosciutto, reading, rooftop farming, rooftop farms, RooftopFarming, RooftopFarms, urban farming, urban farms, UrbanFarming, UrbanFarms