Farm City

On Thursday, the Redwood sustainable agriculture class went out to the farm for the first time since school started up again. We weeded our beds and checked on how our plants had handled the weed takeover. To my surprise, everything looked great! Seeing how well the plants had done on their own, such as the bell beans forming on the branches in the bed next to mine, and the young broccoli heads in my groups' bed, growing larger (like the ones I get at the store), reminded me of a book I read over break. It's called Farm City by Novella Carpenter. It is about Carpenters experience in Oakland CA, turning an empty lot into what she calls an urban farm. The way she describes all the hard work she put into her crops and animals, and how it benefited her yields, now inspires me when I am out on our Redwood farm.

While I was picking at the forest of weeds in class today, I couldn't help but think how well Carpenter's vegetables turned out after all she put into her garden. This caused me to imagine how my vegetables would turn out. Would I have an abundance like the Oakland Farmer, having plenty to share for the passerby who would stop by to take a little(or a lot) of what Novella Carpenter had grown? Would my bed fail to produce a sufficient amount of vegetables, resulting in having to hoard what little vegetables we had for ourselves, such as Carpenter after one particularly harsh winter? These were the questions that ran through my mind, as I continued plucking weeds.

Looking over at my small pile of weeds, not only did I realize I needed to pick up my pace, but I also remembered Carpenter, plucking her poultry. She describes this process thoroughly in one chapter of her book. I continued thinking about how our farm reminded me of Carpenters' farm, and how much I had learned from her book. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how entertaining, informational, and inspirational her story is to farmers everywhere, even at Redwood High School. I strongly recommend Novella Carpenter's book, Farm City to anyone who wants to have a sense of the hard work that goes into farming, and how one's work can affect both their yields and lives.

-Elsa Davis