Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer (33 page)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Novella Carpenter grew up in rural Idaho and Washington State. She studied biology and English at the University of Washington, where she had many odd jobs, including assassin bug handler and 16-millimeter projectionist. After moving to California, she attended UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Her writing has appeared on
salon.com, saveur.com, and sfgate.com (the
San Francisco Chronicle
’s Web site) and in
Mother Jones
. Her adventures in urban agriculture began with honeybees and a few chickens, then some turkeys, until she created an urban homestead called GhostTown Farm near downtown Oakland, where she and her boyfriend, Bill, live today.