Novella Carpenter Book Reading

Tuesday, March 15th I bribed a friend and took them with me to Kalamazoo Central High School to see Novella Carpenter talk about her life as an urban farmer and the new book she wrote about it called Farm City. I was actually surprised by how packed the school's auditorium was with the people who had read her book.
She was introduced to the stage with the title of "hippie" and as soon as she walked on stage I could see that the title fit. Wearing relaxed clothing and odd shoes that I find it hard to describe, even her voice had a mellow sound to it. She made a lot of inside jokes that the audience seemed to find entertaining, but probably because they had actually read the book. I was not too lost, though, as she talked through her first experiences with raising animals and squatting on land in California for 8 years where she started her first garden. 
She had actually decided to raise her own animals spontaneously one day when she realized that she wanted fresh meat, rather than the store bought packaged meat. So she went online and ordered a starter kit of poultry.
When her mail came, a large box full of baby poultry (chickens, turkeys, etc.) was waiting for her. She said she had had just about as much experience raising animals as she had killing them. Which means zero.
Eventually she said she figured it all out and even decided to purchase two hogs at an auction one day to add to her farm of different kinds of poultry,  vegetables, fruit trees, and rabbits. Yes, she ate rabbits, and she admitted that many people think she is weird for doing so.
I found Novella very funny and greatly enjoyed listening to her smooth voice. There were a few (very few) younger kids in the audience, though, and at one point Novella said the "f" word. Immediately after that, she talked about finally butchering her hogs and how it had been "like the mafia" because she had had to cut off their heads, and then proceeded to show us a picture... I think the kids may have started crying.
The whole talk, which was actually surprisingly short, was full of Novella's experiences and advice for other farmers in the audience (yes there were some). For example, one of the ways that Novella saved money on food for her animals was by going to China town and dumpster diving. She would find thrown out food that she thought the animals would like and successfully saved a fortune on pig chow and other such foods. We have talked in class about how much food gets wasted every year, so I thought that relevant connection was pretty cool.