Farm City

Hostess: Jennifer

Book: Farm City by Novella Carpenter

Food: Roasted Vegetables, fruit salad, chocolate and vanilla pudding tarts, cheese tortellini with pesto, Boursin cheese dip with basil and tomatoes

Wine of the Night: Lucky Duck Malbec

Month: May

I read this book immediately after last month's book club, and then had to wait a whole month to talk about it! This book was an interesting departure from our normal book club books, and I really enjoyed it. I have to say though, this hits a lot of notes with me, since I am really interested in urban gardening, farming, and food - but not necessarily butchering meat. Actually, not anything related to eating meat at all.

I loved this book - although to be honest I did skip a few parts. As a warning, this has a lot of animal slaughter in it! I did appreciate that Carpenter did care about her animals and treated them humanely before killing and eating them. She put alot of effort into feeding them, and making sure that they were well taken care of. One thing I thought was interesting were how the neighborhood children responded, with curiosity and awe. It was probably the only time some of those kids had seen a real live turkey or pig. My favorite parts were the ones involving the bees and her neighbor, who was always trying to get Carpenter to go vegetarian. Chrissy liked those parts too, and Jennifer and Chrissy both really liked her 30 day challenge of eating food that was within 500 yards of her, or something like that. It was extreme local eating. There is one part during that section with Carpenter and a fruit tree that very vividly stands out from the book for some reason. There really are so many different things that happen in this book, it is a great read. And if you are like me, squeamish about animal death, I didn't feel it detracted from the book to have skipped those parts.

If you are interested, Carpenter has her own blog http://ghosttownfarm.wordpress.com/, where you can read more about her endeavors in urban farming.

Next month is Chrissy's pick, The Lost City of Z. I have been wanting to read this book, and have been putting it off for months, so I am glad it is our book club book.