If rainy weather is keeping you indoors, curl up with a copy of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter . This is a beautifully written memoir about homesteading in urban Oakland. (My brother once bought my nephew two Muscovy ducks for a birthday present with the logic that after he gets bored with them, he could eat them. This didn't go so well.) I haven't heard the term "Edible Pets" since then, until talking with Novella Carpenter. She names her farm animals and shows them tender affection, before slaughtering, butchering and eating many of them. Through this process she has garnered more respect for her animals and food. As she explained, the most important element of separating the pets from the livestock, is intention.

City Dirt: So where do you draw the line between a pet and livestock.

Novella Carpenter: Humans are the deciders. We decide what is food, and what isn't. This is why a lot of farmers are religious. They see themselves as masters of our world. The more domesticated animals we have as pets, the more divorced we are from food. The pet industry is insane. Being a farmer is about intent. If I got a duck as a pet, it would be a pet. If I get one to eat, it's food. The whole thing is a mental process. I have a pet cat that doesn't even catch mice. Its purpose is as a love object. Then there are dairy animals, meat animals, and breeding animals.

City Dirt: There seems to be a contradiction between being a farmer and urban life. This has many people fascinated with your story. Do you find it a contradiction?

Novella Carpenter: The farm happened over time and slowly built up, so for me, it's not weird, it's what I do. People say "this is so crazy, I'm milking a goat." To me it's totally normal and I don't think about it. In some ways, it's a laboratory and I'm experimenting to see what happens. My biggest fear has always been, "Am I going to get in trouble".

City Dirt: There's a violence to ghetto life and a violence to farming. Is there a nearness to death that many of us don't live with on a regular basis?

Novella Carpenter: In a suburban-like place, life is sterilized. Nothing dies. Here there's a connection. People are used to loved ones dying, and on a farm animals are killed. My editors wanted me to connect these ideas more, but I really hesitated because the death of a pig is nothing like the death of a human.

City Dirt: I was reading your Ghost Town Farm Blog about your book tour and it looks like you received a king's welcome in New York City. What is going on right now?

Novella Carpenter: When I was living in New York City, it was the worst time of my life. I was a maid for a summer and hit by a car. I used to be a gutter punk and I can't think of a worst place in my mind--even living in a ghetto here is beautiful compared to New York City. Now when I show up it's great. I have meetings with my editor at Penguin and New York City is getting into eco-urban farming thing more than ever.

City Dirt: There seem to be a lot of romantic notions about farming right now--young people want to move to the country and farm. You've experienced this first hand in Idaho. It's a hard life. What do you predict will happen?

Novella Carpenter: A lot of young people think it would be really cool to go work on a farm. It's kind of like the 60's repeating themselves. They get tired of living on top of people and the stuff like strangers barfing in subways. They think they can build something better and so strike out on their own and try to be totally self-sufficient. But we aren't cowboys or independent warriors. I guess they'll learn that they need other people.

City Dirt: I love the idea of growing enough food so that you can share with your neighbors. Have you had any problems with this?

Novella Carpenter: There's no produce available in the ghetto, and so I leave my garden open. This is also a survival mechanism for me. People in the ghetto keep track of who does what for who. I share, and nothing has ever been stolen from me--not shovels, or wheelbarrows. People feel ownership of the garden and it's fun thing to have as part of neighborhood. It's a big garden. I had extra tomatoes, what the fuck, of course they'll come in and pick food and that's awesome.

Calendar Buzz: Visit Novella's Farm

When: Sunday, December 20, 11am-2pm

What: Signed copies of Farm City, Goat Town t-shirts, fried green tomatoes, and hot chocolate made with goat milk for sale. Goat snuggling and tours free.

Where: Ghosttown Farm, 665 28th Street, at Martin Luther King

How: Don't park on 28th Street!! Park on MLK, and walk over. Please. I'll give you the stink-eye if you drive down 28th Street, which is a dead-end street where my neighbors enjoy parking their cars.

Visit: Novella's website for more information.