Adventures in Urban Farming: Your Day in Baby Nigerian Dwarf Goat News
Novella Carpenter of West Oakland's Ghost Town Farm writes one of the liveliest and most engaging urban farming blogs out there. She's down to earth. Pragmatic. Warm. A little gross. West Oakland makes for interesting farm country. Carpenter has had heritage turkeys devoured by neighborhood pit bulls, and pigs who ran away and were brought back by the local Buddhist monks. The area's a food desert, but the guy who works at the liquor store is friendly and learned how to butcher animals in the old country, and is happy to give tutorials in exchange for meat.
Two-week-old Foxy Brown strikes a pose
Most recently, the happenings at Ghost Town Farm have involved goats. Which Novella learned the birthing practices of by watching YouTube videos people had posted of their own goats in labor. Why? The world is a strange and interesting place.
None of this would have been exotic 100 years ago, when Oakland was full of Italian truck farmers who no doubt birthed their goats just fine, without the assistance of the Internet. But isn't that what the Internet is for? Virtualizing goats? We're living in the future, kids -- butts parked in office chairs, engaging in vicarious goating.
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