Read Online Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter - Free Book Online

feet. We shambled to our bed, passing the glowing brooder in the living room.
    I had recently expanded the brooder. The waterfowl had grown too big and were too messy to keep inside, so I had put them in a pen in the lot. But as the chicks got bigger, instead of putting them outside, where I feared they would catch a chill or get beaten up by the big chickens, I cut out more cardboard and taped on additions, until their pen took up one entire room in the house. The room filled with poultry had seemed crazy only a few hours before, but now that I had met my people—fellow urban farmers—I suddenly had a name for this thing I had been doing but couldn’t quite explain. The chicks and turkey poults were still up, and zoomed around their newly expanded digs.
    “How long are they staying?” Bill whispered, as if the birds were difficult houseguests. The meat-bird experiment, unlike the garden and the bees, was my exclusive domain. Bill agreed that he’d eat the birds, but the raising and the killing were up to me. I just shrugged.
    At 7:30 a.m., I heard three things from my disheveled bed. One was the peeping of the chicks, who had taken to squabbling each morning the minute the sun came up. Another was the Nguyen family’s morning prayers: They listened to a soothing recording of drums and chants as they burned incense. The third noise was Lana yelling in the street. I squinted at the clock and cursed tequila and Lana’s speakeasy. I tucked the covers around Bill, who snored. He could sleep through violent earthquakes, the bastard.
    I fed the chicks and adjusted their brooder lights. That settled them down. Then I peered out the window.
    Lana was outside, causing a commotion. She looked like a comic-book character, lifting a television and heaving it at Bobby. They had never gotten along, and now that Bobby was squatting in a car just outside Lana’s warehouse door, the tension had increased. Their arguments usually revolved around stuff, specifically the spoils from Bobby’s demonic collecting. It was true that the end of the street was starting to resemble an open-air flea market. Bobby had mounted a corkboard sign near his home on which his friends and associates could post messages. He was a social fellow and enjoyed company. Many of his friends brought “gifts,” one of which was the television currently being flung through the air.
    I wandered outside to mediate.
    The two were looking at a small square of earth on the curb where a tree had probably stood in the days before Oakland had gone to hell. These days the spot was home to a cheeseweed mallow, Malva parviflora . Though she hadn’t planted it, Lana had an inordinate love for this weed. It had little pink flowers. It also had an invasive attitude and a pernicious root system that I, as a gardener, could never love.
    Bobby had dug it up and planted a cactus.
    God knows where it came from, but the cactus was spiny and columnar and freshly planted.
    “Morning, darling,” Bobby said to me.
    “Hi,” I mumbled, wanting to seem unbiased.
    “I’m just making some improvements,” Bobby explained, then pointed to the cactus.
    “There was something there already!” Lana yelled. The wilting Malva lay over by the abandoned playfield. Instead of ripping up the cactus—Lana couldn’t hurt another living thing—she had smashed an electrical appliance. The shards of thick glass and wood littered the street.
    It was a turf war between two 28th Street impresarios.
    Lana had been up all night. I knew because I had left her house only a few hours before, and she looked just as she had when I waved goodbye. Her hair still looked wonderful, and her eyes were painted with theatrical curlicues of black eyeliner.
    “Some people don’t listen,” Lana said, glaring at Bobby. He sometimes posted life lessons on his message corkboard. One of his favorites was “Learn to Listen.”
    “I’m just trying to help,” Bobby said.
    “I don’t want your help!” Lana yelled.