The local take away from the White House announcement: A full-service grocery store may finally come to the people of West Oakland. It looks like the People’s Community Market, a long-anticipated mid-size retailer in West Oakland, may be a step closer to raising the capital it needs to break ground.

At a press conference Wednesday, FLOTUS announced that The California FreshWorks Fund, a $200 million public-private partnership loan fund and a project of The California Endowment, will help bring healthy grocers to food deserts. The endowment, a private statewide health foundation established to expand access to affordable, quality health care for communities in need, has been joined by prominent investors on the project, including NCB FSB, Kaiser Permanente, and JP Morgan Chase.

The goal of the fund is to provide loans at or below market rates to encourage new stores in Californian food deserts and it is expected to create or retain some 6000 jobs in the state. The First Lady also announced commitments from large chain retailers, including Walgreens and Wal-Mart, to open or expand 1,500 stores in food deserts around the country. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates, 23.5 million Americans–including 6.5 million children–live in low-income neigborhoods that lack stores likely to sell affordable and nutritious foods.

“The FreshWorks funding is so applicable to what we do and it’s a real acknowledgement of the work we’ve done for nine years in the community to be invited to this event,” said People’s Grocery executive director Nikki Henderson, who was summoned to the White House for the announcement. Since 2002, People’s Grocery has provided food education, training, and access to residents of West Oakland, including cooking classes, nutrition programs, urban agriculture instruction, a mobile grocery truck and a CSA delivery dubbed the “Grub Box.”

Read the full story at KQED.

Read a Q&A with Nikki Henderson on Civil Eats.

Originally published on Bay Area Bites

Not unlike their rural counterparts, urban farmers often make do without a secure relationship to the land they farm. Whether you’re in the city or in the country, being land-insecure makes planning the future nearly impossible. So, when the Oakland-based City Slicker Farms received $4 million earmarked precisely for acquiring land to grow food on, it came as a welcome surprise. The funding was awarded as part of a $5.4 billion state bond for projects involving water quality and access, park improvements, and natural resources and park preservation. And it’s more than a financial boost: it’s a game changer.

“Programs like ours often rely on the generosity of people who let us use their land–and they might end up wanting to sell it or develop it,” says Barbara Finnin, Executive Director of City Slicker Farms, “so we know deeply that it’s painful to put big infrastructure in and not to have the land for very long.”

For nearly a decade City Slicker Farms has been quietly scaling up their work in West Oakland, a historically under-resourced, largely industrial neighborhood that lies just across the freeway from the city’s downtown area. In that time they’ve built seven highly productive produce gardens, a greenhouse, and an education program, while supporting over 100 families with backyard gardens.

Unlike the ever-popular community garden model, City Slicker Farms is designed to distribute fresh food as widely as possible. “If we had a community garden, it might only impact 10 families,” explains Finnin. “With our Community Market Gardens we’re using all the space to grow a lot of vegetables and distribute through a farm stand; that we way we can funnel food to a lot more people.” However, none of the organization’s current garden plots are very big. In addition, many are odd-shaped and it’s not uncommon for City Slicker employees to be seen transporting a tool by bike between sites.

The organization already has a permanent 1.4 acre site in mind–a former paint factory that has undergone a brownfield cleanup process. The site’s owners approached City Slicker Farms last year and invited them to apply for the bond funding together. Key to the application process was a three-month long community design process with West Oakland youth, seniors, and families. Thanks to that process, the resulting park will include not only a large garden and orchard, but a chicken coop, a beehive, a dog run, and a tot lot.

Finnin says City Slicker’s seven current Community Market gardens allow them to grow around 7,000 pounds of produce a year. This new land is expected to double that number. In a neighborhood without a single full service supermarket, such growth could make a crucial difference. “It’s much needed,” says Finnin. “We run out of produce at
our market stands all the time.”

Although $4 million is an impressive number in the urban gardening world, the bond funding only covers the acquisition and development of the park/farm, and not staffing.

But Finnin says City Slicker hopes to provide as much work for area residents as possible. “In the construction phase we plan to see the money going into West Oakland.” On the programming end of things, at least some work will be done by volunteers–City Slicker Farms worked with over 200 last year alone–but Finnin plans to undertake further fundraising in order to pay an expanded staff.

The Bay Area is changing fast, however, and a competent staff may not be all that’s necessary to secure a future of ultra-local food production in West Oakland. So Finnin is also thinking far into the future–beyond the work of City Slicker, itself. Her hope is to legally secure the 1.4 acre plot as a permanent farm, so that it doesn’t get sold for development down the line. The concept is similar to the kinds of land trusts you see in many rapidly developing rural areas. As Finnin puts it, “this is land set aside for West Oakland residents and we want to ensure that it’s going to be dedicated for community use in perpetuity.”

Photo: praise cheeses via Flickr

Each year, between November and February, slowly and intently, hachiya persimmon altars begin to take root in my North Oakland apartment. They form on my kitchen window sill; on my bedroom dresser; on my dining room table; on my office desk. I fall into the familiar habit of always having one or two persimmons in my bag in case, in the course of the day’s travels, I meet a neighbor to whom I’d like to bestow a persimmon.

The first time I saw a persimmon was in my North Oakland neighborhood in California. The exact moment is now foggy in my memory, but the sensation remains clear, that quickening of the heart, that sudden unbelievable joy at such an unexpected fruit in the dead of winter. Now, four years later, I am on a train that has just departed the station in Bra, Italy, and I am heading towards Carmagnola. On the train ride, I’ve passed the most haphazard (insofar as their use of all possible available space) and well-tended orchards that nearly abut the train. And just a moment ago, the train crept along as Italian trains can, and in plain sight, we passed an orchard of hachiya persimmons. A few of the fruits were ripening, but by and large, the tree bore matte lime green fruit, with a few glossy orange globes towards the top. Each time I unexpectedly find myself in sight of a persimmon tree, the same heart-quickening sensation returns, the feeling as lucid as the first time I saw the fruit in Oakland.

What I remember most about that first time are the contrasts; the tree, heavy with fruit, so weighty, and still so unassuming in the dusk’s haze, glowing sweetly. And by this point, by the time the fruit is ripening, almost all the leaves have fallen, leaving absolutely no shield for the radiant orange fruit. They glow, almost unnaturally. I was riding my bicycle and paused in front of the tree, so struck by it. I think years from now, long after I’ve moved on from the Bay Area, the memory of winter persimmons will remain luminescent and magnificent, probably as clear as the day I first spotted the tree.

Persimmons may also hold a special place in my heart because I associate them with generosity. Inevitably when I meet someone who has a persimmon tree and I ask if I am able to harvest some of the fruit, they show an uncommon generosity with the fruit. This generosity does not stem from the desperate desire to rid themselves of the fruit, but I believe that it comes from a shared passion that cannot help but spawn the urgent desire to share.

Here is a case in point. Once, last November, just days before I was leaving for Rome, I was walking in South Berkeley with two friends. We parted ways, I was a bit dismayed from not having found a single viable fruit tree to harvest in our walk around the neighborhood. Just as I turned the corner from King to Woolsey Street, I spotted a middle age man, tenderly pruning his fuyu persimmon tree. Overjoyed, I collected myself and we chatted for a bit. He told me that he had more persimmons than he and his wife could eat this season. He sent me home with two brown lunch bags full of beautiful, ripening orange fuyus.

The morning I left for Rome, I cycled around Temescal and Lower Rockridge, running last minute neighborhood errands. I left my fruit picker with Jenn; a bag of apples for the next door neighbors; a thank you note to Linda for the figs. The fuyus I’d been gifted the previous week by the kind man on Woolsey Street were left on the doorstep of another neighbor. In what I thought was this woman’s front yard, there was a handsome hachiya persimmon tree, laden with fruit. Several years prior, I had left the woman a note requesting permission to harvest from her tree. Several days later, she delivered a bag of hachiyas to my front door step along with a note. For some reason, maybe because I was so taken with this tree and thus even more terrified of rejection, I had not approached the woman for two years, but instead, I watched the fruit ripen from a distance, and cycled past in the evening as the fruit shone in the dim light. I re-introduced myself and asked if it might be okay, once again, to harvest several fruit. She told me that she was not particularly fond of hachiya persimmons, but she adored fuyus. As a thank you for her kindness, I cycled over to her house, and I left the bag of fuyus on the porch bench.

Last year, I had the pleasure to create a hanging persimmon installation at August, a boutique clothing shop on College Avenue in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland. I cycled around the neighborhood, tapping all my persimmon leads, asking each household if I might harvest several fruits for the show. One house, which has two full hachiya trees on the terraced front garden, allowed me to harvest ten persimmons — such generosity in the wake of such a demand! Every year, this woman is inundated with requests from passers by to harvest from her stately persimmon trees, and she still managed to display such warmth and openness in honoring my request. I harvested the ten fruits well after nightfall, replete with head lamp, and a bicycle basket already full of persimmons gathered from other neighborhood trees. Each time I cycle past this house, I am reminded of the relationship that I have with the woman who lives there. She requested grapefruit in exchange, and once the fruits were ripe, I left a bag on the doorstep with a note explaining the location of the grapefruit tree. There is little like an un-seasonally warm April day, clear skies and the acrid smell of heaps of grapefruit, which have been warming and rotting in the April sun. As soon as you reach the top of a certain hill in Upper Rockridge, you won’t help but be able to notice the smell of the grapefruit, and at least for me, even as I bike past this intersection when grapefruits are not falling and rotting, and smell still hangs heavy in the air.

Lastly, here is a fond memory of a persimmon harvest with my friend Megan during the autumn of 2005. Megan and I cycled towards downtown Berkeley one October afternoon in search of two persimmon trees which Megan had spotted earlier in the season when the fruit was not yet ripe. We had a general idea of the location of the tree, we wove our way around the streets west of the Berkeley farmer’s market until we gleefully happened upon the hachiya trees, which were so heavy with ripe fruit — and also completely out of reach. The tree was glimmering with orange spheres, but it would take either a very confident tree climber or a ladder if we really were to do a serious job on the tree. So, we paused and considered the options, after unsuccessfully trying to scale the lower branches of the tree in order to gain footing to reach the higher limbs. Just at this moment appeared a man who looked like he’d definitely have a ladder in his shed. He did, and he kindly lent it to Megan and me for the afternoon, as we precariously repositioned the ladder, trying our best to harvest the fruit on the outlying limbs of the trees. Somehow, it becomes so tempting to reach for the fruit that is just out of reach. Megan and I were a veritable two person assembly line, alternating between me being in the tree and passing fruit to Megan below, and Megan scaling the ladder and passing down fruit to me.

Eventually, a small but enthusiastic crowd gathered at the trunk, mostly inquiring after the fruit that was being harvested, and there were a few sheepish requests for persimmons as well. Amongst the requests was also a rather forthright demand for ‘more fruit!’ by an older woman who spoke very limited English. Although the language barrier prevented us from exchanging love stories of the persimmon tree, what I did gather was that she had harvested fruit from the trees in prior season, and she arrived with three empty plastic bags, and she requested particular fruits to harvest.

Now, I am in Biella, Italy, a small town in the northern Piedmont region. One Saturday afternoon, at the height of the July heat, Bona and I wondered around a neighborhood southeast of the city center, hoping to eventually find the open market. Before we found the market, we happened upon a beautifully imposing hachiya persimmon tree on Via Addis Abeba. The tree sits on the edge of a lot which is also home to a black walnut tree, a plum tree, and a swath of blackberries. The house that sits in the middle of the lot appears abandoned, and I wonder what will come of the persimmons once they begin to ripen this late autumn, after I’ve moved on from Biella. I have a feeling that the fruit, will, as is so common with persimmons, have countless takers, and there will not be the sad sight of heaps of rotting persimmons at the base of the trunk. While it would be a perfect end to my four month stay in this sleepy town, I doubt I’ll be able to end my stay with a persimmon harvest. But, it’s my hope that all those who are lucky enough to enjoy the fruit enjoy the process thoroughly- from spotting the tree to gathering friends to harvest to patiently waiting for the fruit to ripen and finally, to breaking the little hachiya peak with a grapefruit spoon and savoring the season’s first spoonful of unadulterated neighborhood persimmon.

Imagine gathering several friends for morning, midday, evening or weekend foraged city bicycle rides through your neighborhood. Rough maps are drawn, noting the forage-ables that can be found at each location and ‘cold calls’ are made to your neighbors asking if you can sample a fruit from their backyard tree. You have the courage to introduce yourself (despite the pervasiveness and acceptance of urban anomie) and they reward your neighborliness with a sample of Santa Rosa plums, for example. Later, when you find yourself with a surplus of Persian mulberries, you, in turn, deliver a small basket to said neighbor. With time and in this fashion, a community of people who care for and know one another is built, and rather than being the exception, this could be the norm.

This is not idealistic, rather it is necessary, pragmatic, and creative — especially in times when much of the world is suffering from lack of access to healthful and satisfying fresh food. Forage Oakland is a project that works to construct a new model, and is one of many neighborhood projects that will eventually create a network of local resources that address the need and desire for neighborhoods to be more self-sustaining in meeting their food needs. At its core, it works to address how we eat everyday, and how everyone can benefit from viewing their neighborhood as a veritable edible map, considering what is cultivated in any given neighborhood and why, and what histories influence those choices. The gleaning of unharvested fruits; the meeting of new neighbors; the joy of the season’s first hachiya persimmon (straight from your neighbor’s backyard, no less); the gathering and redistribution of fruits that would otherwise be wasted — can be powerful and can work to create a new paradigm around how we presently think about food in our collective consciousness.

I moved to the Bay Area in late August 2004, just after finishing college. What I remember about that first taxi ride from the Oakland airport to my new house at Oregon and Martin Luther King Jr. Way in South Berkeley are the pastel colored squat houses graced with citrus trees in the front yard. Some of the houses along Ashby between San Pablo and Sacramento Streets looked a bit derelict to my eyes, and I found it curious that they would have fruit trees in the front yard. I considered fruit trees to be a display of abundance, wealth, or stability, somehow seeming out of kilter with a house that might house transient residents.

But I soon learned that many of the houses in South Berkeley and North Oakland, regardless of the socio-economic status of the residents, are graced with fruit trees. I found this fascinating. I spent a year living in this house on Oregon Street, more or less oblivious to the bounty around me. While I passed the citrus trees every day, along with other fruits which were, at that point, less recognizable to me, I hadn’t begun to think about the politics of the harvesting, sharing, and possible redistribution of the neighborhood fruit. So, for some time, I happily noted the fruit trees in my neighborhood, and surely appreciated their aesthetic appeal, but the interaction was more or less passive.

The following school term, I began a one year position working at the Edible Schoolyard, which is a school garden based at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley. There, I worked in the ¾ acre garden along side the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students, guiding them in exercises of cultivating, composting building, harvesting and propagating seeds. This was the first time I’d spent such an extended amount of time in a garden and this experience was an awakening, as it suddenly brought to life the countless fruit trees that I passed in my daily travels through Berkeley and Oakland. In due time, I could identify the various fruit trees in my neighborhood, from the passion fruit vines to the loquats to the kaffir limes. A new enthusiasm was borne as I became aware of the countless possibilities of exploring my neighborhood anew.

I began to redefine my neighborhood has an abundant place filled with an ever-changing variety of edibles. I mapped new geographies of the streets I crossed, and with time I became increasingly aware of the nuanced changes in the season that would produce green walnuts perfect for nocino or passion fruit at their prime. Fruits’ coming into season became a secondary calendar with which I gauged the passing of time. I marked the beginning of the spring with the first loquat harvest. Nowadays, five years later, this is all second nature. But, it was only in moving to Northern California that I became more keenly aware of how the seasons change a bit each day, as I could actually see (and taste) these changes for myself. I could know exactly when pears were at their peak by cycling over to 45th Street and harvesting a pear for myself. During plum season, my neighbor on Lawton Avenue would leave a basket of ripe plums for passers by; there was no questioning whether plums were in season.

Coming to these conclusions regarding my food choices as a young adult has been richly empowering and not as linear or obvious as one might think. There has never been a clearer moment for me to understand that what I decide to eat has a direct and immediate impact on others than during the five years I’ve spent in the Bay Area. There is a dedicated community of activists, farmers, eaters, and cooks who are all deeply committed to educating themselves about their food choices with the hope that they will be able to make a well informed decision regarding the producers they support. When presented with the choice, what could be more powerful than taking such a precious matter into one’s own hands?

Forage Oakland is about viewing food as a shared pleasure and a shared resource, and redistributing it to those who will enjoy it. Invite your neighbors to exchange their surplus peaches for their neighbor’s surplus blackberries. Leave a fruit basket on your neighbor’s doorsteps: apples by the pound, Santa Rosa plums, sour cherries, persimmons, pineapple, guava, and apricots. New associations will form, and new geographies will be created. The street corner where Ashby Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way meet will no longer be marked by its corner store, rather it’ll defined by the prolific fig tree on the northeast corner. Encourage your neighbors to share their backyard bounty and barter what they don’t intend to use. Hop on your bicycle and redistribute the surplus to another neighbor, making a note of the location of the harvested bounty. An edible landscape can be formed that is interactive, a bit different every day as fruit ripens and falls and as the seasons change. The barter can translate to other areas of urban living, and can create a community of people who’d rather do it for themselves and play an active role in their consumerism. When there are plums in your neighbor’s backyard, enjoy them with your neighbor!

It was tough sorting thru all of the submissions and their different variations, but we finally decided on the winner of our Killer Taco Recipe Contest. Erin Vang totally wowed us with her “Tacos Natalia”—an Indian/ Spanish fusion with snapper ceviche (Editor: See comments for alternatives) and homemade tortillas! Her delicious recipe is also included in our special taco-themed produce box available from the Fruit Guys. Make sure to order your box by July 27. Below is Erin’s recipe.

Tacos Natalia – Indian/Spanish fish tacos

by Erin Vang

This is an Indian-Spanish twist on the fish taco that always wows ‘em. They’re named for friend Natalie Sellers, longtime chef at the famous Towers restaurant of SF, who suggested the key ingredients–snapper and Spanish smoked paprika–that inspired all the rest.

The Spanish Part: Snapper Ceviche

Marinate 4 hours or overnight:

1 lb fresh, deboned snapper fillets, cubed
juice of 2 limes
1 tsp sea salt
2 tsp smoked Spanish paprika, e.g. Pimentón de la Vera, Picante
1 tsp best Indian cumin you can find, ground
1 tsp crushed chili aleppo

The Indian Part: Coriander Salsa

Buzz into a smooth paste in food processor. Refrigerate overnight to let flavors develop.

one bunch fresh cilantro, carefully rinsed
2 cloves garlic
1/4 red onion
1/2 Scotch bonnet chili, destemmed but with seeds
juice of one lime
1/2 tsp kosher salt
drizzle olive oil

The Taco Part: Tacos Natalia

Adjust seasonings of ceviche and salsa.

Assemble into tacos:

two soft, warm handmade corn tortillas (2C masa, pinch kosher salt, about a cup of water until texture is right; knead, press, griddle, hold warm)
a thick smear of coriander salsa
a generous (drained!) scoop of ceviche
a crumble of cotija cheese

Enjoy! ¡Buen Provecho! Jam kar uraaiye!

The increasingly coordinated campaign to inject the current mainstream food system with good-food principles has slowly gained momentum. For three decades now organic and sustainable food producers have been preparing the ground by offering food that is place-based, healthier for humans and ecosystems, and more delicious. For about ten years, visionaries and writers like Carlo Petrini, Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and Alice Waters have been providing the intellectual and cultural underpinnings for the good food movement. More recently, with local activists leading the way, a few cities, counties and states (notably New York City, Seattle, Woodbury County in Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Illinois) have been working to codify in ordinance and law a glide path for development of a better food system. Most recently, Michele Obama’s garden at the White House, Tom Vilsack’s at the USDA, and Maria Shriver’s in Sacramento sent a message that the top tiers of American political leadership are receptive to the good food movement. The stage is set for an explosion of comprehensive reform.

In Oakland, there were three concrete indications that a new level of grass tops political leadership has emerged to meet the grass roots. First, the Agricultural Marketing Service of USDA provided the bulk of the funding for a summit meeting entitled “Developing Sustainable Foodsheds to Enhance Food Access and Nutrition.” The senior USDA official attending the summit, Deputy Under Secretary, Ann Wright, head of marketing and regulatory programs said the term “sustainable foodshed” is not exactly part of the everyday lexicon at USDA. Yet, she and 15 officials from the marketing, food and nutrition, rural development, and regulatory divisions came anyway to engage good food activists in a substantive dialog so that summit participants can offer recommendations to policy makers on how foodsheds and food access may be improved. Clearly, today’s USDA is moving toward a new food system, not seeking to defend the old one from much needed evolution.

Second, Oakland Mayor, Ron Dellums, who spent 28 years in the US House of Representatives, 21 years on the Armed Services Committee, which he chaired for a time, addressed the Summit. He said that food security is national security, that military planners now see food as a potential primary cause of war. He emphasized that food links the global to the local and is therefore fundamental to the future of cities. He stated that the good food movement could count on him to assist with any effort by mayors to deliver the message to Congress that food security for cities must be enhanced. As if to underline his point, on the same day, the G8 issued its statement on food security in which they said, “food security is closely connected with economic growth and social progress as well as with political stability and peace.”

Third, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, the man who actually spawned the trend among political leaders with his Slow Food Nation garden in 2008, issued the most comprehensive food policy document yet produced by any politician in the nation. His Executive Directive on Healthy Sustainable Food for San Francisco is truly holistic, knitting the many elements required to create a functional foodshed that serves rich and poor. It contains 11 guiding principles and 15 actions with clear deadlines. Other cities have already embraced some of the items in Newsom’s directive, but what is most impressive is that he calls out the need to prioritize healthy food access, ecological health, and the interdependence of rural and urban communities in a period of economic crisis. He sees the link between sustainable food and the nation’s future economic growth.

Newsom orders City departments dedicated to nutrition programs to remain sufficiently staffed despite budget cuts to serve those needing better nutrition. He directs the City to advocate for federal and state policies that will bring about a sustainable food system. Specifically, he cites policies that conserve the region’s prime agricultural land and regional food and agriculture businesses — outside the city’s political boundary. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, he calls for good food principles to be implanted within the City code and general plan in order to ensure that development of a sustainable foodshed and good food access will continue after his administration.

With the linkage of food security and national security and San Francisco’s groundbreaking directive, the bar for healthy sustainable food policy has been reset for all other policy makers in the nation. We applaud both men for their vision and particularly Mayor Newsom for his bold action.

Eat Real will be a great party for the Bay Area, and Oakland in particular, to celebrate good food. We’re corralling the wagons with 30+ taco trucks, hot dog stands, and people on wheels selling every imaginable food – all made with at least a few locally-sourced sustainable ingredients. Our fabulous beer guy, Dave Maclean, is busy selecting around 40 local brews to have on tap; our partners at Buy Fresh, Buy Local have helped chose around 40 local craft food producers; and friends at People’s Grocery and La Cocina are helping build programming and more for the event.

This is the first annual edition of Eat Real, and we’re expecting 25,000+ attendees at the event. We are raising funds for a group of non-profits working locally in food in the Bay Area, and our model hopefully will be replicable by other groups around the country who are looking to raise funds for grassroots work and awareness of food issues via accessible and affordable events. Eat Real is free of charge (only the beer is ticketed), and we’re featuring street foods from over 15 countries – all made by artisans and chefs from around the Bay Area. Your taco secrets will help us spread the word about how to eat better every day. You can send your recipe in any format to info@eatrealfest.com. If you have any questions just send them along – we look forward to hearing from you!

If you liked Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, my guess is that you will love Novella Carpenter’s new book, Farm City: The Education of An Urban Farmer. I found it to be both grittier and funnier than Kingsolver’s book and even easier to read.

The book chronicles Carpenter’s somewhat unintentional experience of creating a “squat garden” in the vacant lot next to her apartment building in Ghosttown, which is what she and the other residents call their rundown neighborhood located near downtown Oakland.

Carpenter starts small (vegetables) but ends up with bees, goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits, geese, turkeys and even two pigs! Along the way, Novella and her boyfriend Billy meet their new neighbors — a motley crew including Bobby, a homeless man who sleeps in an abandoned car on their block, a woman named Lana (it’s “anal” spelled backwards as Lana points out when she first meets them) who runs a speakeasy out of her apartment, and a temple-full of Vietnamese monks.

She also makes new friends including Willow, the pioneering urban farmer who started City Slicker Farms and a much-lauded local chef (Chris Lee of Eccolo) who teaches her to turn the two pigs she and Billy raise entirely on scraps from green bins throughout Chinatown and from food foraged from local dumpsters into delicious cured meats.

Along with the journey from gardener to urban farmer, she takes us soul-searching on topics like the divisions between races, classes and rural and urban dwellers, what it means to be a carnivore, etc. All the while, she pours her heart into growing something green, beautiful and nourishing that will feed not only her and Billy but their friends and neighbors, as well.

Her writing is excellent — evocative, quirky, funny and brutally honest.  The book goes on sale Thursday, June 11th.