I can’t say I’ve ever lived next door to someone attempting to live as Novella Carpenter does at Ghost Town Farms, i.e., raising not only vegetables but also animals for food.
I imagine the challenges for both the farmer and the neighbor are both complex and sensitive, and I was particularly interested to read about this unfortunate situation in Minnesota.
Book
Minn. urban farm sows some unhappiness
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http://www.agweek.com/event/article/id/21922/
At the very beginning of her book The American Way of Eating, Tracie McMillan writes, “Like all myths, the idea that only the affluent and educated care about their meals has spread not because it is true, but because parts of it are. Healthier food is more expensive; that much is true. So is the fact that it can be hard to find in poor neighborhoods. And yet it requires an impossible leap of logic to conclude from these facts that only the rich care about their meals” (2). McMillan explains that she had bought into this myth—that home-cooked, healthy, fresh food was “for the rich”—until, as a writer “covering the poverty beat” for a small magazine, she profiled a young New York girl who was attending a cooking class (3). For the first time, McMillan began to ask herself why it was easier and cheaper to eat junk food than it was to eat healthy food. She asked herself, “Why is it so difficult to eat well?” (9), and that question launched her investigation of the American food system and remains at the heart of her book.
On Tuesday, October 8, Kalamazoo College’s Mary Jane Underwood Center for Civic Engagement and Farms to K will present a public screening of the recently-released documentary, A Place at the Table, that takes up McMillan’s question and asks us to consider why 50 million Americans—1 in 4 children—don’t know where their next meal is coming from, let alone have the resources to ensure that that meal contains healthy, fresh, food. The film, by the producers of Food, Inc., traces the story of three food insecure Americans “who maintain their dignity even as they struggle just to eat” (Place at the Table). Following the screening, there will be a discussion of hunger in Kalamazoo, led by Phyllis Hepp, of Kalamazoo Loaves & Fishes, and Dayon Woodford, a K College student working on a senior thesis on food access in Kalamazoo.
This screening of A Place at the Table is open to the public and takes place from 7 pm - 9 pm Tuesday, October 8 in the Recital Hall of the Fine Arts Building on the campus of Kalamazoo College.
~ Dr. Amelia Katanski, Kalamazoo College
Reading Together Steering Committee
Book
A Place at the Table
place-at-the-table-160
http://kzpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/KPL/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ILS$002f1582$002fSD_ILS:1582194/one?qu=9786315043444&lm=ALLLIBS&rt=ISBN%7C%7C%7CISBN%7C%7C%7CfalseEven though we’ll all have the opportunity to hear Tracie McMillan and Novella Carpenter in person when they come to Kalamazoo in March and April respectively, we are eager to share these videos which briefly introduce you to each author and to some of the issues they address in their books.