Ode to a Butchering Table

The gift of urban agriculture is the work

By Many Howard
The Atlantic
Nov 11, 2010
Manny Howard is the author of My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm.

Excerpt:

Located behind our home in Flatbush, Brooklyn, The Farm was equal parts fever dream and forced march. During the course of my unintentionally ambitious experiment I turned a neglected 800-square-foot patch of barren clay into a verdant wonderland of vegetables, fruit, and livestock. Live on what you produced, and that alone (with the exception of salt, pepper, and coffee beans) for as long as possible, that’s all I hoped to achieve.

Not only was it necessary to import nine tons of topsoil from Eastern Long Island, I had to first tunnel through dense substrate and build a drainage system so the soil wouldn’t float away during the first soaking rain. From there the work just got harder. I planted crops, built both coop and hutch, and installed 35 chickens—both laying hens and meat birds—along with half a dozen rabbits. I worked unceasingly for seven months to keep this unlikely assembly from imploding before the harvest arrived. When it did I was nourished, body and soul.

On The Farm I made more mistakes than anything else, and in the end lived off the yield from all that work for just six weeks. At the time, that felt like an enormous achievement. I still believe it was.

Read the complete article here.