” Do it Yourself ” Farm City Tour

* With Novella Carpenter *

After doing a “straight” tour promoting her New York Times best-selling book, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, Novella Carpenter is taking her urban farming skills and knowledge on the road with hands-on workshops devoted to empowering people to grow their own food and raise livestock in city areas. To that end, she’s offering the following talks and classes in Kansas City at BADSEED this Fall !!! Special guest, Samin Nosrat, former Chez Panisse chef, will be joining Novella for a butchery & cooking demo.

Saturday, October 24, 6-7:30 PM @ BADSEED –

Farm City Talk: An Evening with Novella Carpenter

Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City: the Education of an Urban Farmer (the Penguin Press) will present a slideshow about her rag-tag farm in the middle of downtown Oakland. Her story of farming on land she doesn’t own inspired the New York Times to call it: “easily the funniest, weirdest, most perversely provocative gardening book I’ve ever read. I couldn’t put it down.” In addition to reading from her book and showing slides of her farm where she has raised vegetables and fruit; turkeys, bees, rabbits, chickens, ducks, geese, pigs and now goats, Novella will discuss the history of urban farming in America, the state of the movement today, and what we can learn from urban farmers around the world. She will also be available to give consultations to people eager to start their own urban farms

*This is an unlimited, all ages event - $10 at the door.  Kids are free.

Sunday, October 25, Part 1, 10 AM-1 PM, Part 2 , 4-5 PM –

The Complete Chicken

Part 1 - Generations ago, many recipes called for the woman of the house to first kill and clean a chicken for dinner. These days we are content to shop at grocery stores where that work is done for us. But some people are yearning to re-learn that lost knowledge, or they are curious what it really means to eat meat. At the same time, as more and more people keep backyard chickens for their eggs, it might become necessary to learn how to dispatch an older bird, cull non-producers or aggressive hens, or the occasional rooster from the flock. The first hour of the class will cover backyard chicken basics for keeping happy, healthy hens on a budget, from day old chick to egg producer. The remaining section will focus on best practices for killing a chicken quickly and humanely. It will also cover plucking feathers and cleaning your bird so that you can put healthy, home-grown meat on your table. Depending on the number of students, most people will work in groups to kill, pluck, and clean their own bird.

Part 2 - Butchery and Cooking Demo with Samin Nosrat: Since home-grown birds can be tougher than what you’re used to from the grocery store, we’ll focus on techniques to tenderize the meat.  We’ll show you how to chill and hang the bird to thoroughly drain its blood, and the proper way to rest meat so that your dinner will be as delicious as possible.     You’ll learn how to butcher a chicken quickly and efficiently into eight pieces and make a rich stock with its carcass. The class will also include a cooking demonstration with tips on how to season, roast, braise and grill so that you can extract maximum flavor from your backyard bird, as well as recipes for using all the offal, heads and feet so that none of your bird goes to waste.

Cost of Class is $100 per student, pre-register and payment required, spaces are limited, for details, location, or to sign-up contact Brooke at brooke@badseedfarm.com

BIOS:

Novella Carpenter is the author of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer (the Penguin Press, June 2009). She farms on a 4500 square foot abandoned lot near downtown Oakland and has been raising farm animals in urban areas for over ten years. Her writings have appeared in Mother Jones, Food and Wine, salon.com, and more. She also keeps a popular blog about her adventures in city farming at GhosttownFarm: http://ghosttownfarm.wordpress.com/. She studied under Michael Pollan for two years at University of California Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

A professional cook and freelance writer, Samin Nosrat looks to tradition, culture and history for inspiration.  Trained in the Chez Panisse kitchen, she cooked there for several years before moving to Italy, where she worked closely with the Tuscan butcher Dario Cecchini and chef Benedetta Vitali for nearly two years.  She has spent the past five years as the sous chef and farmwife at Eccolo restaurant, butchering, brining, and preserving nearly everything in an effort to make the restaurant as self-sustaining as possible.  Her writing has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Meatpaper, and Edible San Francisco.