This is the entertaining memoir from Novella Carpenter, the daughter of back-to-the land hippies, and her remarkable efforts to create an urban farm on an inner-city vacant lot in a part of Oakland, CA nicknamed “Ghost-Town.”  The “farm” she creates, sits between train tracks and a freeway, on a dead end street full of run down homes. Novella is an urbanite, and she’s funny, likable and amazingly resourceful. Her frugality and D.I.Y, non-stop, hard work are admirable.  She starts with raising ducks, geese, rabbits, turkeys, adds beekeeping and a host of vegetables crops. Only after she buys a pig at a livestock auction and learns that the pig will grow to 300 lbs does she start her nightly dumpster diving behind the restaurants of Oakland to feed it. The narrator weaves, humor, compassion for her community, and a thoughtful, imaginative approach to life that can convince anyone they can take that bare patch of earth and make it magical.