A child of back-to-the-land hippies, Novella Carpenter grew up in rural Idaho and Washington State. She attended the University of Washington in Seattle, majoring in Biology and English. Past careers include: assassin bug handler, book editor, media projectionist, hamster oocyte collector, and most recently, free-lance journalist. Carpenter studied under Michael Pollan at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism for two years. Her subsequent journalistic work reflects her interests-in farming, food, the environment, and culture. As an Urban Farmer, Carpenter has been cultivating the city for over ten years now, starting with a few chickens, then some bees, until she had a full-blown farm near downtown Oakland.