My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm
This book relates the story of a journalist who recently attempted to garden and raise chickens, ducks, and rabbits in his very small Brooklyn backyard. The stated goal and his contract with New York magazine was to raise enough food to eat out of his backyard for one month.
While the dysfunction of the marriage and lack of family support is disturbing, the book highlights the grave difficulty of trying to survive in an urban setting by raising livestock and gardening. The deeply polluted soil had to be replaced with many tons of topsoil. The dumb rabbits either died by fly-strike, a hideous death, or tore the heads off of their newborns. Predators and the pecking order constantly picked off his barnyard fowl. A tornado decimated the garden. An infinitesimal potato crop yielded a few spuds, most smaller than a quarter. Howard lived through food poisoning and lost 29 pounds in the year-long effort to sustain himself alone.
For urbanites who are mulling over whether they can “farm” in the city to survive, this book is a starting place. The smells, handling the animal wastes (blood from butchering and daily waste products), the extreme disappointments, and the grinding daily labor illustrates what might be faced.
Two years after the experiment, he settled for growing a few tomatoes and keeping a few chickens for the fresh eggs. Now, there is no talk of living off the land, just supplementing. – E.B.