We’ve received a Letter to the Editor regarding our October interview with Novella Carpenter, an urban farmer who visited Spokane last month to promote her new book “Farm City.”
Dear Jon,
I felt that I must write to you regarding the article about Novella Carpenter and urban farming. She raises and kills her own rabbits, ducks and other animals. She is photographed holding and cuddling a baby rabbit and a duck. Apparently, first she cuddles and loves them, forming a bond with the animals, then she slits their throats, then she eviscerates them, and then she cooks and eats them. She says, “there is satisfaction in it [slaughtering the animals] knowing that their life will feed mine.”
My grandfather was born in Colorado in 1889, and he hunted in order to eat. If he did not hunt, he did not eat. Times have changed and it is no longer necessary to kill animals in order to eat. One can make a perfectly satisfactory diet that includes protein sources that are not from animal flesh. I quit eating meat several years ago and don’t even miss it.
I have always enjoyed your publication but I was really offended by the way in which Ms. Carpenter presented “urban farming.” Her whole approach seems pretty schizophrenic to me.
Cheryl Mitchell
