After debate was spurred this year by an incident involving urban-homesteading-advocate Novella Carpenter — who got called out by some animal rights folks for selling, among other things, rabbit pot-pies that she had made from her own rabbits — the City of Oakland finally took a vote this week to end the ban on selling homegrown produce. (The S.F. Board of Supervisors passed a similar ordinance back in April.) This was one of things Carpenter was cited for by the city’s Planning Department, under an archaic law that banned “agricultural activities” and all home businesses that were not indoors.
The City Council did not, however, discuss the issue of keeping farm animals, and nor would this new revision to the code have helped Carpenter, who was forced to apply for a $2,800 permit in order to keep up with her homesteading — Carpenter’s little farm is on a vacant piece of property adjacent to the apartment building where she lives, and the new law only applies to selling vegetables from a person’s own yard.
Carpenter chronicled the creation of her West Oakland farm in the book Farm City.
Oakland allows urban farmers to sell produce [Chron]
Earlier: Oakland May Change Its Urban Farming Rules Now That They Made an Example of Novella Carpenter
The Culprit in Novella Carpenter’s Urban Farm Kerfuffle Was a Rabbit Pot-Pie
