Here's a question for you:  Does Michelle Obama require a "conditional use permit" to share the produce grown in the White House garden?  To sell beets for $2 a bunch, grown and picked from the bountiful urban produce patch, Novella Carpenter of West Oakland, California sure does. "Novella Carpenter took over a vacant lot on a hardscrabble corner of West Oakland eight years ago and turned it into a working farm of vegetables, goats, rabbits and, sometimes, pigs." Carpenter-turned-gardener "milked goats, made cheese and ate much of the produce."  Novella even "wrote a popular book, ‘Farm City,' about the experience and became an icon of the Bay Area's urban farming movement," and did so long before farming expert Michelle signed a book deal with Crown Publishing. The First Lady promotes backyard and community gardening, and plans to write a how-to on cultivating Swiss chard out back - next to the dog run - during a...(Read Full Post)