Jim Montgomery, one of the co-founders of Green Faerie Farm, isn’t your typical red-headed, disabled, gay, geeky urban homesteader. But then how many of those do you know?
The gently-spoken 45-year-old likes to joke that in 1995, when he and two friends bought a 1920 house in West Berkeley with a large lot in back, the neighbors were excited that three gay men had moved in — thinking, no doubt, that home renovation and gentrification would quickly follow.
Instead of fixing up the house, however, the trio, all reeling from having lost most of their friends to AIDS, immediately got to work in the garden and started raising a menagerie of animals to create what is now Green Faerie Farm.
Today, the farm, on about 7,800 square feet of land, includes a large vegetable garden — currently producing tomatoes, zucchini, squash, kale, cabbage, celery, asparagus, and broccoli — as well as mature fruit trees such as apple, pear, peach, plum, apricot, avocado, cherry, orange, tangerine, fig, and pomegranate.
His fellow farmers, both from Costa Rica, grow the edible cactus nopales, and tropical fruits such as kiwi, passionfruit, and pineapple guava. The banana tree is yet to bear fruit but the leaves come in handy for traditional Costa Rican tomales.
The backyard farm also boasts some 20 chickens, about the same number of rabbits, a couple of beehives, and four female Oberhasli dairy goats (a calm, quiet Swiss breed) and their three kids.
Montgomery holds a degree in molecular biology from Cal and teaches math at Maybeck High School. For 25 years he volunteered at the Berkeley Free Clinic, offering HIV prevention education.
Montgomery was born with a birth defect, a genetic disability he shares with his father, in that he has only two thumbs and no fingers or fully formed hands. He wears prosthetic metal plates tied to his wrists by straps, which allow him to grip objects and handle animals. He moves about his backyard with grace, talks about his disability with ease, and exudes the kind of quiet confidence of a person who doesn’t view his physical difference as a limitation.
We chatted this week in his backyard farm.
Can you tell me the story behind the name Green Faerie Farm?
The name comes from the gay fringe — radical faeries — sort of the black Muslims of homosexuals. One of the problems of being gay is being accepted by straight culture and feeling like you need to move to the suburbs to fit in. Radical faeries reject that. They think gay people are unique, have tremendous creativity, and fewer problems around gender fluidity, or what it means to be masculine or feminine. The “green” is a nod to growing things and also in keeping with our political values.
How much of your food do you grow or raise yourself?
We raise all our own meat and have an excess of dairy; we sell some milk as pet food. If the three of us who manage the farm weren’t working full time we could grow 80-90% of our produce in summer and 50-70% during winter. When we retire that’s what we hope to do, that’s our ideal. The reality is more like 50% during summer and 30 percent during winter. Most of our food travels 50 feet to get to our table. … Continue reading »
