On Saturday morning, EBPI went back to Jim Montgomery’s Green Faerie Farm to cover a rabbit slaughter. As one might imagine it was our most intense shoot so far, even though in reality it was in some ways extremely easy - just set up the camera and shoot, basically. Jim killed three rabbits, under the apple tree and in front of our EX-1.

Any footage we use of the slaughters will work as b-roll for the section of Jim’s interview where he talks about his personal views on raising animals. We got various angles and distances so we can be tactful, and not sensational, when we show it. But we felt it was an essential aspect of what he does, and worthy of some coverage in our film.

Here’s what he does: he takes a rabbit from its cage, brings it over to a spot in the garden, and straddles it while stroking the ears and calming it down. He closes the rabbit’s eyes as well, and it doesn’t take long for it to chill and stay there, motionless. Jim then grabs an old pellet gun, aims it straight down at the rabbit’s head, and shoots one shot into its brain.

The first two rabbits immediately stiffened, stood up, and fell over to the side, twitching. Jim moved them over to the cutting board and started to cut off their heads. Whether by virtue of the fact that they weren’t quite dead, or simply that nerves can still act up - plenty - after death, the rabbits kicked fairly violently during the cutting. It seemed though whether or not they were completely dead, though, the kicking was a nervous muscular reaction and nothing more. The head of a rabbit doesn’t come off easy.

After the heads were off, Jim cut off the tail and all paws but one and strung the rabbits up by the remaining paw, by a string hanging from a tree. From there he stripped the fur, which he saved in the freezer, and removed most of the organs. Then he rinsed the carcasses off with water. The end.

Jim knows what he’s doing. He’s killed over 100 rabbits, in his estimation. Over the course of that many animals, you’re going to see it all, including animals that remain motionless after the pellet shot, and others that kick violently. He’s tried several methods but has settled upon the pellet gun - he thinks it does the job as humanely and quickly as possible.

It wasn’t easy to watch. Bunnies are cute and soft, and in our society we are quite far removed from the meat we eat. To see an animal go from alive and well to skinless and gutted hanging by a string in 30 minutes was something of a shock. Also, the filmmaking aspect made for some strange - if not awkward - moments. “I’m sorry, can you put the liver back in for a second? We need to move the camera and get that again.” Jim took it all in stride and humored us and we fiddled with the camera, the bounce up in the trees, the tripod, and the mic and assorted wires.

This is part of Jim’s identity as an urban farmer. He kills his chickens, too, though he takes the goats to a butcher to get it done perfectly. The animals truly make his backyard feel like a farm - not just a food garden. It was tough to cover, but necessary, both for Jim’s identity and also to show another side of urban farming.

There’s a spot in Berkeley near San Pablo and Bancroft which takes its name from both an ecological concept and a identify-redefining gay movement. It has goats, rabbits, chickens, fruits, vegetables, and a beehive. It sells milk to pet owners, and teaches apprentices to care for and milk goats. From the street, it’s impossible to tell there’s anything more than just a house.

In 1995, Jim Montgomery bought a 1920 one-story house with two friends, and immediately began turning it into Green Faerie Farm. The garden measures only 6,000 feet - just a little over 1/10th of an acre - but in its urban setting it feels huge. Really, it’s a backyard that also happens to be a farm.

Jim has a degree in molecular biology, and teaches math at Maybeck High School in Berkeley. His family has lived in Oakland dating back to 1860, where his grandfather was a pig farmer in the hills. As farmers, his family weathered the Great Depression - and as Jim sees possibilities for another economic crisis, he’ll be ready again.

Jim inherited an unusual trait from his father: he was born with only thumbs on his hands. He wears wrist straps with metal plates that extend out and help him grip things. Around the farm, he has no trouble: “I can catch bunnies better than most people.” We actually interviewed him holding a little white bunny (forgoing a chance to have him hold a lethally cute baby bunny and not-as-cute larger black one), and he certainly handled it with much more aplomb than I.

When he was 12 he got a 2-foot-long Burmese Python, and marveled at the way he fed it living food. It got him to thinking about his own food consumption: why was did his food come in packages? Why was it so different than what his snake ate? “There was a disconnect there that I wanted to connect.” He later started making the connection, and now, years later, he knows exactly what he eats - because he either harvests it or slaughters it himself. He estimates he gets about 60% of his meat from his farm, and in the summertime, up to 80% of his fruits and veggies.

As a man who counts over 40 friends and acquaintances lost to AIDS, Jim is in some ways a survivor of a generation. His ultra-chill demeanor belies a busy and often challenging life, and it’s hard to imagine him doing much more, or living a life any closer to his ideals and beliefs.

He believes if everyone were educated and well-fed, a lot of the world’s problems would be solved. He also knows why cosine is gay and sine is straight, but he’s going to explain that one next time. He thinks the fact that chickens have been bred to be little egg bazookas sort of epitomized what is wrong with large-scale industrial meat production. He can stroke a cute bunny while he’s talking about what he’s going to make from its fur. He thinks you need to have a relationship with the animal you’re going to kill.

So where does he fall in the urban farming spectrum? This sums it up pretty well: “Our food travels 50 feet to get to the table.” Green Faerie Farm is probably as good an intersection of idealism and practicality as you’ll find. Plus, he loves it.

Jim was a great interview. Being a teacher, he knows how to answer a question with stories and to how keep a flow going; he generally made Adam’s job easy. There’s a lot left for us to capture - Jim’s walks around the neighborhood with the goats, milking with the apprentices, possibly a slaughter. And bunnies - always more bunnies.

He even gave us a couple ideas for Future Magic - all in all, a good day.