June 15, 2008
By Thelma Gutierrez

THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is quite possibly one of the few households in America where rising food prices are not an issue.

JUSTIN DERVAES, URBAN HOMESTEADER: You just stay at home and you grow your own food in your backyard.

GUTIERREZ: Where high energy costs are not a concern.

ANAIS DERVAES, URBAN HOMESTEADER: We try to cook outdoors using the sun and free energy.

GUTIERREZ: Where sky high gas prices haven’t hurt one bit.

JUSTIN DERVAES: It takes vegetable oil, heat and some chemicals and makes biodiesel.

GUTIERREZ: Meet the Dervaes, a family of four who live off their land, every horizontal and vertical inch they can find. In their back yard — their front yard …

JUSTIN DERVAES: In our driveway, we’ve got strawberries.

GUTIERREZ: Even the driveway of their three bedroom in Pasadena, California.

JUSTIN DERVAES: One of our biggest crop is edible flowers.

GUTIERREZ: That’s right, even their landscaping is edible. The Dervaes’ urban home is a working farm on a tenth of an acre.

JUSTIN DERVAES: Getting a little rabbit’s taste out of it.

GUTIERREZ: They sell to local chefs.

JUSTIN DERVAES: They may call for three pounds of salad, we pick the three pounds of salad. No waste, no mess. That cuts down on overhead.

GUTIERREZ: Anais Dervaes says her family has been living green way before green was in. Their home is paid for and they live on about $25,000 a year. What they don’t sell, they eat.

(on camera): So what can you actually cook in here?

A. DERVAES: Anything that can be cooked in a normal oven can be cooked in a solar oven. And here we have some homegrown potatoes that we harvested and that we’re cooking up for dinner tonight.

GUTIERREZ (voice over): The sun also powers their home and heats their water.

A. DERVAES: You’re looking at our homemade, outdoor solar shower.

GUTIERREZ (on camera): This is the shower you use in the summertime?

A. DERVAES: Yes. And it’s heated with a simple black garden hose, and then the water percolates down and water’s our edible landscaping.

GUTIERREZ (voice-over): The Dervaes pick pets like chickens, ducks and goats that contribute.

JUSTIN DERVAES: Right now, they’re just — they’re pets, and they eat up our waste greens. So, we call them composters.

GUTIERREZ: Even their toilet gives back.

A. DERVAES: You’ll wash your hands with the new water. That water will go in and fill your bowl.

GUTIERREZ: Just when you think you’ve seen it all.

A. DERVAES: This is our bicycle-powered blender.

GUTIERREZ (on camera): Isn’t there a side of you that ever just wants to get out of bed, go in, turn on the blender, make whatever you need to make?

JORDANNA DERVAES, URBAN HOMESTEADER: I don’t really know another way. In a sense, I’ve grown up like this.

GUTIERREZ (voice over): Jordanna Dervaes says as a kid she was picked on for living green.

JORDANNA DERVAES: Right when I began to accept being different and unusual, then I started becoming hip.

GUTIERREZ: In 10 years, she says they went from the crazy family on the block, to the envy of their neighborhood.

Thelma Gutierrez, CNN, Pasadena, California.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0806/21/oh.01.html