Archive for July, 2009

America’s first family of ‘grow your own’ isn’t the Obamas, it is the Dervaeses [...]

Basically, for the past eight years, the family has taken the eco mantra ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ to its logical extreme. They don’t buy anything they don’t absolutely need. They make do and mend with old clothes and secondhand furniture, and reduce to a minimum bought-in resources such as petrol, electricity, water and food. It is a lifestyle that requires all the pluck and determination of old-fashioned pioneers.

Dervaes jokes about his less-than-green thumb when it came to sowing his first seeds. That’s why he loves herbs. “Herbs are always a good choice because they’re so hard to kill,” he says. The family devotes about a quarter of the front yard to 27 different types–everything from aloe to yarrow.