Meet a family who achieved what most people would think impossible in a big city. On less than 4,000 square feet of land in the heart of Pasadena, California, the Dervaes family gets all the food they need from their own backyard. This family of farmers grows 400 varieties of vegetables, fruits, greens and edible flowers and also raises their own livestock. But as a poster child for self-sufficiency, their green lifestyle does not stop in the garden. Almost all their electricity comes from solar panels and they use recycled cooking grease to fuel their cars. They’ve even found a money-saving method for washing up using water from their toilet. These are certainly not your typical city-slickers.

My Generation’s Val Zavala is welcomed into the home of these unique backyard trailblazers to discover the technique behind this well-sown clan.

http://www.aarp.org/home-garden/gardening/info-08-2010/littlehouseontheparkway.html

Many of you who follow this blog or actively participate on the MHK Facebook Page probably remember my several mentions of the Dervaes Family, the nearly self-sufficient Californians who garden just about every inch of their modest Pasadena home and even sell their harvest to local chefs and restauranteurs.

I first learned about Jules Dervaes a few years ago while watching a clip on ABC Nightline. I was instantly intrigued by this interview which showed how he gardened just about every inch of his front and back yard with edible goods and how he got his three grown children so actively involved in the lifestyle of this very modern, urban, self-sufficient homestead.

I was recently fortunate enough to discover the Urban Homestead’s online activity: a website, blog, their tweets on Twitter and connection with the public on Facebook . To that end, I’m so excited and grateful to be able to bring you my own interview with Jules Dervaes, the patriarch of this urban homestead, whom we can learn so much from about living a life free of the constraints of super-consumerism and significantly reduce our carbon imprint on the earth, without sacrificing happiness and wholesome living.

I hope you’ll read the entire interview all the way through, as it contains wonderful and insightful responses to the questions I thought you might ask him yourself. It’s exciting and liberating to learn how to live off the big or small space you occupy right now. I’m learning so much every time I re-cap the interview.

After reading, do you think you could do what Mr. Dervaes has done? Has it inspired you to even want to do what he’s done? Please do leave your comments at the end of this post and let’s start a community discussion on living a more eco-friendly, self-sufficient lifestyle.

Here are the questions & responses:

From what I’ve read about you, it seems as though the introduction of genetically modified food was the real catalyst for you beginning the urban homestead at your Pasadena, California home. Was this the case? If so, why was this such an important turning point for you?

The creation of the Path to Freedom Urban Homestead was the result of my long-held beliefs in living simply and caring for the environment. GMOs were the catalyst for my becoming a full-time homesteader in the city in 2001, but my journey began long before that in the 1970s. (I have written in more depth about those early years in Mother Earth News magazine.)

It was in 2000, when I was living in Pasadena, that, in an angry reaction to the news that U.S. biotech firms were bent on introducing GMOs into the food system, I took the next radical step towards becoming an urban pioneer. I had to protect my family from this mad experiment by providing them with the real food we could grow ourselves. I was shocked and incredulous—and felt helpless—that I was at the mercy of such corporate irresponsibility. This threat forced me to take action. I feared for my children: What kind of world was I handing down to them? That became the turning point for me when “enough was ENOUGH!”

Can you describe for our readers what exactly is an urban homestead?

A suburban or city home on a fraction of an acre where an individual or family lives by principles of low-impact, sustainable self-sufficiency through activities such as gardening for food production and preservation, cottage industry, extensive recycling, and generally simple living—including conservation measures and an old-fashioned DIY self-reliance.

Most people feel overwhelmed by the concept of having a small garden, let alone a larger one such as what you have on your property? What advice can you give to first-time urban homesteaders who may think it’s “too much work”?

Every project will, at the start, entail more work and time just because it is new. It took me 25 years to get my garden to this stage, but I began by planting just a few plants in a small space.

So, for those who feel overwhelmed, pick out vegetables or herbs you would enjoy eating, that are hardy and do well even for rookie green thumbs. Ask your local nursery staff which ones are best for your area and season of year.

Make sure you have good soil to start with. If not, purchase bags of organic compost to amend it. “If you don’t have healthy soil, you don’t have healthy plants.” Feed the soil first, with a regimen that includes mulching and compost. Any leafy greens can be grown easily in containers so you can start getting good results right away.

What did you do to get your family so intricately involved in homesteading–and enjoying and believing in this type of lifestyle?

I followed my father’s example. He had his children work alongside him doing yard work. We helped him clear a “jungle” on our Tampa, Florida property. By working together as a family, my father was setting an example, imprinting his work ethic on me, and so I did the same with my children. By their being involved when they were young, my children were able to experience firsthand, for themselves, the rewards of this way of life. After a while, having experienced success, they came to realize the potential of homesteading.

When they see what is happening in our world and hear about the critical problems we face, they don’t feel helpless because they are doing something about those problems. They have an immediate response to troubling world news—something they can do with their hands versus just talking and worrying about global conditions but not getting anywhere. Here they feel empowered. And you can’t beat empowerment as a motivator.

Aside from growing and maintaining the garden itself, what else are you and your family doing to live off the land?

After food, our family tackled the areas of energy usage, transportation, water and waste, plus established an extensive outreach work online and in person. We continue to hone our back-to-basics skills. Recent projects include setting up a backyard aquaponics system (fish farming and plants) and re-using our greywater from the bathtub for below-ground irrigation.

What challenges do you face having the urban homestead?

Lack of space! But that obstacle has led us to become inventive about using every square inch of space available for growing food—horizontal AND vertical. We still struggle to find enough space for working on additional projects and for storage.

Water is the most crucial challenge for living off the land in an urban setting with a semi-arid climate. We will be dependent on the city’s water supply unless we receive the blessing of rain in due season.

Today’s unpredictable weather patterns with extremes of temperatures have added a whole other level of uncertainty to growing our own food in recent years.

What challenges, if any, do you anticipate in the future with regards to your urban homestead?

In a word, GROWTH. My adult children need to develop their own homesteads, and this expansion cannot be done here in city. We have plans to establish a self-sufficient, agrarian community based on the homestead model that I have developed and are looking worldwide for possible locations.

Can you give our readers an example of the types of animals, plants, vegetables and edible flowers you grow on your land?

Before getting any animals, make sure you first check with your city’s or county’s codes. We have taken great pains to make sure our animals are well cared for and don’t cause any nuisance for our neighbors. On the homestead we raise chickens, ducks, goats, bees, worms and, now, fish. This work gradually evolved over a ten year period.

In the course of a year, the garden grows over 350 varieties of vegetables, herbs, fruit, and edible flowers. We try to find heirloom varieties. With the summer crops coming on, we will soon be enjoying tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, green beans, apples, blueberries, plus common herbs and also edible flowers, such as nasturtiums and dianthus.

What advice can you give to apartment, condo and townhouse dwellers with very little (if any at all) space to grow edibles?

Self-watering containers are good for balconies: they don’t leak, and they have a water reservoir. Neighbors can get together and share small spaces. Other people cultivate a small piece of their rental property—take space you don’t think you have, and turn it into a pint-sized garden or odd-shaped bed, for example, long and narrow against a fence. And community gardens are becoming more popular, too, for people who don’t have their own land.

I advise people that whatever your situation, return to the old ways of doing things and find at least one alternative to the modern way. If you can’t grow it yourself, buy it at a farmer’s market rather than the grocery store. Don’t buy processed food. Cook fresh foods yourself rather than eating out.

What advice can you give to folks living in areas of the country and the world where edibles cannot be grown all year round? Is it still possible to have an urban homestead in climates other than southern California?

In colder climates, people can extend the growing season by using cold frames, row covers and greenhouses, as well as over-wintering certain root crops. Yes, we have a long growing season, but we also are at the mercy of the weather. Southern California is not a paradise—we have hot summers and not much rainfall. One year, we lost almost all of our tomato crop (and, thus, a major portion of our summer cash intake). Our climate is challenging in its own way, and the water crisis is only worsening across the entire southwestern U.S.

If we had a shorter growing season, then we would need a lot more land. Learning how to preserve the harvest becomes even more important when you can’t grow year round.

Do you really generate 6,000 lbs. of edibles on 1/10 of an acre (4300 square feet)? I understand you sell your surplus edibles to local chefs to serve in their restaurants as well as to neighbors? Has the current economic situation reduced or increased interest in your fresh edibles?

We grew 6,000 pounds in our two best years. In recent years, due to a number of factors, we are averaging over 5,000 pounds annually. Our outreach has expanded exponentially, which takes more and more time away from the garden. One year, we re-roofed the house, doing much of the removal and prep work ourselves, so we neglected the garden. Finally, the extreme changes in weather have affected our harvests in the last three years.

Yes, some restaurants and caterers have reduced their produce orders as the economy has impacted their businesses. However, we have seen an increase in the number of individuals buying our produce.

If people visit Pasadena, which restaurants would they be able to visit where they could eat your edibles, particularly the salad that’s named after you?

Two restaurants in Pasadena that offer DerVaes Gardens mesclun salad mix are Marston’s and Elements. Individuals can also order produce in advance and pick it up from our front porch “farm stand.”

Is your home open to visitors for tours? Do you sell garden design plans for the urban homesteader?

The urban homestead is a viable working project used to provide our income from our garden. It is not for demonstrations or public exhibits; therefore, we are not set up for drop-in visits. Because urban homesteading is gaining in popularity, we are unable to handle all the tour requests, so we have focused on bringing the urban homestead to you online with thousands of photos and dozens of videos.

We also produced an award-winning, short documentary, Homegrown Revolution, which is inspiring others around the world to grow their own food. Because people face specific challenges in different areas of the world, we established Freedom Gardens, a free, online social networking site where backyard gardeners can help each other as neighbors did in times past.

We do have the layout of our yard on paper, and we are constantly updating it. Every planting season (at least twice a year), my son, Justin writes down on this schematic what he planted in which bed and how the entire yard is laid out. After many years of doing this, we have created an invaluable resource of record-keeping. However, the layout of our yard and this information isn’t available to the public. To put these significant materials in book form would be labor intensive and take us away from the garden work. The urban homestead is the life’s work and investment of the Dervaes family, built up with hard-earned experience and tested over decades.

What inspires you to keep doing what you’re doing?

On just a basic level, it is my family’s business, our source of income. And the incredible freshness and flavor of the food cannot be beat. On a deeper level, I find a purpose in doing something meaningful and am motivated by the challenge of learning new things. Also, I take my responsibility seriously as a parent to provide for my family’s future.

I feel it is truly a matter of our survival. Yet, my family and I have been blessed to do this creative work surrounded by so much beauty.

Do you think it’s possible for every American to live like you do? Do you think it’s imperative at this juncture when economic, agricultural and environmental crises loom, that every American live the way you do?

One day there will be a time when people will have to make drastic changes. Making some of those changes now reduces the shock of doing it all at once, later. Because Americans consume the most, they will be the most shocked when the resources are no longer there. As the world situation worsens, people will need to commit fully to a different, non-mainstream way of life. You can start a project of change whatever the circumstances, but you cannot keep straddling two positions, occupying the middle ground. A step backwards truly is progress when you choose a path away from the cliff. . . .

Any last thoughts, comments or projects you are involved in that you would like our readers to know about?

What Path to Freedom represents is a lifestyle change, a way to transition from this system to a better one. This difference sets us apart from other projects because we have created a real model where the tangible results of our changes simply speak for themselves. We are living it.

Future plans include the establishment of “Homesteadville,” a village-scale project that takes our practical, personal solution to the next level.

Find the Dervaes Family and the Urban Homestead online

http://www.UrbanHomestead.org
http://www.FreedomGardens.org
http://www.FreedomSeeds.org
http://www.PeddlersWagon.com
http://www.HomegrownRevolutionFilm.com
http://www.DerVaesGardens.com
http://www.JulesDervaes.com

Connect Socially with the Dervaes Family

http://twitter.com/urbanhomestead
http://www.facebook.com/dervaes
http://www.facebook.com/pathtofreedom
http://www.myspace.com/pathtofreedom
http://www.youtube.com/dervaes

Copyright © Jules Dervaes 2010

http://www.myhalalkitchen.com/2010/07/09/my-interview-with-jules-dervaes-of-the-path-to-freedom-the-modern-urban-homestead/

Dervaes Gardens sits practically on top of a Pasadena, California, freeway and is only blocks away from the famous Rose Bowl. Outside are all the trappings of twenty-first-century life: automobiles, satellite dishes, supermarkets, car washes, and stores carrying produce brought thousands of miles for the convenience of their customers. But inside, Jules Dervaes and his children have created what they call an Urban Homestead. Virtually every square inch of land they have available to them—a tenth of an acre in all—is utilized for growing their own food. In addition to the hundreds of varieties of fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers, there is a beehive for honey, ducks and chickens for eggs, and goats for numerous purposes.

Finding Dervaes Gardens is truly a trip back in time. You travel to its location by first taking a crowded, bustling freeway, then exiting at a busy, wide boulevard, and then turning off on a side street. If you carefully search the street for the proper address, you’ll most likely spot it without having to find the number: beautiful blooms and plants crowd all the way up to the iron gate and are even thriving along the curb strip, where normally you would find either poorly surviving grass or simply dirt.

You walk up to the porch and are warmly greeted by Jules’ daughter Anais, wearing a floor-length dress and carrying apples in her hands. She is gathering them for one of today’s chores: making apple butter.

Now, for one brief moment, you pause, fully expecting to turn back around and see a dirt road out front and, beyond that, orchards and fields dotted here and there with wood-frame houses languishing under the blue sky and bright summer sun. Perhaps a buckboard would be going by, pulled by a horse, the driver tipping his hat good morning to you.

Such a vision would be in perfect context to where you are currently standing; for back then everyone would have been doing as Jules and his family are now: growing their own food, and selling the surplus to customers and local eateries. It wasn’t until the advent of inexpensive long-distance shipping and scientific meddling with crop growth that it became more convenient to purchase produce at the local supermarket. Over time, the practice of growing one’s own food—and indeed the entire culture of local farming—became a relic of the past.

But it was just this future shock that brought Jules Dervaes to seek out the ways of his ancestors.

“I’ve had a garden wherever I’ve had my own home,” Dervaes told Organic Connections. “I emigrated to New Zealand in the seventies and started my first garden there, learning how to grow my own food. Then I came back to Florida and put a garden there. Then when I bought this home in ’85, I put in a garden here—it was just a little 15 foot by 15 foot section of the backyard. But there came a point when we had been using Taco Bell taco shells that they got recalled by Vons because they had genetically modified corn in them; and I thought that if they made that mistake with one genetically modified crop, why wouldn’t there be others? You can’t tell genetically modified products from the outside; they’re not marked and they look like any other product. So I just said, ‘I can’t do that to my children.’ I told them, `We’re going to turn this into a farm whether we like it or not.’ So that’s what happened here.”

Because the property had to be converted entirely—the backyard consisted in the main of a huge slab of concrete and a garage—it was a several-year process. However, in their first year they produced 2,000 pounds of produce. Dervaes was very surprised at the high amount. “We all thought it was a fluke,” he said. “Nobody could believe it, and I thought maybe we had beginner’s luck or something. But we stuck with it, and then in 2004 I decided to push the envelope a little further and gave my adult children the challenge to make 6,000 pounds—three tons—in a year. I think we did it because it would have been an embarrassment if we hadn’t. But you push yourself, set yourself high goals; and, just to make sure, we did it again in the next year.”

They’ve had a few ups and downs since, not the least of which is the drought that California has experienced in the last few years. But they’ve still managed to maintain high yields, feed themselves, and create a thriving business selling the surplus to local organic markets and restaurants.

“One of the blessings of the garden, besides giving us our diet, was we actually had a surplus, which was a shock,” Dervaes related. “I don’t know if you’ve ever thought what goes into a pound of lettuce; you can do a pound of tomatoes, bingo, but with lettuce you have to keep cutting—there’s a lot of area. All that stuff is really lightweight, so you’re collecting lettuce or greens like it’s nobody’s business, and I just thought we couldn’t do that. But when we finally perfected a little technique, we were able to sell to local restaurants and caterers. They’re taking off because of the local, fresh organic movement; but also, more than organics, because it’s local food. So the ones we’ve been selling to are getting good business.”

Over the years, Dervaes has learned how to grow his crops without the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. He became an expert in composting and learned to add minerals to his soil with rock dust (a process called “remineralization”) and worm castings. He fights pests with natural methods, using predators—praying mantises, wasps and birds—and organic pesticides such as neem oil.

As for weeds, he controls them mainly by not giving them room to grow. “I crowd them out,” Dervaes said. “I use mulch heavily, and then I’ll put plants close together. I’ll personally do all the weeding when they’re young, and if they don’t go to seed and you keep at it, you can win the battle of weeds without herbicides. But the regimen is to not have any room for them and to not let them seed at all.”

When it comes to his choice of crops, he decided to go far “outside the box” of what is conventionally available. “One of the things we wanted most of all was diversity. We’re prone to go for things that people have left by the wayside. Modern agriculture has come in and said, `This is your standard carrot,’ or ‘This is your standard lettuce; this is your standard squash.’ We said to heck with that—we’re going to go find some forgotten varieties. So we searched the world over and found exotic squashes, exotic cucumbers, exotic tomatoes, and more. We like that because we’re saving them for the next generation.

One example he likes to show visitors is a variety of squash called tromboncino. The fully ripe squash is some five feet long. “We take this everywhere and we show it off,” said Dervaes. “It’s a symbol of what we try to go for—heirloom stuff. You can’t worry about what the supermarket carries; you have to make your own diet where you live. Eat locally and grow locally. We’ve made a mission out of that one.”

In walking around the gardens, you soon discover that fruits and vegetables are not the only non-human residents here. Within and behind the building that was once a garage, eight chickens, four ducks and two goats make their homes. They provide eggs, compost and companionship.

The chickens are not average varieties. Two examples are a hen that is brown with black speckles and another that is black with broadly feathered legs. “We’re trying to save these heirloom chickens because the modern chickens just lay eggs,” Dervaes explained. “The speckled one is a Belgian variety and they lay small eggs, but they’re just pets and we also use them for compost. The black chicken is a cochin, a Chinese variety, and was one of the originals; in human terms she’s about ninety or a hundred and ten years old. She’s gone past her egg-laying capacity but she still eats the food and is good for compost.”

Dervaes then points to a duck. “The ducks are also egg-layers. That’s a khaki campbell duck; it’s a heritage breed from England. It gives some great eggs.”

About the goats? “Goats are for fertilizer. They also eat things that we can’t get rid of, like this pile of sticks and leaves. They’ll eat everything, including rose thorns, so they’re our trash compactors.”

At this point, your visit to the Dervaes Gardens is coming to an end. You’ve long forgotten the world that lurks just outside, that modern place where wonders like this are not at all commonplace. You’ve been totally captivated by the myriad smells from the crops and herbs, the sounds of the chirping birds and the buzzing of bees.

But if Dervaes has his way, this is only the beginning. “In the old days, people had relationships with nature and connections with animals,” he said. “When you remove that and put it in a factory someplace far away, people forget about it. When you have a different relationship with your animals and with your plants, when you treat them real well, they respond. Your own health and the health of the planet are intimately related, and as a society we’ve gotten away from that. So we just brought this all to pass in the city, in our Urban Homestead, and we’re spreading the word far and wide.”

To find out more about Dervaes Gardens, visit their website (fully created and maintained by Jules’ daughter Jordanne) at www.dervaesgardens.com.

You can also find out about the Dervaes family and their continuing journey by following their blog at www.urbanhomestead.org.

For more information on soil remineralization, visit www.remineralize.org.

http://organicconnectmag.com/wp/2010/07/urban-homestead-local-organic-and-in-the-city/

By Chrystal Baker

Nestled amongst a row of unassuming homes in Pasadena, California, there sits a house with a family’s garden–a garden that produces almost 400 varieties of crops and up to 6,000 pounds of harvested produce. The Dervaes family grows just about everything they eat on a daily basis. Not only is it their means of sustenance, but it is also a business. This business, and their way of life as a whole, have become a blueprint for people across the world who want to go back to the basics of self-sufficiency.

It began as a way for the Dervaeses to decrease their carbon footprint, eliminate consumption of genetically modified foods and also take back control of their independence. In 1984, Jules Dervaes bought a home in Pasadena on one-fifth acre of land and decided that it would be a veritable urban homestead for his family. Having spent several years as a small scale farmer in his home state of Florida and also after a brief stint in New Zealand where he raised bees and grew his own food, Jules was fairly equipped to take on this challenge. He and his three children–Anais, Justin and Jordanne–made concerted efforts to live a more natural lifestyle and use less resources. They grew vegetables, flowers and herbs in the front yard, stopped usage of the air conditioner and clothes dryer, became full-fledged vegetarians and utilized solar power and grey water. In the mid 1990s, the family began selling the pesticide-free, edible flowers in their front yard to restaurants and caterers. Just before the year 2000, the Dervaes Garden became a main source of the family’s income as they decreased the amount of flowers sold and focused on the vegetables that flourished each season. What had once been a means of providing meals for the family became a business. In 2001, they decided to document this new life in an online journal, Pathtofreedom.com. As of today, the website is a number one resource for those of similar mind striving to create their own urban homesteads.

The Dervaeses work together in all aspects of life as they maintain the seasonal crops, take care of the goats, chickens and ducks in the backyard coop and process orders and deliveries to local restaurants in the Pasadena area. It seems as though they live in a completely different world from their neighbors in Downtown Pasadena. When they first began to use less electricity, practice water conservation and grow all of their food, it was seemed peculiar. Fast forward to 2010, and there is pure recognition of the benefits of harvesting a garden of organic foods and even churning jugs of biodiesel for the family car. They have shunned many of our daily conveniences in exchange for the simplicity, reward and wealth of working with their hands. This was never a decision based on the search for fame–it was simply the sincere desire to exert power over their lives and destiny.

After two decades of living in their own square off the grid, the Dervaes family has pushed itself to the top of the list of educators for urban homesteading. Now, they participate in a number of outreach activities with local schools, environmental festivals, film screenings of their documentary “Homegrown”, workshops and community events. Outreach has been added to the list of work that the family does to encourage more people to take this step backwards for progress, as Jules has said. Through these activities and their main website: www.Pathtofreedom.com. The family shares all of the information learned over the years with others who are interested. They have even created a social networking site: www.Freedomgardens.org, for people worldwide to discuss sustainable living practices through food.

Although they have found emotional and personal wealth, the family does not live richly. They earn, on average, $30,000 a year for four people. They have found savings in homegrown food, solar powered heating system and outdoor shower, a hand-cranked blender, biodiesel fuel created from restaurants’ discarded vegetable oil and shopping for second-hand clothing and furniture. It is easy to see how they can live well, even on a smaller scale. The most notable and noble aspect of the Dervaes’ decision to live in this manner is how they have managed to secure, maintain and grow a very strong sense of family. They live together, work together and eat together. And they eat well. Their goal for living a better life has had a very strong impact on their community in Pasadena and far beyond. They are living a revolution and hope more people join in.

Urban Homestead
631 Cypress Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91103
http://urbanhomestead.org/

http://basilmagazine.com/cms2/view.htm/2/58/916/1854/Live+Urban%20Homestead

In the middle of the bustle of Pasadena lies the Urban Homestead, a self-reliant oasis for Jules Dervaes and his adult children, Anais, Justin, and Jordanne. The family lives and works on the property, where a tenth of an acre is devoted to gardening. The average home-sized spot has yielded more than 5,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables annually for the past two years. It boasts more than 400 different types of produce, as well as nearly 2,000 chicken and duck eggs and 25 pounds of honey, which is sold to local restaurants, caterers and other clients and also finds its way to the Dervaes’ table.

“I wasn’t sure when I started how much I could grow, we just keep pushing the envelope that’s all,” Jules Dervaes says.

Dervaes hopes to encourage others to take up the spade and grow some of their own produce. He recommends a few easy crops for beginners, such as herbs, edible flowers, pole beans and greens, such as leaf lettuce, arugula, mustard, regular and ruby Swiss chard, kale and collards. Greens are good in the winter and spring, Dervaes says, and in summer, he suggests tomatoes, sweet peppers and hot peppers. He likes a challenge in his vegetables. “Squash, I would categorize as too easy, then you have the issue of having too much.”

Don’t fret if your vegetables are not “grocery-store perfect,” homegrown produce can look a little different from what you may be used to. Tomatoes, especially heirlooms, can come in “funky” shapes, but they taste wonderful. “At the store they have to have perfection because people don’t like blemishes, but the real organic vegetable won’t look as perfect,” Dervaes says.

Your produce may also be different colors than you see in the store. For example, carrots not only come in orange, they can be white, yellow, red, or deep purple. Try growing vegetables in unique hues on purpose–experimenting for fun and flavor.

Also, in organic gardens, it is common to see holes in the plants’ leaves, as the bugs know good food. Just wash as you harvest and enjoy.

Don’t be afraid to ask your local nursery for help. They should have the plants that are in season and will grow in your area. “I thought once you have a good season, then you’ll always have a good season, but Arctic ice is melting, bees are dying–there are a whole lot of things at odds right now, and nature’s having a rough go, so you’re going to have some bumps in the road,” Dervaes says. The most important tip is to be patient. “You have to keep coming back to try to adapt and try something else,” Dervaes says. “Experiment because you are going to learn from it.”

Timing
How you start your plants depends on what you plan to grow and how much time you have. Seeds are best started a couple months in advance of the season, but are susceptible to weather. If it’s later in the season and you want to get going quickly, purchase 4-inch plants from a nursery. Greens and smaller vegetables, such as radishes, are easy and best to start from seeds, while bigger produce, like tomatoes and peppers, are easier to start from plants. If it’s really late in the season, buy plants in gallon or larger containers that are about to fruit or already have some on them. “You can splurge just to have a crop, to get your first under your belt,” Dervaes says.

Soil
Much of Southern California has poor soil, so Dervaes advises you to enrich it. He recommends using organic compost, following the directions on the bag for the proper amount for your space. You can also make your own compost from kitchen scraps and “finished” plants or produce that goes bad before you can harvest it.
If you have animals running around–the Urban Homestead has goat, chicken and duck–their manure can help you create extra-rich compost. They use nine different kinds of compost to find out what works best for each crop. “Some people feed the plants; We recommend feeding the soil the plants grow in, “Dervaes says.

Water
It can be expensive, and water restrictions go with the territory in Southern California. This is where your soil is the key. With poor soil, the water will sit on the surface, which doesn’t benefit the plant. Good soil will be spongy and hold water. To help conserve water, don’t use a sprinkler that goes everywhere. Instead, hand-water at the base of each plant. Mulch heavily throughout the season, as keeping the soil covered will protect it from drying out from the sun. You can select fine to heavy mulches as appropriate for the growing area and plant.

For a successful start in your garden, Jules Dervaes of the Urban Homestead recommends:

Nasturtium is an edible flower. Its leaves and petals are good in salads and its seeds can be pickled. You can also nibble on the petals of roses, Johnny Jump-Ups and bachelor’s buttons.

Herbs are great to grow because they thrive despite our hot and dry climate. Try unusual types of plants, such as yellow sage and oregano which add color to your garden. French tarragon doubles as good groundcover.

Ruby chard (red Swiss chard) adds color and can be started as seed. Harvest its leaves as you need them. The younger, softer leaves are tasty in salad, while the older, heavier leaves can be cooked for a side dish.

Tomatoes are always popular, but they need a lot of sun exposure. Plant them in containers so you can move them around to find just the right spot. Also don’t give up on tomatoes. The fickle plants may do poorly one year and thrive the next. Three plants in a 15-gallon tub should keep your family stocked with tomatoes throughout the summer.

Bell peppers are also a great summer plant, but expect them to be smaller than you find in the store.

Red Russian kale is a great winter crop to plant in November or December.

Beets are also good during colder months and have a long harvest, since you can eat the leaves as salad throughout the season and pull out the root whenever you like.

Pole beans are pretty on a trellis in an odd corner of your garden. Pick them frequently–the more you harvest, the more they produce.

Jules Dervaes shares some is his tips to get you growing:

Start small so you have a better chance of success.

Begin with “foolproof” plants, such as herbs. Also find out what your neighbors are growing and ask your local nursery which plants and varieties do well in your area.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help, but still do most of the work yourself so you know what to plant the next year. Gardening for yourself is rewarding.

Garden as a family: “Especially when they bring it to the table, they’ll eat it if they grow it.”

Soil is the key to a successful garden. It is alive and needs to be well, so nurture it. It may take a long time to obtain healthy soil because nature takes a long time.

Be patient and never quit.

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PHOTOS: http://www.insidesocal.com/rose/2010/06/photos-edible-living-arrangements-at-pasadenas-urban-homestead.html

The American director of a prize-winning environmental documentary film has said he owes his success to the two years he spent living at Stafford, near Hokitika.

Jules Dervaes’ short film Homegrown Revolution, about his 40-year journey to become self-sufficient, received an honourable mention as best short film at the Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival, in Palmerston North last week.

The former beekeeper and founder of the worldwide Urban Homesteading movement, which encourages urban dwellers to live a low-impact, self-sufficient lifestyle, said he owed his success to the inspiration he received from both the people and the countryside when he lived in Stafford during the 1970s.

“I owe a great debt of gratitude to several locals who taught me skills, gave me advice and kindly assisted me when I was in need of help in my struggle to become self-sufficient,” he said.

“My three adult children and I have recreated a modern version of the Stafford homestead on a 1/5th acre city lot in Pasadena, California, where we grow our own food organically and try to live a simple lifestyle.”

He said both the film and the Urban Homestead movement provided a “personal solution to an out-of-control, global crisis.”

Reel Earth festival co-ordinator Christine Coles said Mr Dervaes’ film impressed the judges with its upbeat, optimistic outlook and its ‘can do if you want to’ attitude.

“There is such an energy about it you feel you simply must either get started planting or if you’re a seasoned gardener it challenges you to reassess some of the traditional Yates Gardening techniques which we learned from our parents at about the time Jules Dervaes planted his first garden on the West Coast, 35 years ago,” she said.

Urban Self-Sufficiency: Eating and Living the Sustainable Way

Since 2001, Jules Dervaes and his family have been living a protest—Path to Freedom—against corporate control of the food supply. They now grow over 2.7 tonnes of organic produce annually on a one-fifth acre residential lot in Pasadena, California (1/10 acre garden). Their project incorporates alternative energy, transportation, and back-to-basics practices. In a talk illustrated with stunning photos of his Southern California urban homestead, Mr. Dervaes will present steps individuals can take, where they are and with what they have, to become self-sufficient and live as responsible stewards of the earth.

This presentation will include a screening of the family’s popular, multi award- winning 16 minute short film Homegrown Revolution currently being screened at the Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival in Palmerston North (http://www.homegrownrevolutionfilm.com).

Jules Dervaes, founder of the urban homestead movement, and his three adult children, Anais, Justin, and Jordanne, are eco-pioneers demonstrating how living self-sufficiently can be achieved in a city residential environment with limited space. Additional sustainability projects the family have undertaken include raising “citified” farm animals; installing solar panels to generate electricity for their home; and making their own biodiesel fuel from waste vegetable oil. Mr. Dervaes’s first “homestead” was here in the South Island in the early to mid-1970s.

The man at the centre of flood concerns in Stafford has credited a small concrete breakwater built by a former resident 30 years ago for saving his house, and possibly his life.

Rob Wanrooy, who was this week told he would have to stump up the cash to pay for flood protection from nearby Waimea Creek, yesterday came face to face with the man who he said was responsible for minimising the damage to his home during recent flooding.

Jules Dervaes, a former Stafford beekeeper, experienced similar problems to Mr Wanrooy when he lived in the same property in the early-1970s.

Before moving back to live in his native Pasadena, in California, in 1974, he built the breakwater to protect the property from flooding.

Mr Dervaes was back in New Zealand this week with his family to show a film about urban organic farming at a Palmerston North film festival, and when a friend sent him the recent Guardian picture of Rob Wanrooy he said he felt “a serious case of deja vu”.

“Before I moved back to the States we were flooded twice in two years. It was amazing seeing that picture, I was in the exact same situation as Rob 35 years ago. The creek burst in exactly the same place and the water took the same identical path then as it did now,” Mr Dervaes said yesterday.

“At first we managed to build a barrier with a bulldozer but the water got so high it eventually just blew wide open, so then I started to build a concrete wall as I knew where the water was coming from and I hoped the wall would take the water to the road.”

Mr Wanrooy said without the breakwater his house would certainly not have survived the recent flood.

“It is possible that it may even have saved my life.”

He said he felt it was up to the regional and district councils to pay for flood defence, rather than leaving it to individual homeowners.

“It doesn’t make sense that they can pay thousands to drop 1080 but they can’t pay to fix a leaky creek.”

http://www.greystar.co.nz/node/182

The Dervaes family have transformed their California home into an urban homestead. They harvest nearly 3 tons of organic food from their 1/10 acre garden while incorporating many back-to-basics practices, as well as solar energy and biodiesel. The idea started when the family was living in Hokitika in the 1970s. (duration: 16′37″)

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/20100525

Listen: http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/ntn/2010/05/25/jules_dervaes
Download MP3: http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20100525-1130-Jules_Dervaes-048.mp3

Download this episode to your MP3 player, throw on your work clothes, grab your spade and head to the garden. Leave the European Bailout and the NYSE glitches behind you and grow something real.

Jules returns to the show and this time I (Steve) have moved beyond making lame excuses as to why I don’t have time to grow my own tomato’s. The questions I have for Jules this time are more directed to the beginner gardener but I have a feeling any green thumb will enjoy this conversation as well.

This episode of Two Beers kicks off with a short chat about Jules’ appearance on a reality show on the Food Network channel. It’s a lively and humorous discussion but I encourage you to follow the links below and watch the show for yourself. Getting a glimpse of the Dervaes’ home is a rare treat and can inspire you to build a two-story Cobb oven… just watch the video already. Enjoy the podcast.

Jules Dervaes – Path to Freedom – Urban Homestead – Find them on Facebook

Jules on Food Network

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

http://twobeerswithsteve.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=613729