First, there is the study in opposites: the sprawl of concrete meeting a spread of fecund growth, white picket fence lining city street, the roar of freeway competing with the screech of a hen celebrating the laying of the morning’s first egg.

Path to Freedom is itself a dichotomy: a farm in the city, a “peaceful” revolution. It’s an oasis, an example and a subtle confrontation. It is simultaneously, an “urban homestead,” which existed before the term, and also one family’s quest to find “freedom” amid the chaos of city life.

Jules Dervaes and his three children began building their 1/5-acre Pasadena family farm a decade ago, but it is only recently that the world has caught up to them. Both a renewed interest in sustainability and a sour economy has transformed what once might have been deemed “kooky” into a undeniably enviable independence.

“There was a time when we were the crazy people on the block, tearing up our lawn and planting things,” says the youngest Dervaes, Jordanne, 26,” and suddenly I look up 10 years later and we’re cool. I don’t know when that happened, but I do know we’d be doing this—whether it was cool or not.”

Establishing one of the first “urban homesteading” websites to document their shared experiment, the Dervaes have become, over the last 10 years, if not “cool,” then certainly highly admired worldwide. Millions follow their popular blog, which documents the family as it successfully feeds and fuels itself—entirely from the fruits of its own labor and the incredible bounty of its tiny plot of land.

“Part of the reason we’ve gotten so much attention [is] that we’ve shown that this can be done successfully,” says patriarch Jules Dervaes. “One of the points we wanted to make was not only could this be done, but it could be done with only a little money and a little land.”

In one year the Dervaes’ homestead can produce three tons of fruits and vegetables, 25 pounds of honey and nearly 2,000 duck and chicken eggs. They utilize solar heat and people-powered machinery: for example, a blender connected to a stationary bike (pedaling gets the blades going) and an old-fashioned hand wringer washing machine. They also make their own preserves and their own biodiesel fuel.

As a result of these Herculean efforts and a low-impact, self-sufficient, sustainable lifestyle, the Dervaes have become, quite unexpectedly, the poster family for the green homestead movement. It’s a crown, however, they seem to wear somewhat uneasily.

“The economic collapse has boosted our emails and our outreach and it seems like people are now looking at this lifestyle seriously, as a viable alternative,” says the senior Dervaes, but the danger is that it’s now become trendy. So it’s up in the air, which way it will go. I’ve been here before, back in the 1970s. There was [a] big rush, a ‘back to the land’ movement that was truly sustainable. But what happened is a lot of those people got out there and realized it was hard!”

For more about the Dervaes’ homestead, go to www.pathtofreedom.com.

http://www.thisisbrandx.com/2010/03/home-sweet-homestead-a-green-path-to-freedom.html

Self-sufficiency may be the rage right now, but it’s not a new concept. After all, pioneers had to be independent to survive in a new, often hostile, environment. A move away from the land began when farming became mechanized after World War II. Soon, suburbia replaced fields, and gardens gave way to landscaping. In the 1970s, people began to yearn for a simpler life, and the self-sufficiency movement began to grow.

Today, there is a huge trend to go “back to the land,” but why are we embracing a lifestyle where manure happens and vegetables come into the house covered in dirt instead of plastic wrap? Some make the decision because they don’t want to rely on the corporate machine for their food source; others are concerned with the planet and want to reduce their carbon footprint; while others want the pleasure and security that comes with self-reliance.

[...]

An Urban Setting

Self-sufficiency on acres of land is all well and good, but what about urban and suburban dwellers? how can you care for a family on such a tiny piece of land?

Jules Dervaes is probably the finest example of an urban homesteader in the world. Alarmed by the introduction of genetically modified organisms into the food supply, Dervaes wanted to stop relying on corporations for food. The Path to Freedom, his family-operated urban homestead in Pasadena, Calif., is the result. The homestead is run by Dervaes and his three adult children, Anais, Justin and Jordanne, and they produce more than 6,000 pounds of fruit and vegetables (400 different varieties) each year on their 1/10-acre garden. His urban farm has been feature by Oprah, ABC’s Nightline, CNN and The New York Times Magazine. Homegrown Revolution, Dervaes’ film about his project, has received worldwide praise and recognition.

“In 2001, there was a recall of taco shells that we had been eating,” says Dervaes. “They had been accidentally made with GMO corn that wasn’t certified for humans. I thought, ‘If corporations are able to make giant mistakes like this, how could I be satisfied with that lack of safety?’”

Dervaes says it took a few years to learn to work with his small space. He killed the grass in the front yard but didn’t have anything to replace it, so he went through a “brown year.” “We had some strange looks from the neighbors,” he says. “My daughter was worried to go outside because the neighbors would ask, ‘What is up with your dad?’ But I can’t blame them, because it was radical change. Everyone’s front yard looked the same.”

Dervaes finally hit on the idea of having an edible front garden, and today it’s a lush haven that people stop to admire. The back garden fits into every bit of space, both vertical and horizontal. Pots holding herbs are suspended from trellis poles. Raised beds, divided by small footpaths, are crammed with vegetables.

The Dervaes kids yearned for animals and found Pasadena codes allow all livestock except swine. “You’re allowed to have a set number, and some livestock have to be kept a certain distance from the neighbors’,” says Dervaes. “We did take it a step at a time. We had bantam chickens, then ducks and now two pygmy goats.”

[...]

How Much?

Self-sufficiency is a journey, not something you can jump straight into. Most people aren’t completely self-sufficient, even the most earnest.

[...]

Dervaes knows it’s difficult to be directly self-sufficient in a modern world, so all their extra produce is sold to local restaurants. They save seeds and sell them online. [Note: the family\'s own seeds are not available for sale. They do sell open-pollinated seeds from other suppliers at FreedomSeeds.org.] Solar panels, hand-cranked appliances and a greywater catchment system cut down on power and water bills. They also started several websites designed to help like-minded people get a start in urban microfarming. “Even though we have little space, we are still viable,” he says. “We grow the more valuable vegetables that we can sell to chefs, and we buy staples from a co-oop.”

Self-sufficiency is drawing people from many walks of like and for many different reasons. But they all have one thing in common–to go back to a simpler way of life, a life that rests easier on the land. What could be more rewarding?

[Inset] Not a Trend

Jules Dervaes and his family don’t see sustainable living as a trend. They see it as life. Plain and simple.

Well, maybe simple isn’t quite the word we’re looking for. In addition to their blossoming front yard that produces 6,000 pounds of herbs, fruits and vegetables every year, the Dervaeses own goats, chickens and ducks. With all those animals and no livestock vets in their community, they’re responsible for their animals’ health care. Talk about commitment and dedication.

See the family in action in Urban Farm exclusive online videos: www.urbanfarmonline.com/dervaesvideos.

Event Details:
In the midst of a dense urban setting in downtown Pasadena, radical change is taking root. For over 20 years, the Dervaes family has been transforming their home into an urban homestead, a model for sustainable agriculture and city living. They harvest three tons of organic food annually from their 1/10 acre garden. Solar energy and biodiesel reduce the family’s footprint on the earth. Big dreams and little space? This is one you won’t want to miss!

Presenter: Jules Dervaes

Workshop Session: G

An Interview with Jules Dervaes

In the bustling city of Pasadena, Calif., lives a family of urban-farm pioneers. Jules Dervaes has spent more than 20 years cultivating his 8,700-square-foot urban farm with the help of his three adult children, Anaïs, Justin and Jordanne.

The Dervaes family’s example of sustainability stands out in their quiet suburban neighborhood. The front yard is a lush agricultural oasis yielding 6,000 pounds of produce annually, which is sold to local restaurants and farmers’ markets. Their farm livestock (goats, chickens, ducks and rabbits) replace the typical suburban pets and contribute to garden compost. In addition, the Dervaes family has undertaken other sustainable pursuits such as solar-power paneling, homemade biodiesel fuel and water reclamation projects.

In 2001, the Dervaes family launched Path to Freedom to document their urban-homesteading progress and to encourage others to adopt a sustainable lifestyle. So far, their website has attracted urban farmers from more than 120 countries. The shift in perception toward sustainable living and urban farming emboldens Jules Dervaes in his endeavor to reduce his carbon footprint. “This is a sustainable family,” says Jules. “Our plan is to make a sustainable community.”

The film “Homegrown” tells the story of a farm scrunched around a 1500-square-foot home less than a mile from downtown Pasadena. It butts next to the intersection of Interstates 210 and 134. They grow about 6000 pounds of food in a year on one tenth of an acre. There’s also a goat and some chickens.

The popular term is low carbon footprint, and the Dervaes family have been intensely active in this regard for 20 years. Their commitment, however, seems to be more fundamentally fueled by a dedication to self-sufficiency. Jules Dervaes and his children, Justin, Anais, Jordanne, live and work at a modest yet ambitious ideal. Their shared devotion includes the evolving direction of papa Dervaes and his grown children.

Their bounty includes being satisfied with fresh produce that’s in season and generating satisfaction from the kitchen labors that follow their farming labors. It includes struggling for money when the cost of watering their compact crop rises significantly and restaurants buy less from them in a struggling economy.

Just the name of the film, “Homegrown,” and the name of their Web site, www.pathtofreedom.com, tells you much about the Dervaes family. They are inspirational. Most people will not walk the talk as thoroughly as they do, but they are an exemplary family.
[...]

Q & A with ‘Homegrown’
Chuck Jaffee: You have a well established career as a TV and film editor. Say something about taking on this documentary project as director as well as being the editor.

Robert McFalls: Most documentaries are “found” in post [after the filming has been done], so the editor is an important part of authorship. The director is more the driver than the editor. Editing suits my personality. With documentary editing, you get to be more of a storyteller.

CJ: How is it that you know the Dervaes family and got to make this film about them?

RM: I was looking for a project I wanted to do. I read an article about them. I liked the family aspect of their story. I contacted them.

CJ: What did you want the film to do?

RM: It seems like the economy and energy and environmental things are coming together in a way that it’s possible we’re going to have to do more of the kind of things the Dervaes family is doing, that we’ll have to get more back to our roots. Most people are just a few generations removed from being farmers.

CJ: What do you think makes the Jules Dervaes tick?

RM: Jules is a true believer, down the line. For telling a story, it’s good to have a person who’s true and driven by it. And yet, he’s vulnerable and warm. He’s a great character.

http://www.theunion.com/article/20091224/PROSPECTOR/912239979/1079&parentprofile=1055

Jules Dervaes presents “Urban Gardening as Education”
Industry Panel: ENERGY
Conference Center Room # 107
Friday, December 11, 2009 10:20 a.m.
http://www.green-technology.org/TI-new/

California is setting the pace for a green schools revolution that reflects the state’s commitment to preserving natural resources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The added benefit? Healthy environments that improve faculty morale and student performance.

High performance schools will be the subject of the third annual Green California Schools Summit, the largest green schools conference in the U.S. Taking place at the Pasadena Convention Center, Pasadena, California on December 9 – 11, 2009, the Summit covers every aspect of building, financing and maintaining green schools. Themed “Bringing Sustainability to a New Generation,” the Summit will bring together leaders in the green schools movement. Through a full range of educational workshops and sessions, networking opportunities and special events, they will share strategies, best practices and results from their green schools programs. The Summit will also feature an expo where hundreds of exhibitors will be available to discuss innovative products and services that can help schools and districts attain their green goals and significant short and long term savings. By popular demand. The Green California Schools Summit & Expo will show you how to green your school or district.

Despite turbulent economic times, funding can be found for school projects, whether from state sources, the private sector or federal stimulus funds. Don’t miss this chance to discover what’s available.

The Summit will also address the role of curriculum in green schools, and the role that schools can play in helping students find a place in the emerging green economy.

Seventeen years ago, Jules Dervaes placed in front of his three hungry kids a quarter-pound burger and a slightly heavier condition. They had to choose between the beef sandwich and a rectangle he’d drawn in the living room, which measured 55 square feet. “For every burger you eat, you lose about that much of rainforest,” Dervaes warned, pointing at it.

That day in 1992, space prevailed over food. The young trio killed their appetite, and the family has been vegetarian ever since. “You have to make people feel bad enough to make something good happen,” smiles 61-year-old Dervaes, who’s been trying to do precisely that for over 25 years-make others feel bad enough to want to plant seeds in their backyard.

The jolly American, who likes to call himself an urban homesteader (farmhouse owner), started sowing seeds outside his house in the monster city of Los Angeles almost two decades ago. Today, he owns a urban homestead which attracts not only green activists, science students and Americans who mistake his daughter’s goat for “some kind of a dog”, but also film festivals the world over. Recently, the Dervaeses screened their award-winning documentary Homegrown Revolution in Mumbai for wannabe homesteaders.

The film, which chronicles the family’s domestic green movement, starts with the Vietnam war, which disturbed then college student Dervaes enough to develop an ambition. He soon migrated to New Zealand, took up farming and felt like “I was travelling back in time”. While sweating it out in the fields, he ruminated about the path to progress: “Taking a step backwards.” A combination of circumstances forced him to move back to his homeland Florida, where he bought a 10-acre farm, but the need to give his kids “a better choice” forced him to sell the land and move to a low-income neighbourhood in LA in 1986. The backyard was full of mulch, and growing grass demanded money, attention and water.

So in the same uptight city, where vegetarians were branded as hippies, the Dervaes family decided to convert about 4,300 square feet of their backyard into a farm. The task ahead was Herculean-the soil had to be changed, a lot of digging was required and there was absolutely no precedent for their effort-but the three home-improvers were determined. Despite successive failures, non-cooperative weather, consistent loss of crop, time and money, they managed to transform their brown, worn lawn into a green organic garden. Their slow and steady endeavour, which now yields a produce of 6,000 pounds of tomatoes, broccoli, berries, peaches, red mustard, guavas and edible flowers annually, and is even supplied to local restaurants, is called Path To Freedom.

This freedom struggle entails some drastic lifestyle changes. There is an outdoor shower and the family bathes only once a week (sweat is fought by drinking water instead). The run-off helps irrigate their small farm. Three pygmy goats, two chickens, ducks and rabbits help the quality of soil by creating manure and form “the cutest composting system” according to 23-year-old Jordanne, the Dervaes’ youngest daughter. When she takes the goats for a hike, people stump her with their ignorance. “Is that a rabbit?” they’d ask. “A llama?” was another gem.

Jordanne says friends found her weird as she walked barefoot in the house, ate eggs that came from the chicken’s butt (”Where else do they think eggs come from?”) and had goats for pets. “You don’t smell like a goat,” they would say. “There is such a disconnect with basics,” Jordanne muses. In the US, she hears that farmers are starving. “But when we ask them how much land they have, they say ten acres,” reveals Jordanne, blinking. “I feel like saying, we have two chickens, you know.”

When the film was shown to students of an Udaipur college recently, a student said, “Thank you for bringing the Indian culture back to India.” That touched the Dervaeses, who feel more comfortable in India than in America. “In the West, we tend to think linearly,” explains Dervaes, drawing a straight ray and marking points named A, B and C across it on a notebook. “After producing and using, we don’t know what to do with the waste,” he says, circling the letter C. In the Third World, however, he finds that the same three letters form the vertices of a triangle called development. “Here, everyone recycles and works with their hands so there’s an instant connect with Nature.”

“Growing your own food is the only way of radical protest,” feels this persistent homesteader, for whom freedom means an escape from commercial monopoly over seeds and food. In 2001, when Genetically Modified corn turned up in food at Taco Bell, the cheerful gardener turned into a protester. The idea of GM food, strawberries being injected with a fish gene and the like seemed like an act against Nature to him. “GM, in my opinion, is almost anti-Hindu. The religion worships its trees and Nature,” feels Dervaes, who now has his own brand called Freedom seeds.

Homesteading may be a full-time occupation with crucial investments called time and space, yet Dervaes sees hope for Mumbai. When told about the terrace gardens here, he is impressed. “It’s a good thing you all have terraces-our terraces are full of air-conditioner ducts,” he smiles. “Start with whatever you have. Plant a seed, turn off lights, save water. The first step is to want to do it,” he says. The next one is to draw a rectangle.